suspected meteorite death in southern India

[space otter]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/scientists-investigate-suspected-meteorite-death-in-southern-india/ar-BBpfcc9?li=BBnb7Kz
Reuters
Sandhya Ravishankar
4 hrs ago

Scientists investigate suspected meteorite death in southern India

© STR/AFP/Getty Images Indian authorities inspect the site of a suspected meteorite landing on February 7, 2016 in Vellore district in southern Tamil Nadu state in an impact that killed a bus driver and injured three others on February 6.

 
Indian scientists are investigating whether a man was killed by a meteorite, which if confirmed would be the first recorded death from falling fragments of space rock in almost 200 years.

Jayalalithaa Jayaram, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, has said a bus driver at a college in her state was killed by the meteorite and awarded 100,000 rupees ($1,470) in compensation to his family.

"A meteorite fell within the college premises," Jayalalithaa said. The man "sustained serious injuries and died while on the way to the hospital."

Jayalalithaa, a former film star, left tight-lipped local officials struggling to explain the mystery blast at the engineering college that left a small crater and broke windows.

The bus driver was standing on a patch of grass near the college cafeteria when he was killed, while two gardeners and a student were injured, officials said. A dark blue stone resembling a diamond was found at the scene.

Government officials at first suspected the blast was caused by explosives accidentally left after building work. However, investigations found no evidence of explosive material at the site.

"When no evidence of explosive material was found, we moved to the theory that it might be a meteorite," said a district official who asked not be named. "It is not confirmed yet as samples need to be analyzed."

A team from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics was expected to visit on Tuesday to collect samples.

G. Baskar, the principal of the college in Vellore district, was working in his cabin when he heard an explosion.

"It was a sound like nothing I've ever heard before," he said. "There was no smell at all, no fire, nothing."

The last reported death from a meteorite strike was in 1825, according to a list kept by International Comet Quarterly, a scientific journal.

Simon Goodwin, an astrophysics expert from Britain's University of Sheffield, said meteorite deaths were rare because the rocks usually burn up when passing through the Earth's atmosphere or land in the ocean or hit remote areas.

"When you look at the fraction of the Earth's surface that is heavily populated, it's not very much," he said.

In 2013, a meteorite exploded over central Russia, raining fireballs over a vast area and causing a shock wave that smashed windows, damaged buildings and injured 1,200 people.

(Editing by Andrew MacAskill and Nick Macfie)

[zorgon]

Was going to post that yesterday but didn't have a reliable source and the one I had used images from an unknown meteorite mislabled Russian

But I will toss them in here as they are a cool capture. Just have to find the original source

[funbox]

nice to see the family was well compensated *first in 200 years* *immortalised in stone?* *excuse second pun *, would have thought the meteorite would have gone for a few rupees more though

funbox

[space otter]

after  comments went looking and found this


https://www.rt.com/news/331687-india-man-killed-meteorite/

Universal karma? Indian man believed first to be killed by meteorite

Published time: 8 Feb, 2016 01:51
Edited time: 8 Feb, 2016 02:54


© Steven Watt / Reuters

An Indian may be the first known human being to have been killed by a meteorite hit. Authorities said that a small celestial body struck a southern college campus, killing a bus driver and injuring three others in an incident initially reported as a bomb.

The "mysterious explosion" that took place on Saturday in Vellore, a city in the south Indian state of Tamil, has been confirmed as a meteorite impact by Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

"A mishap occurred yesterday when a meteorite fell in the campus of a private engineering college in Vellore district's K Pantharappalli village," Jayalalithaa said.




A bus driver who was walking in the area was struck by the meteorite and killed. The victim, named only as Kamaraj was reportedly thrown 10 feet into the air by the impact, and declared dead once he was transferred to hospital.


Sam Daniel Stalin ?@jsamdaniel  · Feb 7 
Piece of a meteorite found at a private engineering college in Vellore. One person was dead in the explosion.



The impact also injured three people and nearby buses and buildings. Witnesses said they saw a mysterious object fall from the sky.

While the government initially suspected that the driver had been killed in a bomb blast, forensic scientists could not find traces of explosives. Instead, authorities said that they have recovered a piece of a meteorite, in a two foot deep crater near a water tank where the incident happened.



Prashanth ?@itisprashanth  · Feb 7 
Crater formed due to meteor impact at Nattrampalli, vellore. looks like a powerful impact.



Prashanth ?@itisprashanth  · Feb 7 
Windows shattered due to Meteor impact at Naatraampalli, Vellore. Just like russian meteor impact .


In addition to offering the best medical treatment the government promised to pay the families of the victim and those who were injured compensations for the unfortunate "mishap."

"I have ordered the Vellore district administration and hospital officials to provide them best treatment," Jayalalithaa said.

While meteorites occasionally hit vehicles and buildings with people inside, there have been no casualties reported from direct hits thus far. The closest call know to date was the Chelyabinsk incident in 2013, where a superbolide exploded in the Russian city's skies, damaging hundreds of buildings and injuring more than 1,000 people.




Saturday's death may become the first registered death from meteorite, as according to calculations by astronomer Alan Harris the person's odds of being killed by a celestial body impact during lifetime are about 1 in 700,000.

[Dyna]

This is interesting.

Still, a report by the National Resource Council estimates that there should be approximately 91 meteorite-related fatalities every year. Perhaps many meteoric deaths have simply gone unreported—a possibility supported by the fact that historic records are very sparse before the 19th century.

But based on records compiled by Harvard's International Comet Quarterly, it's clear there have been close calls over the past 200 years. These include a—later disputed—report of an Indian man getting killed by a meteorite in 1825; another case of an Indian man getting struck in the arm by a space rock in 1827; and many instances of meteorites smashing through people's roofs or hitting their cars. A (possibly apocryphal) report declares that a meteorite struck a house in China in 1907, causing it to collapse and killing the family inside. In 1915, another report claims that a meteorite tore off a Chinese woman's arm.

With animals, we have a few solid reports of death-by-meteorite, including a horse that was struck and killed in New Concord, Ohio in 1860, and a dog that had the misfortune of getting walloped during a meteorite shower over Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911.

http://gizmodo.com/the-many-times-humans-have-almost-been-killed-by-meteor-1757844238

[space otter]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/meteorite-not-responsible-for-killing-man-in-india-nasa/ar-BBplC5U?li=BBnb7Kz
AFP
10 mins ago

Meteorite not responsible for killing man in India: NASA

NASA on Wednesday said it was unlikely a meteorite was responsible for killing a man at a college campus in India last week, as local scientists continued to examine the mysterious object recovered from the scene.

Authorities in southern Tamil Nadu state had claimed that a meteorite fatally struck a bus driver and injured three others on Saturday.

After reviewing photographic evidence, the US space agency told AFP that they did not believe the object was a meteorite.

"While more details are forthcoming from local scientists, this is unlikely something from space," Dwayne Brown, a NASA spokesman, said in a statement.

"To form a crater the size of what has been posted online would have required a meteorite of at least several kilograms," he said.

Local officials recovered a blue object, which was roughly smaller than an adult hand, near the accident site and claimed it had left a crater in the ground. The college also reported that buildings on the campus were damaged during the incident.

Two days after the episode, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram said the unknown object was a meteorite, triggering an international debate.

G.C. Anupama of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, which sent a team to examine the object, said the group has not finished their investigation yet.

"The team has received a sample from the local police investigating the event. The nature of the object will be ascertained only after a detailed analyses by the experts," Anupama, the dean of the institute, told AFP.

Meteors are particles of dust and rock that usually burn up as they pass through Earth's atmosphere.

Those that do not burn up completely, surviving the fall to Earth, are known as meteorites.

In February 2013 a meteorite plunged over Russia's Ural Mountains, creating a shockwave that injured 1,200 people and damaged thousands of homes.




ahhh what kind of college was it?
oh yeah   private engineering college in Vellore district's K Pantharappalli village
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm very interesting

[zorgon]

Meteorite hits Car


Explanation: The Peekskill meteor of 1992 was captured on 16 independent videos and then struck a car. Documented as brighter than the full Moon, the spectacular fireball crossed parts of several US states during its 40 seconds of glory before landing in Peekskill, New York. The resulting meteorite, pictured here, is composed of dense rock and has the size and mass of an extremely heavy bowling ball. If you are lucky enough to find a meteorite just after impact, do not pick it up -- parts of it are likely to be either very hot or very cold. In this weekend's Leonid meteor shower, few meteors, if any, are expected to hit the ground.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061119.html