Picture this: You’re safely in bed and suddenly a meteor passes over your roof and descends right next to your head, making you realize in an instant how life is hanging by a thread! That’s exactly what happened to Ruth Hamilton of Golden, British Columbia. She says her dog woke her up for a few seconds before a piece of about 1 kg crossed the surface and landed a few inches from her pillow.
Maybe his dog saved his life! According to a Canadian television channel world NewsIt’s a piece of meteor that lit up the sky earlier on the night of October 3. The discovery was later confirmed by a team of experts from Western University in Ontario, Canada.
« Everything in the story was consistent with a meteorite fall, and the fact that this beautiful fireball appeared around the same time made it a very obvious case. Peter Brown, professor of astronomy at Western University, said in: CBC.
1 in 1,600,000 “chance”
This incident brings us back to the question: What are the risks of being killed by a meteorite? As you can imagine the answer to this question is not simple, because events are rare. However, in 2014, Stephen A. Nelson, Professor of Earth Sciences at Tulane University, posted: a tool After making the effort to calculate the probabilities of such an event. He estimated the risk of death from a local collision from a meteorite, asteroid or comet at 1 in 1,600,000. In other words, the risk is very low, although greater than the odds of winning the EuroMillions jackpot (1 chance in 139,838,160).
In this case, if luck finally decides to work entirely in Hamilton’s favour, a meteorite making the same kind of landslide entry (literally) cost Ann Hudgens his life in 1954, the first known person to hit a meteorite. Not to mention that the said piece weighs 4 kg. But as with Hamilton, Hudgens’ house roof wasn’t in vain, as he braked the body hard before hitting the thigh. But she wasn’t as lucky as Hamilton, but she was badly bruised.
How about a piece of space rock that’s been invited into a stranger’s house? Hamilton says it plans to keep it after Brown and his team examined it in detail. ” I’ve never felt afraid in my life “,” to announce to me International News. “I didn’t know what to do, so I called 911 and when I spoke to the worker, I turned my pillow and saw a rock slipping between two pillows. ».
from a meteorite
« It was like an explosion. So I jumped out of bed, and when I came back I saw a hole in the ceiling Hamilton costume: world News. « It shivered like a leaf. […] You sleep perfectly and safely, you think, in your bed, and you could be swept away by a meteor, it seems ».
After his call, a police officer was immediately sent to investigate. The latter initially suspected it was a construction site wreck on a nearby highway. ” Phone call (building site) They said they didn’t cause an explosion, but they saw a glow in the sky and that’s when we found out it was a meteor. Hamilton says. In fact, according to astronomers, it’s part of a meteor shower that occurred earlier in the night.
A video posted by Global News about the event:
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