New Delhi: In an extremely rare astronomical event, a woman from Eastern France’s Alsace, was hit by a meteorite while sitting on her terrace.
The woman was having coffee with her friend on the terrace when she was hit on the ribs by a mysterious pebble.
"I heard a big 'Poom' coming from the roof next to us. In the second that followed, I felt a shock in the ribs. I thought it was an animal, a bat!" the woman was quoted as saying.
"We thought it was a piece of cement, the one we apply to the ridge tiles. But it didn't have the colour,” she added.
To understand what stuck her, she got the rock checked by a local roofer who suggested it to be a meteorite. The rock was then examined by geologist Dr. Thierry Rebmann, who confirmed its extra-terrestrial origins.
The rock appeared to contain a mixture of iron and silicon, and could be a meteorite, said Dr. Rebmann.
The geologist further said that the phenomenon of people being struck by such objects is extremely rare, adding that the Meteorites are "space rocks" that survive their journey through the Earth's atmosphere and hit the ground.
According to NASA, these objects, known as meteoroids when they are in space, range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. Almost 50 tonnes of meteoritic material are estimated to fall to Earth every day.
The first confirmed case of a meteorite directly striking a person occurred in the US in 1954, where a woman was struck by a 3.6 kg stony meteorite that crashed through her roof, leaving her with severe bruising.
With inputs from IANS