[meteorite-list] German Cottage Destroyed By Meteor?

From: Darryl Pitt <darryl_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Oct 20 12:45:19 2006
Message-ID: <0F094DBD-9A33-489E-AC62-8A8E03F463A5_at_dof3.com>

The last time I encountered something like the following it had been
suggested years ago in a Reuters story that the impact of a meteorite
(originating from a meteor shower) destroyed a home and started a
fire that killed two young children in Columbia. After a little
digging, I learned there was no electrical power supplied to the home
(located in a slum) and purportedly no accelerant. I suppose because
my bro is a forensic psychiatrist with an expertise in infanticide
that I immediately concluded that dear-ole-dad used "the meteor
started the fire" excuse to kill his kids. Reuters put me in touch
with a local paper who put me in touch with the local police. Dad
later confessed to the crime.

A bolide creating an arc of blazing light cannot land near where it
was observed; only bolides that seem largely stationary in the sky
and grow larger with the passage of time could pay a visit to your
doorstep.
Wonder who wanted to kill grandpa---or maybe he was sneaking a cig
and feel asleep dreaming of (fill in blank).




On Oct 20, 2006, at 12:19 PM, Ron Baalke wrote:

>
>
> http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?
> type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2006-10-20T142152Z_01_L20298092_RTRIDST_0
> _OUKOE-UK-GERMANY-METEOR.XML&WTmodLoc=NewsLanding-C11-Odd-3
>
> German cottage destroyed by meteor
> Reuters
> October 20, 2006
>
> BERLIN (Reuters) - A fire that destroyed a cottage near Bonn and
> injured
> a 77-year-old man was probably caused by a meteor and witnesses saw an
> arc of blazing light in the sky, German police said on Friday.
>
> Burkhard Rick, a spokesman for the police in Siegburg east of Bonn,
> said
> the fire gutted the cottage and badly burnt the man's hands and
> face in
> the incident on October 10.
>
> "We sought assistance from Bochum observatory and they noted that at
> that particular moment the earth was near a field of meteoroid
> splinter
> and it could be assumed that particles had entered the atmosphere,"
> he said.
>
> "The particles usually don't reach the surface because they
> disintegrate
> in the atmosphere," he added. "But some can make it to the ground. We
> believe this was a bolide (meteoric fireball) with a size of no more
> than 10 mm."
>
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Received on Fri 20 Oct 2006 12:45:09 PM PDT