While enjoying a cricket county match, two spectators were apparently treated to one of the rarest of cosmic events: a meteorite falling from the sky, landing right in front of them. The “dark” rock, measuring 5 inches wide, broke in two on impact. Amazingly, a piece hit one of the witnesses.
“One piece bounced up and hit me in the chest and the other ended up against the boundary board,” said Jan Marszel. “It came across at quite a speed – if it had hit me full on it could have been very interesting.”
It’s not clear from the Telegraph‘s minimally skeptical article when this happened (I’m assuming it was during the recent Middlesex vs. Sussex game in Uxbridge, northwest London, using the tidbits of information from the text) and the only expert opinion cited is that of Dr. Matthew Genge, a meteorite expert at Imperial College, who hasn’t handled the evidence yet.
“If this turns out to be a meteorite it’s very exciting and would be the first fall in the UK since 1992,” Genge points out.
(That last statement isn’t very accurate. I’m certain that there have been many meteorites falling onto the UK since 1992. If proven true, this would be the first witnessed fall in the UK since 1992.)
UPDATE (July 27, 10:22 am PT): With thanks to Philip Stobbart, who also commented on the Uxbridge object, some clarification of Genge’s quote has been provided, I stand corrected:
Ian O’Neill does a good job of debunking this, with one minor error. A ‘fall’ to a meteor expert is one of two categories of meteorites, falls and finds, referring to when they were seen – falling, or found later – not to meteorites actually physically falling. The papers made the same error, although they accepted the idea of this being the first fallen meteorite since 1992…
Original post continues:
Thank goodness the eyewitness account didn’t include a description about smoke bellowing from an incendiary-like pebble (i.e. the recent Israel spoof/weapon), but there are some huge question marks hanging over the validity of the Uxbridge object.
The first red flag is that one of the witnesses said: “…out of a blue sky, we saw this small dark object hurtling towards us.” I might be wrong, but spotting a 5-inch wide object flying through the air, at speed, ain’t easy. I would have thought the only time they were alerted of the ‘meteorite’ would have been when it hit the ground. Or when it hit Marszel in the thorax.
Secondly, was the ‘meteorite’ really 5 inches wide? After a quick search, I found a photograph of the offending object:
5 inches? Are you sure? I know us guys are known for overcompensating, but this is ridiculous. Granted, it’s probably just shoddy reporting, but that piece of rock is barely an inch wide.
Also, when a meteoroid blasts through the Earth’s atmosphere, a huge amount of heat is generated around it, creating a ‘fusion crust.’ This crust should be very obvious surrounding recently fallen meteorites. Looking at this picture, no fusion crust is visible. It could be that we are looking at the interior of the broken ‘meteorite,’ and the black fusion crust is on the other side, but there’s no indication in the photo that this is a bona fide space rock.
If I were to place a bet, I’d say that this is not a meteorite. However, it will be interesting to see what the experts think once they are able to study the sample.
Special thanks to Twitter buddy Madge Leebman for the tip!
