A woman from a village in Alsace in east France has told how she was hit by a meteorite as she sat on her terrace - an incredibly rare event.
Just before the woman and a friend had heard a loud "boom" from the roof of the house as they sat outside at 4:00 on July 6, she told her local paper Dernière Nouvelles d'Alsace.
She said the stone bounced off the roof and struck her in the chest, leaving a bruise over her ribs.
Her first thought was that it was an animal, before she realised what had happened.
The woman, from Schirmeck, later had it checked out by a geologist, Dr Thierry Rebmann.
© The Trustees of the Natural History MuseumThe tiny fragment of a meteorite that landed on a driveway in the U.K. in 2021. The rock that hit the woman in france was six times smaller than this one.
"Finding a meteor is already uncommon, but to be in direct contact and have it fall on you, that is astronomically rare," Dr Rebmann told France Bleu Alsace. "We haven't seen that in decades in this region."
In fact, according to The Meteoritical Society's database, only five meteorites have landed in France in the 21st century, with the last one in 2015 weighing barely 3.12 grams.
Dr Rebmann identified the object on the woman's request saying it resembled a volcanic rock.
Such objects are usually burnt up as they cross the Earth's atmosphere, he said - which is what is often referred to as a shooting star. However, in this case, there was a little material left, around 50g in weight.
According to Dr Rebmann, the meteor was not rare in itself and did not consist of rare materials, however, he said it is very rare to be struck by one.
He has now recommended that the meteorite undergoes in-depth analysis done by a planetary physics institute to determine its origins.
"Its mineralogical composition can give us an idea about where it may have come from," he said.
Reader Comments
The True Story of History's Only Known Meteorite Victim (written prior to this incident) [Link]
The is maybe the third incident of a meteor making contact.