Some people make wishes by meteors, others are hunted by meteorites …

2025年11月15日 | admin | A1
"Source of this article: Popular Science China"
Author: Enjoy the cool (National Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
The article comes from WeChat official account (ID: kexue Dayuan), a scientific compound.
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When a meteor streaks across the sky, it’s a romantic scene to make a wish while watching the stars burn all over the sky.
Did you know that these stones from outer space will also be executioners of human beings? If the meteor is no longer fleeting, but comes at you, can you still make a wish for it with peace of mind?
Meteorite-Unburned "Meteor"
The most beautiful astronomical phenomenon is the meteor. Those whispers streaked across the earth’s atmosphere, and generate showed an amazing bright line. Its stay is shorter than a flash in the pan. Most of the space debris forming these bands is very small, and its size is between the size of sand and pebbles. They travel through the atmosphere and burn violently, and they have vanished before they reach the ground. As Tagore wrote: "I have flown, and the sky has not left any trace."
A meteorite entered the earth’s atmosphere during the Leonid meteor shower in November 2002 (Source: NASA)
And those who remain "strong physique" after burning in the atmosphere are out of the romantic category and become meteorites that have an attack on the earth. According to the data recorded in NASA’s meteorite database since 1988, at least 822 large meteorites exploded in the atmosphere and produced raindrops of debris. Some scientists think that as many as 17 meteorites can hit the surface every day.
From April 15th, 1988 to March 4th, 2020, the earth was hit by a meteorite and the impact energy was recorded (image source: NASA).
Indeed, the earth drifting in space is a living target. Every year, many meteorites, big or small, come to the earth. It can be the target of "cosmic sniper", and the meteorite with the size of a projectile falls down and is picked up as a precious collection; It can also be the target of the "space rocket army". When the city-sized stones hit, the whole earth had to be rebuilt. The extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago may be related to this.
So, in the long river of history, is there a meteorite that just killed a person? It sounds a bit like comparing meteorites to missiles. During the Chechen war, the leader of the anti-government armed forces became the first person to be killed by missile tracking because a phone was aimed at by the missile. This is natural for missiles with excellent scientific and technological crystallization, and meteorites are ordinary stones in plain English. Without a tracking and guidance system, can it complete the "task" of accurately hitting a person?
During the Chechen war, dudayev, the leader of Chechen anti-government armed forces, was killed by an air-to-ground missile launched by the Russian army immediately after being intercepted by the Russian army (source: kknews).
Victims in history
The last reported meteorite death occurred in 2016. According to a report in an Indian newspaper, a bus driver went to the outdoor pool to wash his face during his lunch break. Unfortunately, the impact of a meteorite from outer space killed him. At the same time, the shock wave caused by the explosion also injured three other people. This incident was immediately reprinted by the new york Times, which made such a rare event once become the after-dinner talk of people all over the world.
After the incident, the Indian authorities inspected the location where a suspected meteorite fell (Source: npr.org).
However, as far as scientific facts are concerned, it is doubtful whether this incident can be characterized as a meteorite attack. The sudden upsurge of the incident attracted experts from NASA, who evaluated it.
Judging from the photos from the scene, this incident has little to do with meteorites, and there is no characteristic that whispers should show in the photos. At the same time, small meteorites will not cause fire or explosion when they hit the ground. It takes at least several kilograms of meteorites to form a crater as big as the one published on the Internet. Although local scientists in India have revealed more details about the incident, the results still show that it is unlikely to come from space, and the culprit is more likely to be a man-made object.
What left a deep impression on the public was the incident that happened in Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013: a meteorite with a diameter of 17 meters and a weight of 7,000 tons rushed towards the earth at a speed of 54 times the speed of sound, and the meteorite that exploded in mid-air caused three shock waves with different energies. About 1500 people were injured in this incident, most of them were injured by shattered glass. Part of the roof collapsed during the explosion. This is the most powerful meteorite attack since the Tunguska Big Bang in 1908. Fortunately, no one lost his life in this accident.
The left picture above is a part of the meteorite of the Chelyabinsk incident, and the right picture shows the broken window of the local opera house after the incident (source: Wikipedia).
Therefore, although meteorites are dangerous, the probability of directly hitting people is very low. At present, the only confirmed incident of meteorite hitting people dates back to 1954. A lady named Hodges was comfortably taking a nap on the sofa at home. A meteorite smashed through the roof of her house and directly hit her leg, causing a big bruise on the left side of her body. Pity this lady who sleeps alone at home, disaster comes from heaven, and she is literally lying down and being shot.
Ms. Hodges who was smashed (Source: Sina)
Who is truly the first victim?
Although the Indian media said that the 2016 incident was the first meteorite killing incident, from an academic point of view, this timeline has to be moved forward. The time just mentioned in 1954 was earlier than that in 2016, but it was not a "murder case".
Moving on, the Tunguska Big Bang in Siberia in 1908 was the most famous. It is estimated that the explosive power at that time was equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT explosive, which was 1000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima. More than 80 million trees in 2150 square kilometers burned down, with a total area of 2150 square kilometers, and hundreds of reindeer and two people were killed. Fortunately, the explosion happened in the sparsely populated Siberian region.
At present, the main doubt in academic circles is whether the culprit is an asteroid or a comet. Also, because the explosion occurred in a place away from human settlements, Russia at that time paid little attention to this incident, and some records may be lost in the subsequent turbulent years. I believe we can continue to grow potatoes there after the incident is thoroughly investigated.
Photos of the Tunguska Big Bang taken by scientists in the former Soviet Union in 1927 (source: Wikipedia)
From an academic paper recently published in the journal Meteorite and Planetary Science[1]From the point of view, "the murder of human beings by meteorites" may need to be traced back to 1888 at the earliest. A number of documents found in the Turkish National Archives show that on August 22nd, 1888 (during the Ottoman Empire), a falling meteorite hit the Kurdistan region of Iraq, killing one person and paralyzing another for life.
The x in the upper left corner is the place where the explosion occurred, and the red arrow is the meteorite movement route speculated by the researchers (image source: Reference 1).
The record of this incident contains three independent documents in total, and its authority is beyond doubt. According to the records, at about 8: 30 pm on the day of the incident, a big fireball appeared in the sky, and then meteorites fell from the sky like rain. The whole incident lasted about 10 minutes. The document mentioned that both the unknown victim and the victim were directly hit by meteorites.
Unfortunately, there was no good astronomical monitoring system at that time. According to the description in the government report, the main fireball of high-altitude explosion also destroyed crops and farmland in this area, which is very consistent with the characteristics of meteorite attack. At present, the investigation is still going on. According to the village where it was found and the location where the impact debris was found, the researchers speculated that the "offensive" route of the meteorite was southeast. Due to the limited data at present, we can’t make a perfect resumption, so we can’t know the exact height, speed, size and position of the fireball.
These are three documents that reveal the incident. At present, the research team is still searching for more documents related to this incident (image source: Reference 1).
Why do you want to study the meteorite wounding incident?
This study is very enlightening. History is not entirely written in mainstream languages such as Chinese and English. Because the language recorded at that time was Turkish, the minority-biased language made this incident silent for more than a hundred years and became the earliest meteorite murder case discovered at present. However, we can’t conclude that this is the earliest meteorite murder case in human history. From the perspective of probability, since someone was killed in one hundred years, the possibility of someone being injured by meteorites in two hundred years and one thousand years is also very high.
The process of pursuing the earliest meteorite murder case is still going on, which is not only a curiosity, but also a process of evaluating the danger of the earth in space. It is not easy to accomplish such a task. It is not only a category of astronomy, but also involves history. In the process of work, interdisciplinary cooperation with archivists and translators is needed.
Fanwai: Records of Ming Dynasty in China
Curious, you may ask: Is there any record of meteorite impact in the history of China?
There really is, that is, the big explosion at Wanggong Factory in the Ming Dynasty. Wang Gong Factory was a powder magazine for manufacturing and storing gunpowder in Beijing at that time. A bizarre explosion occurred in the sixth year of the apocalypse (1626). At that time, a copy of "Tianbian Mansion" edited and distributed by a private newspaper office recorded that the explosion caused heavy casualties of more than 20,000 people, with an explosion area of 2.25 square kilometers, which was equivalent to the Hiroshima atomic bomb. This incident and the "Tunguska Big Bang" are listed as two unsolved cases of mass destruction in human history.
Unfortunately, regarding the explosion, the power described by different channels varies greatly. According to the official Records of the Ming Dynasty and Xizong, the explosion caused more than 10,000 houses to collapse, with more than 500 victims. The only certainty is that it is unlikely that things will be misreported. It can be inferred from the literature that "the sound is like a roar" and "there is a big light in the sky", which is quite consistent with the phenomena such as sparks and fireballs formed by friction with the atmosphere and the vibration and noise caused by hitting the ground when the meteorite rushes to the earth.
Imagine the Big Bang of Wang Gong Factory (Source: Sina)
However, the place where the incident occurred was an arsenal, which was an accidental explosion caused by a security risk, and it was not impossible. Coupled with the fierce party struggle at that time, the possibility of describing man-made disasters as natural disasters for political interests should not be underestimated. At present, there is still controversy in academic circles, so let’s press no table first.
There are many arguments in the history forum that "I know the world is invincible", so please ask curious readers to think about it. Is it possible that this was a failed nuclear test at that time? A minority argument holds that the Ming army exploded when it was collecting thunder stones (containing uranium) to make nuclear weapons. Here, the source of this view is posted in Reference 5 for your reading and thinking.
References:
[1]Unsalan O, Bayatl A, Jenniskens P. Earliest evidence of a death and injury by a meteorite[J]. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 2020.
[2]La Paz L. Injuries from falling meteorites[J]. Contributions of the Meteoritical Society, 1951, 5(17): 75-82.
[3]2016 meteorite event https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/world/Asia/that-waste-a-meteor-that-killed-a-man-in-India-NASA-says.html.
[4]Chelyabinsk Asteroid Impact Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
[5]China successfully tested an atomic bomb in the Ming Dynasty? http://sysu-chca.blog.sohu.com/52938386.html
Source: Science Courtyard
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