Unbelievable facts
A man from India was recently hit by a meteorite.
If confirmed, he would be the first person in history to die from a meteorite impact.
A bus driver named V. Kamaraj (V. Kamaraj) died from serious injuries as he passed by the Bharathidasan College of Engineering café, where a celestial body fell with a loud sound, leaving a crater about 60 cm deep.
In addition, three more people were injured in the explosion, who were later taken to hospital.
There are several more cases in history when a meteorite fell on a person, but they were not fatal.
Meteorites that fell on humans
The first documented case of an extraterrestrial object falling on a person is that of Anne Hodges. In November 1954, a woman was dozing on a sofa in her home, Alabama, USA, when a grapefruit-sized meteorite penetrated the roof of her house, ricochet off the radio and hit her thigh, leaving a bruise the size of a pineapple.
Also in 1992, a small meteorite weighing about 3 grams hit a Ugandan boy, but he was slowed down by a tree and did not cause any damage.
In 2013, a large meteorite fell in Chelyabinsk, which affected more than 1,000 people, but no deaths.
See also: A meteorite fell in the Chelyabinsk region
Some experts are skeptical about the Indian case and doubt that the death was caused by a meteorite.
The death of a person from a meteorite
So how likely are you to be hit by a meteorite?
According to Peter Brown, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, about every 7 years, a meteorite weighing 200 grams or more will fall per person on our planet and more.
This may seem quite dangerous to you, but the scientist believes that many people would not even notice if a small meteorite fell on them.
A small fragment of the meteorite will fall on a person at a speed of about 60 km per hour.
“You'll be able to feel like something hit you, you won't know what it is,” Brown said.
If you don't get hit by a meteorite weighing about 200 grams at a speed of 140 km per hour, you will definitely feel it, but you can also survive unless the meteorite hits your head directly.
It is estimated that if you take the average human life expectancy (71 years), you can survive about 10 meteor falls in your lifetime.
A meteorite weighing about 200 grams or more is 1 in 700 million likely to fall on you, considering that about 7 billion people live in the world.
By comparison, the odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 12,000.