Meteorite crash-lands in woman’s bed in Canada

 


The space rock was next to her head when she awoke.


A meteorite that crashed through her ceiling and landed on her pillow nearly avoided striking a woman in Canada.

On the night of Oct. 3, Ruth Hamilton, a resident of Golden, British Columbia, was sleeping in her bed when she was startled awake by an explosive sound as something fell through the roof and pelted her with debris, according to Hamilton, who spoke to Victoria News on Oct. 8.

She leapt from her bed and turned on the light, only to find a rock wedged between her pillows, exactly where her head had been seconds before. According to The New York Times, the object was about the size of a fist and weighed roughly 2.8 pounds (1.3 kilograms) (Oct. 14).

According to Victoria News, Hamilton immediately dialed 911, a police officer arrived on the scene and investigated the debris before checking with a local construction business to see whether they had set off any explosions at a highway site in the adjacent Kicking Horse Canyon.

No blasting took place that night, according to a construction firm representative, but they did notice "a big light in the sky that had erupted and made loud booms," Hamilton told Victoria News. According to Canadian Broadcasting Company, Hamilton recognised the object on her pillow — a grey, melon-size boulder — was most likely a rock from space.

Thousands of fast-moving space pebbles survive their scorching journey through Earth's atmosphere each year to land as meteorites on the planet's surface, however the vast majority of these cosmic missiles go unreported and undiscovered. And just a few persons in recorded history have been as near to a meteorite as Hamilton was at the time of impact.

Ann Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama, was struck by a falling meteorite on Nov. 30, 1954, and is a renowned example. Hodges, like Hamilton, was sound asleep in her home when the meteorite arrived. However, unlike Hamilton, Hodges did not make it out of the event unhurt. Though Hamilton was unharmed by her close call, she told the CBC that the event left her terrified. Hodges' meteorite was approximately the size of a softball and weighed around 8.5 pounds (3.8 kg), and it struck her after rebounding off a radio console, creating a big bruise on her side.

You're sound asleep, snug in your bed, and a meteorite may potentially take you out, according to Hamilton. She intends to submit the meteorite to Western University's Department of Physics and Astronomy in London, Ontario, for analysis, but she wants to keep the rock once the researchers' investigation is through, according to the CBC.

Originally Published Here.

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