A Meteorite Crashed Through Somebody's Ceiling and Landed on Their Bed (chicagotribune.com) 197
The New York Times reports:
Ruth Hamilton was fast asleep in her home in British Columbia when she awoke to the sound of her dog barking, followed by "an explosion." She jumped up and turned on the light, only to see a hole in the ceiling. Her clock said 11:35 p.m.
At first, Hamilton thought that a tree had fallen on her house. But, no, all the trees were there. She called 911 and, while on the phone with an operator, noticed a large charcoal gray object between her two floral pillows.
"Oh, my gosh," she recalled telling the operator, "there's a rock in my bed."
A meteorite, she later learned.
The 2.8-pound rock the size of a large man's fist had barely missed Hamilton's head, leaving "drywall debris all over my face," she said. Her close encounter on the night of Oct. 3 left her rattled, but it captivated the internet and handed scientists an unusual chance to study a space rock that had crashed to Earth.
"It just seems surreal," Hamilton said in an interview Wednesday. "Then I'll go in and look in the room and, yep, there's still a hole in my ceiling. Yep, that happened."
The Times reports that Peter Brown, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, places the odds of a meteor crashing into someone's bed at 1 in 100 billion.
At first, Hamilton thought that a tree had fallen on her house. But, no, all the trees were there. She called 911 and, while on the phone with an operator, noticed a large charcoal gray object between her two floral pillows.
"Oh, my gosh," she recalled telling the operator, "there's a rock in my bed."
A meteorite, she later learned.
The 2.8-pound rock the size of a large man's fist had barely missed Hamilton's head, leaving "drywall debris all over my face," she said. Her close encounter on the night of Oct. 3 left her rattled, but it captivated the internet and handed scientists an unusual chance to study a space rock that had crashed to Earth.
"It just seems surreal," Hamilton said in an interview Wednesday. "Then I'll go in and look in the room and, yep, there's still a hole in my ceiling. Yep, that happened."
The Times reports that Peter Brown, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, places the odds of a meteor crashing into someone's bed at 1 in 100 billion.
Ruth Hamilton (Score:3, Funny)
Because meteors are ruthless.
Question (Score:3)
Does she get to keep it? Seems like an awful waste of a harrowing experience if she can't.
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"there's a rock in my bed." (Score:2)
reminds me of this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Sell it! (Score:3)
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She had better hope it is stone then. She's going to need the cash to fix her roof. I suspect her insurance is not going to cover meteor strikes.
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Why wouldn't it? UK home insurance (like US home insurance) typically covers all risks except those particularly excluded, and meteor strike is unlikely to be particularly excluded.
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With enough publicity surrounding the event, the insurance company won't want to deny the claim...
Also it only punched a hole and didn't destroy the whole roof, so shouldn't cost a huge amount to patch up - depending on the style of roof.
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With enough publicity surrounding the event, the insurance company won't want to deny the claim...
What are you talking about? Denying claims is what they do for a living.
Re: Sell it! (Score:2)
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It's Canada. We don't have "acts of god." You can have insurance against specific perils, or all peril insurance, in which everything is covered *except* certain perils (usually floods and earthquakes). Meteorites are unlikely to be specifically included or excluded so it likely depends on whether she cheeped out on her home insurance or not.
Re: Sell it! (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Sell it! (Score:2)
"Acts of God" is a term for "destruction from a natural cause" and "heaven" would be sky/space.
Obviously the religious wording dates back to a very long time ago but the real meaning is natural causes.
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Citation needed. :
For example [valuepenguin.com]
However, insurance policies don't use the phrase "act of God." Instead, the contracts just describe specific events. Different types of insurance, such as automobile and homeowners, cover acts of God in different ways. . .
The only way to find out for sure whether you're protected against a particular form of damage is to read through your policy carefully and ask your insurance agent for clarification if you're unsure. . .
The most common type of homeowners insurance, called HO-3, insures the structure of your home for every peril except for things that are specifically excluded.
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If I had a meteorite, I would keep it. Not everything is worth money.
Re:Sell it! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's so bizarre, to me, how some people will throw away money for some irrational emotion
Once you have enough money to provide for your needs, "irrational emotion" is the only thing left to spend money on. And yet, it sounds like you are willing to trade everything for money. Why?
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ok I don't want to put a kid in an Ivy League school. I would be really happy to have a meteorite. Especially one that landed in my bed.
That's magical.
Re: Sell it! (Score:3)
Well, a meteorite sitting on a shelf isn't doing a goddamn thing for me. If I sell it, I can put that money to work.
Parent specifically said "once basic needs are met". What exactly does that money do for you, once your living is assured? Allow you to buy things? What things? Inanimate? A painting? A tie? Flowers? A meteor, for example, if you care to have one? *shurg*
Re: Sell it! (Score:2)
I get your point, but what about people who collect things, like coins or stamps? Or even collecting things you don't pay for, like rocks or fossils. Clearly they get some joy out of owning that sort of thing.
Personally I think I'm in the middle ground, I'd keep it up to a certain value, depending upon how financially comfortable I am. Maybe I'm a millionaire and that $10k is nothing to me and the story is worth more. (I'm not a millionaire, and $10k would *probably* be enough to get me to sell it).
Re: Sell it! (Score:2)
Figure out why people rabidly insist that the Earth is flat and then get back to me.
Re:Sell it! (Score:5, Informative)
This is what meteorite collectors call a 'hammer stone' - a rare meteorite that actually damages a man-made structure during the fall. In such cases it matters little if it's an iron, ordinary chondrite or something a bit more exotic. Basically unless it's a rare Lunar or Martian, the unusual circumstances of the fall will dictate the price and my guess is that it would be far above the said $25,000.
As for getting the funds to fix the roof, she can cut out the damaged area and sell it for far more than what would cost to fix the roof.
Even tiny fragments of her roof could fetch $20-$50.
On the other hand, exporting meteorites from Canada is very strictly regulated so if it turns out to be something interesting she is not likely to receive the required permits and could be forced to sell to a Canadian university for a lower amount than what she could get on an open auction.
The size of a large manâ(TM)s fist?? (Score:3, Interesting)
So when describing something that could have severely injured her face it was compared to a large manâ(TM)s fist ðY".
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Maybe she’s led a rough life.
Odd way to think of odds... (Score:5, Interesting)
1 in 100 billion what? If you wake up with a rock on the bed 100 billions one of the rocks would a meteor? Or if you wake up and there is no space rock on your bed, once in 100 billion times there likely will be a space rock?
There are 7 billion people waking up every day. In two weeks 100 billion times people would have woken up and checked to see if there is a space rock on the pillow next to them. About 25 times a year ...
There are billions of people and millions of things are happening to them. So " one in a million" would be something happens all the time ...
Re: Odd way to think of odds... (Score:2)
Hush now. Next you'll be complaining that lightyear isn't a unit of time and that parsec is a unit of distance.
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The odds over an average lifetime, perhaps? Or maybe per 100 billion people over a time span of centuries? Some fuzzy math would be used for such an estimation, but that's the nature of statistics when _predicting_ odds.
It's per year. See other comments above where they linked to the full statement. The odds of a given person having a meteorite hit their bed in a given year are about one in 100B, per this calculation (details not given). Given the population of the earth, that means we should expect it to happen once every decade or two.
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This is likely the second closest meteorite strike in recorded history -- after the only one that actually hit someone.
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This is likely the second closest meteorite strike in recorded history -- after the only one that actually hit someone.
You're probably thinking of Ann Hodges from Alabama, who was hit in 1954, but a boy in Mbale was hit in 1992, and there's credible evidence that a man in Turkey was killed by one in 1882 and less certain evidence that an Italian man was killed by one in 1667.
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The odds of a meteorite hurtling into someone’s home and hitting a bed in any given year is about 1 in 100 billion, Brown said.
From Chicago Tribune [chicagotribune.com].
It seems to me he means per home per year. If you cut important parts of the quote, it becomes meaningless... welcome to journalism ;)
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Concerning its visit (Score:2)
Well, it obviously came to "rest" then.
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Dog (Score:3)
How did the dog know a meteorite would shortly be crashing into the house?
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How did the dog know a meteorite would shortly be crashing into the house?
I know that this /. and all, but from TFA
other Canadians had heard two loud booms and seen a fireball streaking across the sky.
I'd suggest that the dog picked up on that and just started barking.
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How did the dog know a meteorite would shortly be crashing into the house?
I know that this /. and all, but from TFA
other Canadians had heard two loud booms and seen a fireball streaking across the sky.
I'd suggest that the dog picked up on that and just started barking.
I think a more likely explanation is that the dog began barking after the meteor came through the roof, and that Ruth's memory of the sequence of barking and crash is not reliable, due to the fact that she was asleep, and maybe a bit traumatized.
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Are you suggesting that a meteor travelling fast enough to create a sonic boom (faster than the speed of sound) will reach the house before the sound of it? Because that's not how sound works. It might have made a bright light out the window, though.
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I think the odds are more complicated than that (Score:5, Funny)
For one thing, you need to divide the Earth up into zones of diameter d and duration t to figure out how likely a strike is. Let's say a bed-sized diameter of 2m/6' and a person's lifetime of approximately 80 years.
Then you need to decide how much of the Earth is covered by beds, which due to population growth varies considerably. You probably cheat on this one and just assume it's the number of beds estimated to exist today and forget about variation over time.
Next, you need to categorize the meteors by size. A large enough meteor, nobody would be alive to find it next to them. Too small, it never makes it to the house. We need something that leaves a big enough rock to punch through a home but without so much momentum remaining that it continues through the bed. That's a pretty narrow range.
I would not be surprised to find that if you did those calculations, even given all the beds in the world over a period of 80 years, the odds are actually more like one in trillions.
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It must be more common than that, considering it happens from time to time.
This happened in Canada (Score:2)
Something odd happening to a woman in Canada is the international equivalent of a US "Florida man" story.
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The odds were just for crashing into someone's bed though, not gently landing on it, which is indeed much more unlikely. E.g. I would count large meteors that make km-size impact craters, as having crashed on ALL the missing houses/beds. Not that this makes calculation easier in any way, just increases odds ;)
The house is safer now (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/GTqz4duPdYQ?t... [youtu.be]
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Are meteors attracted to sleeping people? (Score:3)
"The grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a farm house, bounced off a large wooden console radio, and hit Hodges while she napped on a couch."
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Space Force where were you? (Score:2)
Wookin Pa Nub. (Score:2)
*CRASH*
Hi! Is this Jenny!
I got your number!
At least it didn't open (Score:2)
Only 2 degrees... (Score:3)
between me and that woman. Her nephew is in one of my classes at university.
Some people have all the luck (Score:4, Funny)
Meteorite hunters scour the deserts and the poles for meteorites and she sleeps beside one.
P(meteorite in bed) ~ 1:32000 (Score:2)
Surface area of the earth: 510 065 000 km (all, including seas)
Number of people on the planet: 7.9 billion
Avg size of a bed: 2x1 m (adjust as you wish)
Bed area ~7.9*2 billion m or ~15800 km (if one bed per person)
If meteorites are uniformly distributed over the Earth (probably not), then the probability of a given meteorite hits a bed is:
P(bed hit) = 15800 / 510 065 000 = ~3.1E-5 = ~1 / 32000
So one meteroite in 32000 would end up in someone's bed.
However, not all meteorites would be big enough to punch thr
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Slashdot filtered out my nice squares, making m^2 and km^2 just m and km. Grmph...
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Amen.
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One in 100 billion.
I think they got that calculation mixed up with the odds of a woman ending up in a Slashdotter's bed.
Internet in 2021 (Score:2)
"Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism."
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Ops, missed the most important part of the post, Brazil.
"Meterorite crashes through ceiling, lands on bed" (Score:2)
Would be less awkward.
Wrong odds? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The Times reports that Peter Brown, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, places the odds of a meteor crashing into someone's bed at 1 in 100 billion."
Wrong. The odds are 1 in 1. It happened.
Are you sure? I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.
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odds... per year? (Score:5, Interesting)
Odds of one in 100 billion... per what?
Per year?
Population of Earth is 7.8 billion, so that means you should see it roughly once every 12.8 years.
OK, sounds reasonable.
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ObMinchin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:odds... per year? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess he estimated somehow the number of beds on the planet and their combined size and divided by the surface of the planet.
However without timeframe (you suggested per year) and knowledge how many meteorites it make to the ground, the number is a bit useless.
Re:odds... per year? (Score:4, Funny)
I guess he estimated somehow the number of beds on the planet and their combined size and divided by the surface of the planet.
However without timeframe (you suggested per year) and knowledge how many meteorites it make to the ground, the number is a bit useless.
I'm sure a use could be found for the number. I'm going to use it for my next set of estimates.
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How many Olympic swimming pools is that?
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All of them do. If they burn up before hitting the ground, they're meteors.
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The odds are based on how many beds, but it's per-meteor, not per-timeframe.
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Correction - it is per year. Badly misquoted then.
Exactly. The exact quote: (Score:5, Informative)
The odds of a meteorite hurtling into someone’s home and hitting a bed in any given year is about 1 in 100 billion, Brown said.
From Chicago Tribune [chicagotribune.com].
Journalists will routinely cut parts of quotes they don't understand, rendering them useless to those who would understand.
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Although, the way it is phrased, the probability is per home? In which case for the expected frequency we should go by number of homes in the world?
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To me it sounded like the odds that it will happen to any particular person in their lifetime.
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"The odds of a meteorite hurtling into someone’s home and hitting a bed in any given year is about 1 in 100 billion, Brown said."
From Chicago Tribune [chicagotribune.com].
Thanks.
Journalists will routinely cut parts of quotes they don't understand, rendering them useless to those who would understand.
I've noticed that. And the farther along the chain of transmission you go, the more context gets removed and quotes get streamlined. By the time it becomes a Facebook photosnark, there's very little left.
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Regardless of what the odds are claimed to be, they're still greater than the chance of being killed by a recreational multirotor drone.
In fact falling space rocks are a bigger danger than many realize.
In Tunguska (about 1908 from memory) a chunk of space detritus exploded and caused massive damage along with almost certainly a death or two.
In the 1950s, a woman was injured in her bed when she was struck by a meteorite. She did recover but NatGeo did a great story on this at the time.
In 2013 another piece
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True, the odds are now 1 in 1 of a meteor having crashed into someone's bed
I guess so... I thought something like this already happened before, anyways
2015 San Carlos [harvard.edu] Meteorite - The rock fell from the sky, smashing through the roof of the house, bouncing off a couch, and destroying a bed and TV.
2013 meteorite crashes through roof of a House in Connecticut - .. at first, police thought the rock was a broken piece of airport runway concrete that had dropped from a plane when landing gear was being lower
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Re:Wrong odds (Score:4, Interesting)
The real story is still to come, when Ruth Hamilton wins the lottery in the near future. Unfortunately a couple years later Ruth Hamilton will be hit by lightning, twice! And survive! But be sadly eaten by a shark a few days later, on dry land.
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The real story is still to come, when Ruth Hamilton wins the lottery in the near future. Unfortunately a couple years later Ruth Hamilton will be hit by lightning, twice! And survive! But be sadly eaten by a shark a few days later, on dry land.
That asshole Zaphod Beeblebrox left his infinite improbability drive turned on again, eh?
Re: Wrong odds (Score:5, Informative)
It's happened before. A woman in Alabama had burns and bruising in her body from being hit by a meteorite while in bed.
Re:Wrong odds (Score:5, Funny)
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That sounds a lot like an urban myth to me. Unless the "professor" was an English professor or something, it's unrealistic to think that they would be fooled by a painted rock.
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Re:Wrong odds (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the story as you presented it is that paint is obviously paint and not any kind of stone, from space or otherwise. There's basically no expert who is going to be somehow fooled by paint. You can't imitate the grain of rock well enough to fool a geologist with some paint. So, the whole story sounds very much like a typical populist "dumb expert doesn't really know anything" story. You get a lot of that sort of thing from people who like to believe that the "so called" smart people are, in actuality, less intelligent than "real" people. Usually they also believe things like that math is actually useless in the "real" world, and computers are just toys that aren't good for anything, etc.
If the story didn't include the element about a professor from the University coming out to look at the meteorite and going on about how "he went on and on about this thing, and how you could see from the scorch marks this and that", then the story might be believable. The dumb "expert" being fooled is a genre convention though.
I also have to say, your telling of it sounds a lot like someone perpetuating an urban myth rather than someone taken in by one It's the little details like the "you guessed it..." and the fact that you "wonder if it's the same guy" even though this supposedly happened 30-35 years ago making it obviously unlikely that a current associate professor would be the same guy. Especially since the article actually says that he's with the University of Calgary. Sorry, even your telling of it is way too much like an urban myth/folk story.
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"Odds in any given year" if you read the article.
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It's happened before, it was a photo in the old Life magazine as I recall.
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These are probably the odds of a meteor crashing in one specific person's bed, not into "anyone's" bed, so these odds are wrong. "A meteor crashing into someone's bed" must have much higher odds, given the number of beds on earth, and the number of meteors that hit earth. But they aren't 1 in 1, either. If you throw a fair die once, the number you get doesn't acuire a 1 in 1 chance of being thrown, it's still a 1 in 6 chance.
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These are probably the odds of a meteor crashing in one specific person's bed, not into "anyone's" bed, so these odds are wrong.
That makes no sense. If that were the right interpretation, it would happen many times a year. But it doesn't.
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Re: Wrong odds (Score:2)
I interpret it as odds of a meteorite hitting YOUR bed in a year. Given 8 billion people on Earth and making the probably poor assumption of 1 bed/person, that's a 1/13 chance of a bed strike per year. Doesn't sound crazy to me.
Going a step further, if the average person is 1/3rd the area of the bed and sleeps 7 hours per night, then the chances of the person actually getting hit in their sleep by a meteorite is 1/13*1/3*7/24, or 0.007.
Their odds are nonsense (Score:3)
I suspect these are numbers were actually pulled out of someone's ass without even a cursory back-of-the-napkin calculation.
Let's do that calculation shall we? Given that a meteorite has struck Earth, what are the odds that it lands in someone's bed? The same as the percentage of Earth's surface that is covered in beds:
Surface area of the Earth: 510 trillion m2
population of Earth: ~8 billion
Surface area of a queen size bed: 3m2
Average number of queen sized beds per person worldwide (wild estimate:) 0.33
So
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I just checked my bed. No meteor. Time to recalculate.
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Anyone know how fast it should be travelling? I would think it would go right through her bed and subfloor as if they weren't even there.
Also, should it not be extremely hot from burning up in the atmosphere? Would that not start a huge fire in her bed (pillows?!!) that somehow stopped it's descent?
Is it just me, or is this story a bit far-fetched?
Quick search on Google gave me this: here [amsmeteors.org]. Apparently the small ones slow down quite a bit and no, they're not hot by the time they reach the ground. Hollywood and reality rarely line up.
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F=MA
It's pretty small and the roof would take the vast majority of the momentum out of it. That and all the air in the atmosphere that slowed it down and cooled it off on the way.
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This is what happens when I try to use the modern Internet:
What the actual fuck? Did you just have an aneurysm?
I wish. He's been posting this shit for years now.