An Amerind man may be the first person in recorded history to have been killed by a meteorite . Identified only as Kamaraj , the man – a double-decker equipment driver – was killed on Saturday at the Bharathidasan Engineering College near the townsfolk of Natrampalli in the Vellore district in southern India .
The cause of death was an explosion , which also injure three others and demolish nearby window . ab initio it was opine to be a blast from a bomb , but forensic and turkey experts found no explosive substances at the scene .
“ We can rule out the possible action of any terror angle or sabotage , ” a police official toldThe Hindu . “ Not a single ingredient pertain to any kind of explosive was find at the site . We suspect it to be a meteorite fall . ”
A stone found at the impact land site , which left a small crater 1.2 meter ( 4 feet ) deep in the ground , is presently being analyzed by scientists . The blast occurred early on Saturday , with Kamaraj being declared dead when take on to a infirmary . It ’s not clean if he was kill by the initial impact , or the termination blast .
Crater formed due to meteor encroachment at Nattrampalli , vellore . look like a powerful impact.pic.twitter.com/POlim224pn
— Prashanth ( @itisprashanth)February 7 , 2016
There has never been a recorded human human death from a meteorite before . The only old suspected human death was a dog in Egypt in 1911 , which was supposedly vaporize by a Martian meteorite call in Nakhla . As no remains of the dog were found , though , that report remains anecdotic .
Humans have also been injured by meteorites before , but not kill . Perhaps one of the most infamous case was Ann Elizabeth Hodges in 1954 . The woman , 34 at the prison term , was struck while nap on her couch when a meteorite crash through her roof of her house in Sylacauga , Alabama , badly bruising one side of her body . More recently , in February 2013 , theChelyabinsk meteorinjured hundreds in Russia when it exploded above the ground .
Some scientists remain skeptical about this reported expiry from a meteorite , however . Associate professor Dipankar Banerjee of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics ( IIA ) said he thought it may have been orbiter junk , and not a infinite rock , that cause the case . “ I will be very surprised if such a thing happened because of a shooting star shower , ” he tell , reportedThe New Indian Express . “ Normally meteor showers are trackable and there are prognostication for this . But there was no prognostication of this . ”
Of course , that in itself would be rather big news . But it ’s not unheard of that a meteor passes through the atmosphere without being tracked . After all , the Chelyabinsk meteorite came as a surprisal . And over the weekend , it was also report that an unidentified meteoritehit Denmark .
