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Woman in France recently enjoying coffee with her friend was struck by a small meteorite in what is considered an extremely rare event, according to local news.
The woman was chatting with her friend outside on a terrace when she was hit in the ribs by a mysterious pebble, French newspaper "Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace (DNA) reported."
"I heard a big 'Poom' coming from the roof next to us. In the second that followed, I felt a shock on the ribs. I thought it was an animal, a bat!" the woman, who has not been identified, told the news outlet. "We thought it was a piece of cement, the one we apply to the ridge tiles. But it didn't have the color."
Meteorites are "space rocks" that survive their journey thought the Earth's atmosphere and hit the ground. These objects—known as meteoroids when they are in space—range in size from dust grains to small asteroids.
Meteoroids originate from other larger bodies—primarily asteroids, but also the moon and other planets like Mars. Meteoroids can be rocky, metallic, or a combination of the two.
After being struck by the rock, the French woman, who is a resident of the commune of Schirmeck in the northeast of the country, took it to a roofer for examination. The roofer told her that it was not made from cement but that it looked like a meteorite. She then showed the mysterious object to geologist Thierry Rebmann.
The geologist told DNA that the rock appeared to contain a mixture of iron and silicon, and could be a meteorite. In total, all the pieces of the meteorite that have been recovered have a total mass of almost 4 ounces. Rebmann said the phenomenon of people being struck by such objects is extremely rare.
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