A Meteorite Bites The Dust
A woman in British Columbia, Canada had the fright of her life when a meteorite crashed through her ceiling and landed on the pillow next to hers in early October. While understandably shaken, Ruth Hamilton’s close encounter with the 2.8 pound hot rock was a thrilling discovery for space researchers at the University of Calgary, who say the chances of this happening are one in 100 billion or so. In a separate incident, scientists suspect a meteorite was also to blame for what New Hampshire locals called a “mysterious boom” over the region, which shook buildings, scared pets and reverberated as an audible sound over the area on October 10th. Our proximity to space and the unknowns are a constant source of awe and mystery, but also innovation, as we uncovered in our Space: Innovation Exploration Brought Down to Earth report.
“Any frontier is about looking for something better. Humans look up at the night sky just like humans look up at birds. The idea of flight is a fundamental human longing, and space is the same,” Carissa Christensen, CEO of Bryce Space and Technology told us in Space. Whether it’s mysterious meteorites or Jeff Bezos taking mere mortals like William Shatner on a Blue Origin spaceflight, the fascination with space is opening up new worlds, from astro tourism to technologies that will help us live more sustainably on the ground, too.
And if a meteorite comes crashing, the home may not be the safest space after all.
Anna is the Editorial Director at sparks & honey and author of sparks & honey’s cultural intelligence reports. She eats blueberries at 5pm every day, and when she's not writing, Anna is running across bridges in NYC, taking photographs along the way.