# 10 Weird Meteorite Stories from Space ## Метаданные - **Канал:** John Michael Godier - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB6GP2pvb-0 - **Дата:** 30.05.2026 - **Длительность:** 23:08 - **Просмотры:** 41,481 - **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52178 ## Описание An exploration of ten weird meteorite stories from space. My Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/johnmichaelgodier My Event Horizon Channel: https://www.youtube.com/eventhorizonshow Music: Cylinder Five by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: https://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/ Cylinder Eight by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: https://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/ Cylinder Seven by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: https://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/ ## Транскрипт ### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) [] Hidden within the study of meteorites  there have been a number of strange,   sometimes even bizarre stories of the  recovery and the composition of rocks   falling from space. Already mysterious, these  fragments of planets and asteroids are sometimes   accompanied by colorful and interesting  stories beyond their extraterrestrial   origins, so here are ten weird meteorite  stories from the history of meteoritics. Number 10. Clarendon C, Texas. 2015 While this meteorite isn’t of  great interest scientifically,   it’s a common chondrite that represents around  80 percent of all meteorites and we have,   and more fall each year, it’s the strange  circumstances of how this meteorite was   found that was interesting, because it  apparently was not found by a human. To explain a few things, the C in the name  indicates that it was the third meteorite,   unrelated to the others, found in the  areas around Clarendon. This was a large,   weathered meteorite that had broken into  fragments, but the largest was about 760   pounds. It was found by the owners of a dude  ranch, or rather, was found by their horse samson. What happened was they were taking some guests  horseback riding and decided to stop for water   for the horses near a stream, and about ten feet  from the meteorite samson stopped in its tracks,   snorted at it in an agitated way, and wouldn’t  get close to it. The owner saw that the huge   rock that was scaring the horse was a rusty  looking stone, and the other fragments lying   around it were significantly heavier than  normal rocks, and as a result suspected it   was a meteorite. It was confirmed, and indeed,  this meteorite was discovered by a horse.    What exactly the horse was picking up on  is anyone’s guess, because the meteorite   had been sitting on earth exposed to rain and  weather for many years. But whatever it was,   the horse knew something wasn’t right about that  rock. The huge mass is now in a university museum. Number 9. Chinguetti, Mauretania.   1916 The Missing Meteorite Enigma In 1916 a French Army captain named Gaston Ripert  overheard some camel herders in Mauretania talking   about an enormous block of iron in the Sahara  desert dunes that they referred to as the iron   of god. Ripert asked them if they would show  it to him, so they rode out into the desert,   even to the extent that one interpretation is that  Ripert was blindfolded for the journey because he   said he went out there blind, and about dawn  they arrived, and there was a truly enormous   partly buried piece of what appeared to be iron,  and by enormous, the report is that it was 100   meters wide, so more of a hill than a rock, that  had polished to mirror shine by the blowing sand. He also noticed that the mass had what he  described as needles of iron that could   not be broken off, which is interesting  because iron rich silicate meteorites   might do that as they weather, and there was  no way Ripert knew that possibility because   that type of weathering in this meteorite  class had not been discovered yet in 1916. So Ripert collected what he thought was  a detached piece of this iron mass from   the top of it that he believed was part  of it, and after World War I had ended   he had it analyzed and it was found to be a  scarce type of stony iron meteorite called a   mesosiderite. Exactly the type of meteorite  that might form the needles he observed. This type of meteorite is from a zone inside of an  asteroid where an impact of a stone mass hits an   iron mass heating everything up and the materials  mixed only to cool afterward. After that,   a further impact knocked it off the asteroid to  eventually make its way to earth. If a meteorite   like this falls on earth and is subject to long  periods of weathering, the silicates can weather   out before the iron and form metal needle  structures. Because of the purported size,   which would be far larger than any other known  meteorite, the huge mass out in the desert became   the stuff of legends to meteorite hunters. Any  attempts for many years to find the iron main mass   again were fruitless, and it was assumed that the  shifting sand had reburied the mass, compounded   by the fact that Ripert only had a general idea,  more of a guess, of where it was because he was   traveling blind. No one today living in the area  seems to have any knowledge of the original story   of the camel herdsmen that blindfolded Ripert  to keep the iron of god’s location secret. The scientific problem here is that there  is an upper limit on how large a relatively   small meteorite that fell to earth can  be, even in a glancing skip trajectory,   and not explode into huge numbers of fragments  because of violent entry. The description of   the iron block here far exceeds that size, but  also wasn’t large enough to overwhelm it like   something like a dinosaur killer asteroid  can, and the meteorite material he brought   back didn’t have any out of the ordinary  strength properties or anything like that. ### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00] It’s still unknown what Ripert saw in the desert,  we only know that he brought back a real meteorite   from the area that is of a scarce type, but modern  magnetometer surveys of the area simply do not   show a giant mass of iron rich material present  anywhere out there. And the Chinguetti meteorite   itself that he recovered, is determined to have  only been no larger than 31 inches originally   before its atmospheric flight. Ripert was  schooled in natural sciences and geology and   maintained that he knew what he saw, but whatever  that huge mass was, it was never found again. Number 8. Ann Hodges Survived  Being Hit By a Meteorite This case is one of the very rare cases where  someone was verifiably hit by a meteorite. The   story is about Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges.   On November 30, 1954 she was napping on her   couch in Sylacauga, Alabama when a meteorite fell  through her roof, through the ceiling, hit a radio   and bounced off and then hit her on her thigh and  hand leaving bruises. Initially her and her mother   who was also in the house at the time thought  the chimney had collapsed because the meteorite   had filled the house with debris and dust and  left a large hole in the roof and ceiling. Her husband got home a few hours later from  work, to which she said there had been a little   excitement. It did shake her though, and she  visited the hospital the next day. And here’s   where this gets a bit silly. So the US Air Force  shows up and confiscates the meteorite, not at all   sure how they had that legal authority or why  they were interested in a natural space rock,   and confirmed that it was indeed a chondrite  meteorite and somehow the Mayor of the town got   ahold of it and wanted to donate it a museum,  but Hodges countered that she had well enough   evidence from the hole in her house, that it  was hers. She eventually got her meteorite back,   only to get sued by her landlord who claimed  ownership, a settlement was agreed upon,   and Hodges ultimately kept her meteorite.   The problem is that she got a lot of short   term media attention over the incident,  and the fact that it happened at all,   seemed to have affected her overall  health, which wasn’t great to begin   with and ultimately she sold the meteorite  to the Alabama Museum of Natural History. Number 7. Space and Northern Sudan. 2008. This is a situation that will probably happen  again and with increasing frequency as all sky   surveys come online to actively track near earth  objects with increasing precision. On October 8,   2008, the automated Catalina  sky survey spotted an asteroid,   cataloged as 2008 TC3, that appeared to be  on a collision course with earth. It was,   but posed no major threat, it was simply too  small. But what’s noteworthy is that it was   first spotted in space and then was monitored  all the way down to the surface of the earth. One day later, it hit earth as a meteorite and  was predicted correctly to fall in an area of   Northern Sudan. The entry was witnessed  by airline pilots as flashes in the sky,   who had been warned of the imminent fall, and it  exploded 37 kilometers above the ground with a   yield of as much as 2. 1 kilotons of TNT. Much  of this meteorite vaporized in the atmosphere,   but about 35 pounds of fresh meteorites were  ultimately found near an area called Almahata   Sitta, arabic for station six, which is  a railroad stop on the line to Khartoum. The meteorite is generally, that gets  complicated, considered to be a rare type   called a Ureilite based on the first sample  found and was found to contain amino acids,   making it an important meteorite, that’s usually  something associated with a different type of   meteorite and is associated with life, but  the story gets more convoluted. The origin   of ureilites is undetermined, but it is believed  that they are from F type solar system asteroids. Then it got weirder. As the area of  the fall was searched more meteorites   were found and they kept coming back as  different classifications of meteorite,   sometimes radically. Indeed, there were  20 different types noted, some unique,   that were all in a very small geographical  area. It seems unlikely that they aren’t   related somehow. But it’s not impossible that  a bunch of different types of meteorites from   different origins would fall about the same time  in the same area. It could happen, but not likely. But the types didn’t really match the dust  in the atmosphere after the fall and other   indicators that maybe this is just an area  that just happened by chance to get hit by   a bunch of different meteorites from  different origins. Nanodiamonds were   actually found in some of the material  that would indicate that the material   actually came from a moon or mars sized object  originally that was shattered into asteroids, ### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00] or at least a Ceres sized object that  had interactions of water going on. Interestingly the object was also  captured by infrasound detector   arrays in Kenya when it exploded and the  US caught it with its spy satellites,   the images of which have never been released.   Ultimately though, asteroids of this size hit   earth several times per year, and it fell over  a sparsely populated area and caused no damage.   Number 6. The Malacca Incident. In the middle of the 17th century,   or the 19th century, the history isn’t clear on  that, a Dutch ship called the Malacca was sailing   near the island of Sumatra and the account is that  a meteorite struck the ship, devastating its deck,   and killed two sailors instantly, and injured  many more. The accounts suggest that meteorite   fragments actually penetrated the wood deck of  the vessel. The problem is that no one seems   to have saved any of the fragments. Finding anything now is not likely,   as the fragments would be under water in an  uncertain location because it happened in the   open sea. The ship is long gone, the witnesses  long gone, and no meteorite associated with   it exists. Still, the nature of the account  does seem to indicate that it was a meteorite   that hit the Malacca one day long ago. Number 5. The Tutankhamun Meteorite Dagger  The pharaoh Tutankhamun reigned about 1334  to 1325 BC and his tomb was found famously   intact and unrobbed by Howard Carter. Many  famous artifacts were discovered including   perhaps the most famous ancient artifact ever  found, the gold mask of Tutankhamun. But also   in the grave goods of the tomb there was an iron  dagger. The composition of the iron here showed   a high nickel content and the presence of cobalt  that indicated a composition consistent with an   iron meteorite that had been worked into a knife. This was kingly indeed, because this was a period   in time where iron smelting and iron working was  very rare in Egypt, and in fact, that early iron   was considered more precious than gold. Iron  of unknown origin found somewhere in Egypt in a   fully metallic form would certainly have gotten  attention and ended up in Tutankhamun’s burial   goods. There have actually been instances of  metallic beads found in Egyptian tombs that appear   to be meteoritic iron as well, but it’s not clear  if it’s from the same meteorite as the dagger.    But analysis of some of the beads showed that the  Egyptians were working with meteorite iron before   they were working with smelted iron. Oddly the  Egyptians appeared to link iron with the stars   in their temple inventories. Regardless of the  reasons they did that, well, we link iron today,   and nickel, with the explosions of giant stars. Number 4. The Iron Rain of Yunnan   Province. About 1341 AD. This is a truly anomalous one, because   it should be solved by now but isn’t. Historic  annals from China record that around 1341,   a huge iron rain occurred that was so intense  that numerous people and animals were killed.    If this actually happened, it would be among the  most deadly meteorite falls in recorded history.    In medieval China, they had been smelting and  working iron for millenia, and knew what iron was,   it was an every day material for them so they  would have recognized iron when they saw it.   Moreover the account specifically describes a  massive explosion in the sky before the iron rain,   and it can reasonably be said that the most  likely cause was an iron meteorite entering the   atmosphere, detonating into numerous fragments,  and the fragments falling to earth. This still   happens, it can happen tomorrow, and the account  seems to accurately describe that. But here is   the oddity, for such a large event, the reality is  that iron will just sit in the ground and slowly   rust, and there are meteorites far older than  1341 that survive, the Canyon Diablo meteorite   in Arizona is iron, and it fell 50,000 years  ago, forming an iron rain of its own fragments   of which are numerous along with fully metallic  fragments still found today. Yet in this case,   even in an area where metal detectors have been  in private hands for years, no one has ever   found any specimens of an iron rich meteorite  fall in this area. The pieces should be there,   but haven't turned up. Even if the fragments were  recovered and smelted, with that extensive of a   fall, something would have been missed, and  there are other iron meteorite falls in China   that in modern times were easily and rapidly  identified no matter how old the fall was.   Number 3. Bondoc and Harvey Nininger This story is like something out of an Indiana   Jones film. This meteorite is an intermediate  meteorite type, officially a mesosiderite,   a mix of stone and iron in roughly equal  proportions and was found on the Bondoc   Peninsula in the Philippines sometime in 1956. A  lot of people did not at the time believe this was ### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00] a meteorite, it’s very strange compared to other  meteorites known, and still is, but it was one   and was sold to Dr. Harvey H. Nininger in 1962.   Nininger was basically the father of the field of   meteorite studies, and was keenly acquiring  any specimens he could from anywhere in the   world for his studies. In this case, the Bondoc  meteorite was enormous, about 850 kilograms,   but getting something like that from a remote  area in the Philippines back to his laboratory   in the United States was not an easy task at all. Basically, Nininger sent a grad student from the   University of Kansas to go get the meteorite, and  it took over three years in total. He had to walk   nine hours to get to the meteorite with a team he  had along a crocodile and snake infested river,   and once there had to load the meteorite on a sled  that was supposed to be drawn by three harnessed   caribao, a water buffalo though some sources  say caribou, but they couldn’t budge it, so they   brought in a bulldozer with great difficulty,  one wonders, if you intend to drag a sled,   why not a team of four caribao? Well the accounts  do say there were crocodiles in the area,   so maybe they originally did. Anyway, the  bulldozer dragged it to a river bank, they   built a bamboo raft and loaded it onto it. And  then a typhoon struck, derailing the whole thing,   and two motorboats had to be brought in to keep  the raft stable during the storm but one of the   boats sank, nearly killing four people. Eventually, with even more difficulty,   it was transported to Manila by truck, and  then loaded onto a ship and taken to the US,   where there was much bureaucratic red tape to  import it, and finally it made it Nininger’s lab,   and the bulk of this meteorite is now with  a specialized laboratory at the University   of Arizona. Seems like a lot of trouble that  grad student John Lednicky went through, but   it was worthwhile because Bondoc is a very unique  meteorite with unclear origins other than it is   from the boundary layer of a destroyed asteroid  between its iron core and silicate surface.   Number 2. The Hypatia Stone, Egypt. 1996. In 1996 a small claimed meteorite was found,   some claimed it to be kimberlite debris,  but there are also still proponents of it   being a meteorite of a very special origin, the  nucleus of a comet. This has never been settled,   and this stone is still considered unclassified  and not listed in the official meteorite catalogs.    The reason the finder picked it up was because  it appeared glassy, and in that area of Egypt a   valuable type of impact glass is found known  as Libyan desert glass. But it wasn’t that.   The problem is that this stone was tiny,  only 30 grams, and that had to be cut into   pieces for analysis and only about four  grams really remain. Where it gets weird   is the composition. This rock contains diamonds,  microscopic ones, which meteorites sometimes do,   but earth geology is less likely, though  obviously diamonds are found on this planet.    The samples showed anomalous isotope distributions  that looked extraterrestrial, but were called   into question as contamination. One interesting  idea here is that it has been suggested that the   stone actually is a fragment of whatever impacted  North Africa and created the Libyan desert glass,   but this too is unresolved. Moreover, the weird  chemistry suggests in some ways that if it is   a meteorite, it predates the solar system. By 2018, compounds were found that supported   a very unusual, but extraterrestrial origin.   Whatever this rock is, it’s chemically   weird and some samples of interstellar  dust grains actually overlap with it,   meaning that it’s possible that this stone  is a relic, older than the solar system,   of material created in a Type Ia supernova. But  ultimately just what this stone is, or even if it   represents meteorite, and if not what created  its geology on Earth remain open questions.   Number 1. The Fossil Meteorite Osterplana 065 This one is a genuine mystery, with a bizarre   history. So meteorites unless something unusual  happens, just land on the earth’s surface and   then start to weather away. Eventually, they’re  gone, incorporated in the soil, and chances are   because micrometeoroids constantly rain upon the  surface of the earth, you almost certainly have   interacted with degraded material from space  if you’ve ever gardened, or even washed your   car. Or at least the atoms they were made from  before they dissipated from weathering and so on.   But very rarely a meteorite can preserve for a  very long time under the right conditions and even   effectively become a fossil. Cue in the Thorsberg  stone quarry in Sweden. This meteorite impacted   earth in the Ordovician Period, about 470 million  years ago. It basically fell in water and embedded   itself in sediment, and that preserved it. This is an unusual period, because other   fossil meteorites of this period from the same  fossil beds have been found that seem to correlate ### Segment 5 (20:00 - 23:00) [20:00] with a specific break up of an asteroid that  yielded the very common L type of chondrite.    L chondrites are considered very normal meteorites  for the solar system, and show nothing unusual,   but one is very different. Cataloged as Osterplana  065, this meteorite may have been a fragment of   the impactor that broke up the L chondrite parent  body based on cosmic ray exposure, but it’s not   like any other meteorite ever seen because  the chromium to oxygen isotope ratios fall way   outside of any other meteorite we’ve ever found. There have been papers published on this anomalous   meteorite, one specifically that suggests that  whatever this meteorite is, the type no longer   falls on earth for unknown reasons even though  the L chondrites still routinely do. This is   unsatisfying, if you have one type still falling,  you should have both types still falling because   to shatter an asteroid of the magnitude of the L  Chondrite parent body, you either need huge mass   which leaves meteorites, or very high speed.   Or alternatively, you need a situation where   the L chondrite parent body is still out there  somewhere, and took other hits and still produces   ejected material, but the impactor is long gone  and does not. The ultimate conclusion at the   time though was that the meteorites that fall on  earth today are not completely representative of   what asteroids were in the asteroid belt during  the Ordovician period. That makes little sense.   I offer another suggestion, that the meteorite  impactor may have been small, and moving at a   high speed hyperbolic trajectory and its anomalous  isotopes may point to it being an interstellar   meteorite that originated in another star system  entirely. If you have things like 3i/ATLAS,   Oumuamua and 2i Borisov in such numbers as to  suggest interstellar material passes through   the solar system constantly and always has, then  it’s certainly possible that such a rock might hit   a solar system object at a hyperbolic speed,  a characteristic that identifies interstellar   objects, and leave a meteorite that gets deposited  on earth. I leave it up to the chemists to decide   if my hypothesis is viable or not. Thanks for listening! I am futurist   and science fiction author John Michael  Godier currently warning all of you in   the audience that if you intend to recover a  multiple ton meteorite from a remote location,   be sure you bring enough caribou if its in an  area where they live, and not water buffaloes   if that isn’t appropriate. That whole affair got  infinitely more difficult than planned because   they were a caribao short. But isn’t that how life  works, never enough hours in the day, and always a   caribou short which is why it takes me forever to  get books out and be sure to check out my books at   your favorite online book retailer and subscribe  to my channels for regular, in depth explorations   into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects  of this amazing universe in which we live.