Scientists at the US space agency NASA have discounted reports that an Indian bus driver in Tamil Nadu was killed by a meteorite, but Indian experts said this can only be ruled out after “detailed analysis”.
Only a detailed analysis of the object that has been received from the Vellore police can tell whether it is a meteorite or not, said a senior official of Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA).
“The IIA team has received a sample from the local police. The nature of the object can be ascertained only after a detailed analyses by experts,” IIA dean G.C.Anupama told IANS on Wednesday.
Kamaraj, employed as a driver with Bharathidasan Engineering College in Natrampalli in Vellore district, around 170 km from Chennai, was killed and three others were injured in an explosion after a burning object fell from the sky on February 6.
Police said Kamaraj and others were hit by splinters due to the impact of the unknown object which also created a three-feet wide crater.
They said the fragments of material embedded in Kamaraj’s body had been sent for forensic analysis and the post-mortem report would be finalised only after the receipt of the analysis report.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa had announced a solatium of `100,000 to Kamaraj’s family saying he lost his life due to meteorite hit.
Anupama said: “Most meteoroids (as the object is known before it impacts the Earth) disintegrate as they traverse through the Earth’s atmosphere, but a few can disrupt giving rise to several meteorites - as the object is known once it impacts the Earth.
But NASA scientists held that online photographs of the site of the suspected meteorite hit in a college campus on Saturday were more consistent with “a land based explosion” than with something from space, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Early reports included images of a crater, five feet deep and two feet wide. Witnesses described hearing an explosion, and police recovered a black, pockmarked stone from the site in Vellore.
lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary defence officer, told the US daily in an email that a death by meteorite impact was so rare that one has never been scientifically confirmed in recorded history.