少年被隕石砸中手部幸存

Gerrit Blank， 14， was on his way to school when he saw \"ball of light\" heading straight towards him from the sky.

A red hot， pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground.

The teenager survived the strike， the chances of which are just 1 in a million——but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand.

He said: \"At first I just saw a large ball of light， and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder. The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.\"

Scientists are now studying the peasized meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen， Germany.

Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space.

Ansgar Kortem， director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory， said: \"It's a real meteorite， therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists. Most don't actually make it to ground level because they evaporate in the atmosphere. Of those that do get through， about six out of every seven of them land in water，\" he added.

The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama， USA， in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house， bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.

14歲的Gerrit Blank在上學的路上，突然發現天上有一個“光球”直直沖自己腦袋飛過來。一片發熱的、豌豆大小的隕石于是就這樣砸中了他的手，然后掉落地面，砸出一英尺寬的小坑。

這孩子幸運地活了下來——這樣的幾率只有百萬分之一啊！不過手上留下了一道三寸長的傷疤。

他回憶說：“一開始我只是看到一個大大的光球，然后突然手上一陣劇痛，一瞬間耳邊傳來巨響，像一個雷突然炸開，我的耳朵隨后嗡嗡響了好幾個小時。”

科學家們現在正在研究這片墜落在德國埃森的隕石。

化學檢測證實這的確是從太空掉下來的。

德國沃爾特霍曼天文臺主任Ansgar Kortem說：“這片隕石很珍貴。大多數隕石不會掉到地球表面，通常是在大氣層中就燒毀了。而真正能掉落到地面的，有七分之六的都是掉入水域。”

另外一個被隕石砸到并且活下來的例子，是在1954年的美國，當時一個葡萄柚大小的隕石碎片砸穿屋頂，撞到了家具然后砸到一個正睡覺的女人身上。