A blinding green flash, a dull rumble and a pierced house: two weeks after the fall of an asteroid between France and Germany, scientists confirm the unique aspect of this science fiction scene.
Nearly two weeks after a spectacular fireball passed through the European sky, scientific analyzes confirm the historic aspect of the event. What was only a green flash for thousands of French people turned into an extremely rare impact on a German home.
On March 8, around 7:00 p.m., time stood still from the Rhineland to the French Grand Est. In a few seconds, the dark night faded. “It was like a car collision, I looked around but I didn’t see anything“, says a cyclist still in shock. “I saw something fly at an incredible speed, it was certainly four times faster than a jet plane“, reports another city dweller in the local media SWR. In Nancy, Strasbourg, Lille and even in the Vosges, witnesses describe the same unreal scene: a ball of fire projecting clear shadows on the ground, transforming the nocturnal landscape into a daytime setting.
The numerous videos from “dashcams” (cameras installed on car windshields) and surveillance cameras which continue to saturate social networks show a trajectory turning fluorescent green. For astrophysicists, the explanation is now confirmed: this characteristic color indicates the presence of nickel and magnesium in the rock. Entering the atmosphere at more than 70,000 km/h, these metals ignite and ionize, creating this electrical halo that has so disconcerted observers. Faced with the massive influx of calls, the Koblenz police had to reassure the population: it was neither a plane crash nor a satellite fall, but a rare natural event.
While most meteors disintegrate completely at high altitude, this one survived its hellish journey. In Koblenz, in the Güls district, the unthinkable happened: a fragment hit the roof of a residential house, leaving a hole the size of a football. Although the police and firefighters have secured the impact areas in the Hunsrück and Eifel regions, interest does not wane. For scientists, each gram recovered is a time capsule dating back to the formation of the solar system. Fortunately, despite the violence of the impact and the speed of the fall, no injuries were reported.
Such an event is a statistical miracle: if such powerful lightning only occurs about once a year in a country, seeing a meteorite directly hit a home only happens a few times a century on the scale of a continent.
