Without Warning

If there is any doubt that unexpected stuff from outer space can inflict grievous bodily harm, just ask Brenda Archer in New Zealand. Her grandson had just left the living room as she was making breakfast when she heard an “almighty explosion.”

“It was like a bomb had gone off. I couldn’t see anything. There was just dust.”

A meteorite the size of a grapefruit had punched a hole through the roof, ricocheted off the couch, hit the ceiling, and come to rest under the PC.

Lucky, the toddler had left the room, and luckily the extraterrestrial missile wasn’t watermelon sized. Had it been, Grandma Archer and family might have become modern man’s first-known causalities from a non-earth-bound threat.

It’s ironic, too, that the damage to the house, at a mere $6,000, would represent a small fortune to the science dedicated to asteroid research—no exaggeration.