What is the chance of being hit by a meteorite or a piece of space debris?
ANSWER – Very low indeed! In fact, books about meteors up until the internet age used to quote time after time that “no one has ever been killed by a meteorite”. The internet has now put historians in contact with meteorite researchers, and most will agree that throughout recorded history, there probably are several cases where people have in fact been killed by meteorite strikes. In the last decade, there are also a few recorded instances of damage to people and property, although no deaths. A car has been dented, and one holed, a house roof has been breached, and a person hit, amongst others. In 2003, the town of Park Field in Illinois suffered multiple damages from a meteorite “shower” (probably fragments from the one meteoroid that entered the Earth’s atmosphere moments before). It should be noted that the above incidents are from meteorites that are travelling relatively slowly (about 100 metres per second). They have been decelerated by the Earth’s atmosphere from the initial met
