The incident occurred at around 4 a.m. on July 6 in Schirmeck, in the Bas-Rhin department, northeastern France. An unnamed woman was drinking coffee with a friend on the porch when she suddenly heard a loud noise, according to the science news site The Science Times .
Most meteorites burn up in the atmosphere so they rarely hit the ground, and hitting people is even rarer.
"I heard a loud bang coming from the roof next door, then I felt a strong impact on my ribs. I thought it was probably some animal, like a bat," the woman recounted.
But when she checked again, she realized that what hit her was a small rock the size of a golf ball. At first, she thought it was a piece of cement, however, the strange thing was that the rock had no color.
She took the small piece of rock to geologist Dr. Thierry Rebmann. After examining it, Dr. Rebmann discovered that the rock was made of iron and silicon, a typical mixture of meteorites.
Her ribs were painfully bruised. Perhaps because the roof had significantly blocked the impact of the meteorite, she was not seriously injured. The odds of a person being hit by a meteorite were extremely rare, only about 1 in 840 million.
Normally, when meteorites enter the atmosphere, they will rub against the air and most of them will burn up completely. Therefore, it is very rare for meteorites to fall to the ground.
"Finding a meteorite is rare, but to come into direct contact with it, to be hit by it, is even rarer. We have not recorded any cases in the past decades in this area," Dr Rebmann told local radio station France Bleu Alsace.
The origin of the meteorite remains unknown. Dr. Rebmann suggested that scientists conduct further research to confirm its exact origin.
Every few years, scientists discover a meteorite the size of a golf ball falling to the ground. However, they rarely fall in residential areas, but often fall in the desert, according to The Science Times .
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