{"id":155975,"date":"2025-10-31T21:01:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/155975\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T21:01:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:01:15","slug":"that-was-close-driver-narrowly-avoids-a-cosmic-calamity-after-a-one-in-a-billion-meteorite-smashes-into-the-windscreen-of-his-tesla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/155975\/","title":{"rendered":"That was close! Driver narrowly avoids a cosmic calamity after a ‘one-in-a-billion’ METEORITE smashes into the windscreen of his Tesla"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Australian driver narrowly avoided a cosmic calamity after a ‘one-in-a-billion’ meteorite smashed into his car windscreen.<\/p>\n

Dr Andrew Melville-Smith, a vet from Whyalla, South Australia<\/a>, was driving home from picking up his brand-new Tesla<\/a> Model Y when a loud crash brought him to a halt.<\/p>\n

‘I thought we’d crashed,’ said Dr Melville-Smith in a post on his clinic’s website.<\/p>\n

‘I was in shock; I remember wiping glass particles from my face and being completely disoriented.’<\/p>\n

Dr Melville-Smith initially had no idea what caused the sudden shock, and only began to suspect an extraterrestrial explanation when he found that the glass in his windscreen was melted.<\/p>\n

Experts say that the odds of a meteor travelling from outer space to hit someone while they are driving are ‘unimaginably unlikely’.<\/p>\n

However, the South Australian Museum has now requested access to the car to investigate further and, hopefully, recover some fragments of the missing meteor.<\/p>\n

If confirmed, this will be the first time in recorded history that a space rock has ever hit a moving vehicle.<\/p>\n

\"Dr <\/p>\n

Dr Andrew Melville-Smith, a vet from Whyalla, South Australia, may have narrowly avoided a cosmic calamity after his brand-new Tesla was hit by a meteorite\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The impact is now being investigated by the South Australian Museum, which will be able to determine whether it really was caused by a meteorite\u00a0<\/p>\n

The shocking incident occurred at 21:00 local time on October 19, around 25 miles north (40 km) from the town of Port Germein.<\/p>\n

Dr Melville-Smith was driving at 68 miles per hour (110 km\/h), and the night was dark, calm, and clear without a hint of rain or lightning.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, there was a loud crash, and the cabin of the car filled with white smoke and a burning smell.<\/p>\n

Dr Melville-Smith looked around for anything that might have caused the collision, but there was no sign of anything or anybody nearby.<\/p>\n

To make things more confusing, Tesla’s onboard cameras didn’t reveal anything that could have caused the damage.<\/p>\n

Upon stopping the car, the vet discovered that his windscreen had a massive crater where the glass appeared to have melted and sagged inwards, and was still warm to the touch.<\/p>\n

Although it initially seemed absurd to think he had been struck by a meteorite, the fact that automotive glass melts at around 1,500\u00b0C (2,732\u00b0F) made him think twice.<\/p>\n

That’s when he decided to reach out to the scientists at the South Australian Museum.<\/p>\n

\"Dr <\/p>\n

Dr Melville-Smith was driving around 25 miles north (40 km) from the town of Port Germein when there was a sudden crash and the car filled with white smoke\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Bizarrely, <\/p>\n

Bizarrely, Dr Melville-Smith discovered that the crater in his windshield was partly melted and was still warm to the touch when he pulled over to investigate<\/p>\n

Dr Kieran Meaney, Museum Minerals and Meteorites Collection Manager at the museum, says: ‘My initial thought was, nah, there’s no way this is going to be the real deal.<\/p>\n

‘We get a lot of meteorite inquiries at the Museum and most of the time they turn out to be a rock from earth that is doing a very good impersonation of a meteorite.’<\/p>\n

However, just like Dr Melville-Smith, the mysterious melted glass made Dr Meaney think twice.<\/p>\n

He says: ‘Once I looked at all the details and the glass of his windscreen seems to have melted a little bit, and the acrylic layers in the glass have discolouration, almost like they’ve been burnt.<\/p>\n

‘It was certainly hit by something and it was something hot, and we don’t have another good explanation for what else it could have been.’<\/p>\n

When Dr Melville-Smith has the windscreen replaced, he plans to hand it over to the museum for further investigation.<\/p>\n

If their analysis shows that a meteorite really was responsible, they will organise a field trip to try and recover the offending space rock.<\/p>\n

However, not everyone is entirely convinced that a meteorite is really to blame.<\/p>\n

\"An <\/p>\n

An alternative explanation is that Dr Melville-Smith was hit by a piece of space debris, such as this fragment from a SpaceX Crew-1 that landed in Dalgety, Australia, which has been known to fall over parts of the country<\/p>\n

So far, there has only been one recorded case of a person being struck by a meteorite.<\/p>\n

On November 20, 1954, a woman named Ann Hodges was hit by a four-kilogram meteorite<\/a> which crashed through her ceiling, bounced off the radio, and hit her in the leg.<\/p>\n

The lack of other recorded incidents suggests that the odds of being struck by a space rock, especially while moving, are so slim as to be likely impossible.<\/p>\n

To add another layer of doubt, Dr Melville-Smith says he never saw a fireball in the sky, which would have definitely accompanied such a large piece of debris.<\/p>\n

Dr Ellie Sansom, of the Desert Fireball Network, told IFLScience: ‘I have serious doubts in its space-rock origin. Not ruling out space debris though. But without any fireball seen, it just doesn’t make sense.’<\/p>\n

Another alternative is that the car was struck by a falling piece of space junk from a rocket or satellite.<\/p>\n

This kind of debris doesn’t usually become so hot, but it does fall on Australia quite frequently.<\/p>\n

However, until the scientists at the South Australian Museum can determine for sure what really happened to Dr Melville-Smith’s car, there will be no way of knowing for sure what really happened to Dr Melville-Smith’s car.<\/p>\n

Explained: The difference between an asteroid, meteorite and other space rocks<\/a> <\/p>\n

An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.<\/p>\n

A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system.<\/p>\n

A meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up.<\/p>\n

This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite.<\/p>\n

Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets.<\/p>\n

For example, if Earth passes through the tail of a comet, much of the debris burns up in the atmosphere, forming a meteor shower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Australian driver narrowly avoided a cosmic calamity after a ‘one-in-a-billion’ meteorite smashed into his car windscreen. Dr…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[118,18,19,17,133,3601,451,1298],"class_list":{"0":"post-155975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sciencetech","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-tesla"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115470800549107971","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}