Haberer-Meteorites Gifts of the sky

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Front page of an Indian newspaper

ADVENTURE INDIA

As fate would have it …

… In the previous year I decided to spend my holiday in India together with friends. We planned to visit several sights there. One morning in September a friend called and told me about a spectacular Indian meteorite fall two days before, on 12^th September 2008. I immediately contacted my friends, and as the impacts were exactly in that part of the country which we wanted to visit we rearranged our schedule accordingly.  

We barely had arrived when at breakfast I read in bold letters on the front page of an Indian newspaper: “Meteorite, not bomb”. It was reported that big chunks had fallen down from the sky accompanied by ear-battering noise and dazzling lights which some of the frightened people thought were bomb attacks. However, adjacent investigations proved that it had been the impacts of meteorites.

Of course nothing could hold me back. Due to my inexpressible fascination for meteorites I had closed my architecture office years before in order to focus on my passion. Since that time I have been searching for the extraterrestrial pieces of rock in over 20 expeditions to African and Asian deserts. But one thing I had never seen until then: the few days old impact crater of a just fallen meteorite. Right away I decided to go to the place of the incident. When I arrived there, I made the acquaintance of the friendly locals who were still under the impression of that fascinating but at the same time frightening occurrence. Just a few days apart, these experiences were still strongly present in their face, eyes, and gestures. I was impressed by the stories of the local farmers who told me with telling movements of their hands how the stones came with the speed of missiles, accompanied by ear battering noise and dazzling lights, into their direction. The impact craters which they showed to me were partly located in dangerous vicinity of their dwellings. One particularly big chunk had hit the tarred road in one of the affected villages and left a big hole in the street. A young man told me awesomely how a huge chunk – later it turned out to have the weight of 35 kg – fell into a lake and caused a vertical water column of over 15 meters. In their initial state of shock, some of the locals assumed that they were attacked by bombs. As in the center of the impacts the earth vibrated heavily, some ran in panic out of their houses because they suspected a strong earthquake. Others thought under the impression of the deafening explosions that the end of the world had come.

After two days of intense communication with local people, enriched with numerous notes, impressions, and pictures I drove on to several spots of this fascinating country where I could spend some precious weeks with friends.