Authorities first described it as “an explosion”. The incident, in which a 40-year-old man died and three others were injured, took place at the Bharathidasan Engineering College in Natrampalli, India on Saturday, February 6, 2016. Witnesses reported hearing a loud rumbling noise followed by an explosion which blew out windows of buses and buildings and left a four-foot-deep crater in the ground.
Initially authorities thought the cause of the explosion was a bomb, possibly dropped by a terrorist or military drone aircraft. Today however, we learn that the cause was not manmade at all – it was a meteorite.
Authorities today retrieved a piece of the meteorite and issued the following statement,
“A mishap occurred yesterday when a meteorite fell in the campus of a private engineering college in Vellore district’s K Pantharappalli village.”
A witness described the tiny rock fragments observed at the site of the explosion on Saturday as “blue-ish black” in color and said:
“There was a noise like a big explosion. It was an abnormal sound that could be heard till at least three kilometers [about two miles] away”
The victim, a bus driver for the college, was killed when the meteorite landed in the area where he was walking.
