New Delhi: A suspected meteorite the size of a football plunged into a rice field in Bihar's Madhubani district, startling farmers, authorities said on Thursday.
Onlookers said the light brown-coloured object sent them fleeing from the field when it fell in their village on Wednesday afternoon, sending up smoke. The villagers returned after the smoke subsided and pulled the rock out from its four-feet-deep crater.
"The farmers were working in the paddy field when this heavy rock fell from the sky with a very loud noise," Madhubani District Magistrate Shirsat Kapil Ashok said. "We saw it has very strong magnetic properties, some shine and weighs around 15 kg."
The find is being analysed by scientists as a possible meteorite. Meteors are particles of dust and rock that usually burn up as they pass through Earth's atmosphere, with those that survive the fall known as meteorites.
In 2016, authorities in Tamil Nadu state said a meteorite killed a bus driver and injured three others.
While Indian scientists backed the claim of the regional authorities, US space agency NASA later said did not believe the object was a meteorite.
In February 2013, a meteorite plunged over Russia's Ural Mountains, creating a shockwave that injured around 1,200 people and damaged thousands of homes.
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