Can it really be true that a Bosnian man’s house has been bombarded by meteorites six times since 2007? Dwain Eldred reports...
Geoscientist online 21 July 2010
Spare a thought for Radivoje Lajic, a Bosnian man who believes his house has been hit six times since 2007 by meteorites. He has had his roof reinforced and believes that he is being targeted by extra-terrestrials.
The unfortunate 50 year-old has been widely quoted in the media as saying "I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don't know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit five times has to be deliberate . . . am being targeted by aliens. They are playing games with me. I don't know why they are doing this."
Nobody else seems to have any explanations either. Unnamed “experts” from Belgrade University have apparently confirmed the authenticity of the meteorites, and since the steel reinforcement of Lajic’s house was apparently funded by the sale of one of them to a "university in the Netherlands" (also unnamed) one should perhaps assume that they are correct. Unless the whole thing has been made up, of course. (That such a thing might happen at all, especially in the middle of the silly season, almost defies belief.)
Lajic first came to prominence back in 2008, when the fifth meteorite apparently fell on his house, in the northern village of Gornji Lajici, near Prijedor in northern Bosnia. The first fell in November 2007. Oddly, Lajic says the falls only happen when it is raining. The experience has been frightening, he says, but not entirely negative. He told reporters: "...these meteorites have brought happiness to our family as well, as we've met different people from around the world that were interested in it. And I have had so many visitors that I plan to make a small museum in my back garden."
Professor Sara Russell of London’s Natural History Museum remains dubious. She told
Geoscientist: “I am sceptical that these are really meteorites until I see them myself. The images I have seen do not look like real meteorites, and the story is a really amazing one, for which it is hard to see any rational explanation.” The pale colour of the supposed meteorites shown in published images suggest that the meteorite could only really be a rare form known as an aubrite, and none of the images shows a black fusion crust.