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A veterinarian from Whyalla, South Australia, may have experienced one of the rarest incidents ever recorded. His Tesla was struck by what could have been a meteorite while he was driving on a regional highway. The South Australian Museum has launched an investigation into the mysterious impact, which left the car’s windscreen partially melted and the driver stunned. On the night of October 19, Dr. Andrew Melville-Smith was traveling along the Augusta Highway, about 40 kilometers (25 Miles) past Port Germein, when he heard what he described as a “loud” and “violent” bang. “A truck went past — five to ten seconds later, there was an enormous explosion,” Dr. Melville-Smith told ABC News Australia. “Glass went flying inside the car, there was white smoke everywhere, and we could smell burning. My wife thought the car was on fire.” The car, a Tesla Model Y operating in self-driving mode, did not stop or appear to detect the impact. “The car was driving along and unconcerned … it wasn’t aware of the chaos that was going on in the cabin,” he said. Dr. Melville-Smith was left bleeding from glass fragments but managed to regain control. He initially dismissed the idea that a meteorite could be responsible, but later contacted the South Australian Museum to investigate. A rare possibility The South Australian Museum’s mineralogist, Kieran Meaney, said that if the object proves to be a meteorite, it could represent a world-first case of a meteorite colliding with a moving vehicle. “The odds of that happening are just phenomenally low — if he had been driving ten kilometers faster or slower, it would have missed him,” Meaney said. After initially suspecting a bullet or debris flicked up by a truck, the police ruled out both. “The really unusual thing is that the glass of his windscreen has actually melted a little bit; there was a lot of heat in whatever hit the windscreen,” Meaney told ABC News. He added that the museum team will analyze the damaged windscreen for any embedded particles, a process that could take weeks or months to complete. According to Science Alert, if the samples reveal traces of material consistent with a meteorite, the museum will likely conduct a search of the site to locate any remaining fragments. However, Meaney noted that alternative explanations, such as falling space debris or an object dropped from an aircraft, are still being considered. “It may be the case once we investigate further, we find out it’s something different, but at the moment that’s the theory we are working with,” he said. Experts are still Skeptical Not all scientists are convinced that the mysterious projectile came from space. Professor Jonti Horner, an astrophysicist at the University of Southern Queensland, said there is “good cause” for skepticism. “Two, three, or four minutes before this rock hit the car, there should have been a very widely observed fireball in the sky, at least as bright as a full moon if not significantly brighter,” Horner told ABC News. He added that meteorites are typically cold when they reach the ground, contradicting the intense heat that appeared to melt Tesla’s windscreen. “These things have been held at the cold, cold temperatures at the depths of space for billions of years, and they’ve had a fleeting few seconds of being heated up as they pass through the atmosphere,” he explained. Dr. Hadrien Devillepoix of Curtin University shared similar doubts, telling IFL Science that if a meteorite had caused the impact, a visible fireball would likely have been seen for hundreds of kilometers. Dr. Ellie Sansom from the Desert Fireball Network also expressed “serious doubts in its space-rock origin,” though she did not rule out the possibility of space debris. A mystery yet unsolved The exact nature of the object remains unclear. “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,” Meaney said in a statement. Investigators plan to perform chemical analyses to determine whether the material is of extraterrestrial or terrestrial origin. Despite the uncertainty, Dr. Melville-Smith expressed gratitude that the car’s self-driving mode kept him and his passengers safe during the chaos. “If we were in any other vehicle, we would have crashed during those moments of incapacitation,” he said. As the investigation continues, scientists are weighing a series of improbable scenarios, from space rocks to space junk, in hopes of identifying what exactly fell from the sky onto a moving Tesla in the South Australian night.
