Armageddon… not quite but why don’t they stick scales on their photos!

Exciting news reported in the local papers in Gloucestershire as well as news nationally in the UK this week, as small meteorite hit the UK. First signs were a bright, extended meteor track shot on various door bell and security cameras, with a subsequent find by a bemused family on their driveway.  The family then alerted the experts (don’t tell Gove) who now reliably tell us it contains material from the beginning of the solar system.  Indeed one could argue that the material was probably from the Big Bang in one form or another, but that discussion is for another day.  But BBC and other media providers, please put a scale bar on your pics when there is no natural reference.  The meteorite itself could be any size and the picture of the drive could easily be of a coating on a metals surface of the order of a few microns or less or a stony desert!  Admittedly, if the latter were true the resulting impact would bring out more than a few avid meteorite hunters.

May this be a lesson for budding coating engineers – you don’t want your rather novel coating that is about to revolutionise joint replacement to be mistaken for a meteorite impact!