Skydiver narrowly misses getting hit midair. It's a good thing Chicken Little doesn't skydive, because he'd be seriously losing his cool right now. How else is he supposed to react to this video of a Norwegian skydiver nearly colliding with what appears to be a meteor?
The diver, Anders Helstrup, told Norway's state TV channel, NRK, he caught the incident on camera during a skydive in 2012. He has only recently come around to the idea that the mysterious, falling object could have been a meteor, and not something else, like a rock falling from his skydiving partners, their plane or even from his own parachute.
Experts contacted by NRK have concluded the footage indeed shows a meteor.
"It can’t be anything else," geologist Hans Amundsen told the channel after examining the video. "The shape is typical of meteorites -- a fresh fracture surface on one side, while the other side is rounded.” Amundsen speculated the space rock was the remnant of a much larger meteor that had exploded as it entered Earth's atmosphere.
Had the footage been posted Tuesday, it would immediately have be dismissed as an April Fools' joke. But a website dedicated to finding the rock is taking it very seriously. The site pledges the footage is authentic and hasn't been manipulated.
In an email to The Huffington Post, Helstrup reaffirmed the video's authenticity, writing, "I can guarantee you the story and footage is real, recorded just as it happened. I am aware that April 1 was 3 days ago, but this has nothing to do with that."
"The story is just as amazing to me as it is to most others that are trying to get their head around it," he continued. "I have tried to convince myself [of] every other possible explanation, but I can't seem to make myself believe it's something [other] than a significantly large object."
Helstrup hopes the publicity around his story will lead to someone finding the meteorite.
This story has been updated with a comment from Helstrup.
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