'Aliens' Attacking Bosnian Man with Meteorites
Fivemeteorites have fallen on Radivoje Lajic's house in the past six months. Thereis only one possible conclusion. Lajic says:
"I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. Idon't know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanationthat makes sense. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small thatgetting hit five times has to be deliberate."
Belgrade Universityscientists have confirmed that all of the rocks presented to them by Lajic aremeteorites.
The first meteorite smashed into his house last November.Since that time, four more have hit his home.
Lajic has since installed a steel-girder reinforced roof onhis home in Gornja Lamovite.
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"I am being targeted by aliens. They are playing gameswith me. I don't know why they are doing this."
Although this story is somewhat hard to believe (it would behelpful to see the meteors in situ,having blown through the house, for example), it is as good a reason as any todiscuss orbital kinetic energy weapons.
The first time I read about kinetic energy weapons in orbitwas in a science fiction novel; Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven wrote about itin Footfall,their 1985 novel.
"You take a big iron bar. Give it a rudimentary sensor,and a steerable vane for guidance. Put bundles of them in orbit. To use it,call it down from orbit, aimed at the area you're working on..."
(Read more about flyingcrowbars)
Jerry Pournelle described a weapons system like this in apaper twenty years earlier; it gets its "punch" from kinetic energyalone:
"Thor will impact a target area at about 12,000 feetper second; that is sufficient kinetic energy to destroy most hard targets,with minimum collateral damage and of course no fall-out. Achievable accuracyhas been estimated at ten to twenty feet CEP (circular error ofprobability)."
SF writer GregBear made use of a similar technology in his 2007 novel Quantico:
"Lancets - essentially guided steel telephone polestipped with a chemical warhead. They're designed to fall from low Earth orbitand punch a hole in the ground..."
(Read more about Bear's orbital weaponlancet)
Via Ananova;see also JerryPournelle.com.
(This Science Fiction in the News story used withpermission of Technovelgy.com- where science meets fiction)
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Bill Christensen is the founder and editor of Technovelgy, a website dedicated to cataloguing the inventions, technology and ideas of science fiction writers. Bill is a dedicated reader of science fiction with a passion about science and the history of ideas. For 10 years, he worked as writer creating technical documentation for large companies such as Ford, Unisys and Northern Telecom and currently works to found and maintain large websites. You can see Bill's latest project on Twitter.
