An unusual incident occurred in the Australian state of South Australia, where a couple claimed to have miraculously survived after a mysterious object struck their Tesla. This event has puzzled scientists and led experts to suggest an unprecedented hypothesis: «a meteorite hit a moving vehicle».According to the Nndtv website, Andrew Melville Smith and his wife Jo were returning from a car exhibition in Adelaide when they heard a loud bang followed by the shattering of the car's windshield.Andrew told the Australian ABC network: «I thought we had hit something big. The sound was loud and very intense, to the point that smoke instantly filled the cabin, while the car continued to drive automatically without swerving from the road».Smith believes the Tesla's autopilot feature was the key factor in their survival, as the car remained steady despite the chaos inside.After inspecting the vehicle, the couple discovered that the windshield looked partially melted at the point of impact, with cracks radiating outwards in a star pattern, indicating the immense energy of the collision.Melville Smith reported the incident to the South Australian Museum, where a team of experts led by Dr. Kiran Meeney, assistant head of the mineralogy department, began investigating the source of the mysterious object.Despite the extremely low probability of a meteorite hitting a moving object, Meeney acknowledged that there are field evidence supporting this rare hypothesis.Dr. Meeney said: «The strange thing is that the windshield looked like it had been exposed to intense heat; we don't have a clear explanation yet. The investigation may yield different results, but we are currently leaning towards the meteorite hypothesis».According to Meeney, if the results are confirmed, this would be the first documented case of a meteorite striking a moving car worldwide.The museum plans to analyze samples collected from the car and the scene in search of additional fragments that could confirm the object's extraterrestrial origin.Other experts have proposed alternative explanations, such as space debris or a piece of an aircraft falling. Meanwhile, astrophysics professor Jury Horner expressed doubts about the meteorite theory, pointing out that no fireballs were observed in the sky before the incident, which is common with the fall of large meteorites.It is worth noting that Earth receives about 5,200 tons of material from space annually, most of it in the form of microscopic dust that is invisible to the naked eye.
