An amateur astrophysicist could not believe his luck when he discovered a meteor crater on a Dublin beach and was interviewed by a television crew about the “cosmic event”.
Sadly for Dave Kennedy, the crater was nothing more than a massive hole dug by a couple of friends wielding children’s buckets and spades.
The galactic anticlimax came after Mr Kennedy appeared on television holding a “meteorite” or, as is now more likely, a small heavy rock, and declared it had “come from above”.
“As you can tell here there is a scorch mark on the side, so that would have been at the angle that it came down and its weight,” Mr Kennedy told the reporter for Virgin Media News.
“I’m not sure of its composition, but we’re definitely going to have to find out.”
He added: “When I looked at it and saw how uniform it is, I knew immediately that what I was looking at is an impact site.”
Other astronomy aficionados had plunged into the debate, discussing the depth of the “crater” on Portmarnock beach in County Dublin.
That was until everyone was brought crashing back down to earth after a video of the crater-creating culprits digging the hole was posted on social media.
‘Dug with a kid’s shovel’
The post said: “Lads I’m in bits.
“Some fellas literally dug it the day before with a kid’s shovel ... The way your man was talking about the rock being an asteroid had me in tears.”
Virgin Media has now reported that the meteor strike mystery had been solved.
Despite the evidence the crater was dug by humans during Saturday’s heatwave in Ireland, Mr Kennedy insisted he was still going to get the “meteor” tested.
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