Did a Meteor Take Down Air France Flight 447?

Could a meteor strike be the reason behind the crash of Air France flight 447? The math geeks at Discover crunched some numbers and it turns out that it’s not as implausible as you might think.

According to their calculations, there’s a 1-in-20 chance that a meteor would hit one flight over the past 20 years. Which isn’t too crazy. But still, the odds of something so small falling from the sky and striking something else that’s so small and moving so fast are close to nil, so while this is an interesting theory, the chances are good that it was just a malfunction of the airspeed indicators. [NY Times and Discover]