“Alien” ice block lands in Minorca

The bizarre phenomenon of ice blocks raining on Spain swept across the Balearics yesterday with a two kilos block of ice falling on Mahon in Minorca. In the early hours of yesterday morning more than five blocks of ice, ranging from two to seven kilos, fell on a variety of locations across the country, but the 1.913 gram block of ice which fell out of the sky over Minorca is the first to have been reported in the Balearics. The “alien” object was discovered by builder Cristóbal Torrent Piris, when he turned up for work just before seven o'clock yesterday morning. The ice block has been taken away and is currently being held at a laboratory where it will be analysed before being transfered to the Scientific Investigations Centre in Madrid. Experts at the centre yesterday ruled out that the falling ice blocks are either pieces of comets or have extraterrestrial origins. While scientists are still carrying out their investigations, meteorite specialist at the European Space Agency, Thomas Müller, who is as yet unable to provide a definite explanation, said yesterday that the ice blocks cannot come from the “nucleus of a comet because the composition of the water does not match that of the cosmic bodies.”