What does it look like when a decent-size meteorite hits earth? It was said that a decent-size meteorite hit earth this weekend in Latvia and made a nice crater 20 meters in diameter. Nice photo of the crater here:

Meteorite Strikes Latvia

This isn’t the best video, but appears to be the only one available right now (at night, shortly after impact):

Unfortunately, it appears to be a hoax:

Too tidy to be a meteor, say scientists as they reveal 50-foot crater is a hoax

Scientists investigating a large crater initially believed to have been caused by a meteorite said a closer analysis today revealed it was a hoax.

Experts in the Baltic country rushed to the site after reports that a metorite-like object had crashed late last night in the Mazsalaca region near the Estonian border.

‘This is not a real crater. It is artificial,’ Uldis Nulle, a scientist at the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Center, said after inspecting the site today.

However, a real, non-hoax meteor did hit Peru in 2007. And it did create a 15-meter crater:

Peru meteorite may rewrite rules

A meteorite which ploughed into the Peruvian countryside last year should have shattered and dispersed long before reaching the ground.

That is the conclusion of scientists who have been examining samples of the space rock and the 15m-wide crater it dug out in Carancas last September.

See also: Mysterious Illness From Peru Meteorite

Last week a much smaller meteorite hit an SUV in Canada:

S. Ontario meteorite fragment hit SUV

No crater in this case – just a broken windshield.

More info: How big does a meteor have to be to make it to the ground?

[[[Jump to previous question - How big is the universe]]]