According to AdelaideNow (Australia), a meteorite fell on a village in Peru, and now the villagers are complaining of all manners of sickness:
Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was a plane crashing near their remote village, in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.
Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a “strange odour,” local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.
Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being taken to hospital, Mr Lopez said.
Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene where the meteorite had left a crater 30m wide and 6m deep, said local official Marco Limache.
“Boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby. Residents are very concerned,” he said.
Interesting. Typically, you don’t get small craters (like a meter across) because the meteorite needed to produce something in that size range would be so small that it wouldn’t be moving very quickly when it hit the ground (200 kph or so). Big craters, hundreds of meters across, are formed when a big object hits at hypersonic speeds, because the air doesn’t slow them down much. Craters intermediate in size are very rare, as far as I seen; an object, say, 10 meters across will still be moving at quite a clip when it hits, but not at hypersonic speeds. So the crater size makes me suspicious; I wouldn’t expect a flaming meteorite at that size… but I won’t rule it out with my limited knowledge.
The smoke and other effects make me very suspicious indeed. You just don’t get that sort of thing from a meteorite! Maybe this was space debris, a satellite re-entering. Or it was misreported. Or maybe it was something else. I’ll keep my eyes open for more news; add a comment if you hear more. Boing Boing has an image of the crater.
Part II coming soon.
September 18th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
My best guesses are:
1.This is a case of misreporting.
2. “Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc“, People are getting sick due to something else.
3. It’s a case of freak phenomena (crater releasing bacteria, ground gases, buried toxic waste, into the air, etc.).
September 18th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
And boiling water coming out of the crater? Unless the water table is extremely shallow at this location, I find this very unlikely.
I’m getting the vibes that someone is trying to attract tourists.
September 18th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
So now we know what happend to Steve Fossett!
September 18th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Looks like a pig muck to me, only without the piggies.
September 18th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Ostentation of the current plotline of “Alley Oop”?
September 18th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
I wonder if the “meteor crater” is near any volcanic areas. Boiling water and noxious fumes sounds more like active geology than a meteor impact.
September 18th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Sounds like a sewage or toxic chemical explosion. The meteor’s just a coincidence.
September 18th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Looks like a fumerole to me. The strange smell is likely SO2 or possible H2S, though it could be any other organic gas. I wonder if possibly someone had burried some organic garbage. My dad tried to make beer in 1952, by burrying a five gallon plastic container filled with sugar, H2O,yeast, etc. in a sand dune in Arabia. Two weeks later they returned to find a six foot crater where the container had been burried. Seems they forgot to leave the cap on loose,,,smelled pretty bad too,,,
Gary 7
September 18th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Could be a volcanic gas explosion. That could explain the crater and the symptoms.
September 18th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Way to completely dismiss the phenomenon out of hand without having any real information about it what so ever, duders. Très skeptico, très skeptico!
September 18th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
I agree with Ibrahim’s top three reasons.
It’s a wierd world out there.
And universe beyond.
September 18th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
It kind of reminds me of the craters caused by mortars and smaller caliber artillery.
But boiling water??
You don’t suppose it was a misfiring of a Remote Control Guided NAAFI?
September 18th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Oops. I confused meters and feet. And the picture in Yahoo news made it seem about 30 feet wide.
Maybe not a mortar–
September 18th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Way to completely dismiss the phenomenon out of hand without having any real information about it what so ever, duders. Très skeptico, très skeptico!
Meteor impacts that produce craters are very rare. In addition, most meteor (or impact crater) news are bovine manure (one recent example: the Tunguska “crater” lake was a well-known landmark long before the event).
This one might have an extraterrestrial origin, but since there are many other, much more likely ways to produce a crater (with the associated nausea) it is far more probable that this one is not a meteor crater.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
[...] se pojavila i na SpaceWeather i BadAstronomy.com, na oba sajta izrazena je sumnja da je rec o padu [...]
September 18th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
It might have been a meteorite.
It might not have been a meteorite.
How’s that for a definite maybe?
Standing by for more information before I comment further.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
I was also guessing that whatever it was that made the crater probably released some noxious gases. And to “Abject dismissal without inquiry is not the same as skepticism” up there (man, you have a long name), nobody’s outright dismissing the meteor explanation. Just putting it in its proper perspective – as one explanation out of several, and probably not the likeliest.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Finally the zombies will start attacking, I’ve been warning people for years about this but no one would listen. Now that it’s here all I can say is… I TOLD YOU SO. If any one want’s me I’ll be in my shelter.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Hmmmm, while most of the volcanoes in that region are older and largely inactive, that’s still a seismically fertile area. Coupled with the reports of a fireball, boiling water, and noxious smell, I’m with Gary on this one – I think we’re looking at a fumerole or upheaval. None of those effects are likely (if they have even been observed at all) with a meteorite.
For some fun, go here. See the small blue spot on the west coast, near the “waist’ of South America? That’s Lake Titicaca, and the Desaguadero region lies just south of it. The red triangles are volcanoes – click on any for details. But if I was going to pick an area for a gas vent, that’d definitely be high on the list.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Spike, you beat me to it! I was just going to say, if any of the local cemeteries in the area start disgorging recently deceased citizens, the locals better be careful, or they may end up on the menu…
September 18th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
I think Gary Ansorge hit the nail on the head with this one. Some garbage was buried 50 years ago in an airtight container, and it took this long to build up to explosive levels. That crater just doesn’t look like an impact crater. It’s weirdly proportioned for something that small.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
I just wanted to comment–as someone who has visited Puno–that I’d like to know what altitude the police officers came from. I sure wish I had had oxygen when I was up there.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
I’m curious as to why every one of my comments gets “snagged as spam”:P. Eventually they get approved, but still. There is nothing unusually about any individual comment I post that could be construed as bad by a spam filter. I hate spam filters.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
I thought it was a book blurb for Ian Watson’s _The Martian Inca_ when I first read about it.
“The Mars probe has crashed. A triumph of Soviet technology, the first two-way interplanetary probe performed brilliantly until the final stage of its return. Then something went wrong: rather than following its programmed course to a soft landing in its country of origin, the probe crashed in the Peruvian Andes. Now a weird infection beyond the understanding of medical science has wiped out an entire village– except for one man, who, alone and undiscovered by the medics, survives. He has awakened to find himself become his own ancestor, and a god. Suddenly the flames of an Indian revolution are spreading in South America. He is the Martian Inca.”
September 18th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
I so want it to be the early ammonia servicer from the ISS.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition15/e15_eva_072307.html
September 19th, 2007 at 3:47 am
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7001897.stm
Doesn’t add much except the more detailed picture.
September 19th, 2007 at 4:37 am
Were there any commercial airliners near by? Perhaps one of their toilets had sprung a leak and this was a large chunk of green ice – yuck
September 19th, 2007 at 7:28 am
I don’t want to start a discussion on religion, but…
Isn’t this how Superman came to earth?
He was on an spaceship that crashed to earth… That would explain that fireball, the smoke and the bad smell of burning extraterrestrial fuel (kryptonite?)
Maybe the residents should look around for a little boy….
September 19th, 2007 at 7:48 am
A bunch of peasants in Peru declare a hole in their ground
is from a meteorite and they start getting sick?
Oh yeah, it must be true.
Has anyone actually found a meteorite at the site, or had
a real geologist come to check things out?
I’m still feeling punchy after reading about that ignoramus
from The View who doesn’t know if the planet she presumably
lives on is round or flat.
I see the world has been taking more stupid pills than usual
lately.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:42 am
SpikeShiel:
Just remember, whenever there’s a knocking at your shelter door, accompanied by cries of “Brains!”, always be sure to ask whether they’re zombies hungry for brains, or survivors thanking the thing that has kept them alive.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Another vote for hydrovolcanic activity. Has anyone else been to Death Valley and seen Ubehebe crater?
September 19th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I’m thinking that a landmine from a past war in the region went off when a chemical tanker ran over it, thus generating crater, fireball, toxic and noxious gases, AND a tourist attraction!
Thank you, Thank you…just throw money, please!
September 19th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Why Zombies? My first thought was the X-Files episode “El Mundo Gira” (the one with El Chupacabra).
http://www.x-files.gr/guide/e4×11.htm
September 19th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070919/sc_space/scientistsdoubtmeteoritesickenedperuvians
probably just a Geyser. would make more sense anyway, all the exotic bacteria living in the geyser could do some nasty things to people.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
No no no, it was really a piece of debris from an ancient Martian defense satellite. It’s been secretly orbiting earth for millions of years, a remnant of an ancient war between the martians and the people of Planet X. Unfortunately, the craft was using a Torsion Navigation system that was affected by the same thing causing the decline in domestic bee populations (see http://www.enterprisemission.com/Bees/thebeesneeds.htm). The malfunctioning navigation caused it to collide with another satellite, what remained crashed to Earth. Of course, the crash caused the biochemical weapons on board to rupture. The sickness is being caused by the remnants of some ancient Martian biological weapon. Fortunately, since we are genetically similar to Martians, and the weapon was intended for use against the reptilian people of Planet X, it should only have a minor effect on us. However, folks should be on the look out for a bunch of dead lizards in the area….
Dang… that was almost too easy.
September 20th, 2007 at 3:18 am
good morning
yesterday I write a comment in a italian website, about my personal idea about the meteorite in Perù, I have write, that is my opinion, was maybe a dirty bomb with nerv gass like H2S, or something like space garbage, near the Bolivia border, 200 persons arround the crater the ppm of venomous gas .If was realy a meteorit the high temperature dont permit this …in every case, my opinion was delete after 2minutes
why?
greetings
carmelo
September 20th, 2007 at 3:43 am
smapdi raised the possibility of this being reentry of the Early Ammonia Servicer jettisoned from the ISS on 23 July. Looks like a smoking gun to me … They predicted up to a year before reentry, but stats show that average time to reentry for junk thrown off the ISS is about 36 days, with few staying aloft for more than 100 days. smapdi, did this thought originate with you, or do you have a source ?
September 20th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
It’s highly unlikely to be a meteoroid strike. For one thing, far from being HOT, meteorites which reach the surface are actually COLD. In the few seconds of atmospheric passage, conduction has no hope of significantly heating the inside of anything bigger than a few cm across; only the very outside gets really hot. Most of the heat of entry it carried away by melt and/or vapor. No way a meteorite boiled water for more than a few seconds…..
September 21st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
[...] working its way slowly through the news pipeline), only the illness angle is still a mystery. First reports suggested that a few dozen locals, including the police officers, got nauseous at the site. [...]
September 21st, 2007 at 2:52 pm
It’s a toss-up for me:
I think it could be
1) Volcanic activity such as a sudden venting of gas. If pressure is allowed to accumulate and not vent off slowly, it could release suddenly giving off a roar. The stories focus more on the sickness of the locals than reports of a fireball streaking thru the sky. Or,
2) If Armageddom is near, this could be one of the first meteors from the massive cluster of meteorites from God.
September 21st, 2007 at 4:35 pm
[...] why was Bad Astronomy Blog in denial about the identity of the fallen object? (see here and here. It was no [...]
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:05 am
[...] Via: Bad Astronomy Blog » Meteorite mayhem, Part I [...]
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:50 am
While some call it suspicious that there isn’t any meteorite material laying around……..isn’t it also suspicious thats there isn’t any wreckage eiteher? Even an armed missile will leave junk strewn all over the place…….
September 24th, 2007 at 9:38 am
[...] after the impact, Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy said: …the crater size makes me suspicious; I wouldn’t expect a flaming meteorite at [...]
March 13th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
[...] ein Meteorit mit der Erde kollidiert und hat einen kleinen Krater erzeugt. Die Zeitungen und das Internet waren damals voll mit Meldungen – vor allem deswegen, weil es bei diesem Impakt seltsame [...]