sam
The Force is Strong With This One
My first thought was that the meteorite may have kicked up fungus buried in the soil, similar to what happened in the San Fernando Valley after an earthquake:
I checked to see if there were drought conditions in the area which would heighten such an effect, but only discovered that the Amazon is lower than usual, but that is in Northern Peru, I think, and this Peruvian village is Southern.
I personally do not see why it can’t be a crater caused by a meteorite. It is smaller as the ones we now of old days, and it is a bigger as the ones who happen to fall in front of you on the drive in of your parents house.
They showed a clip on the television news tonight with the people standing around the crater.
One older man stepped forward and told the news crew that he was blown two meters away. Maybe that is how they found the crater. Somebody was close enough to be able to give locate it and warn others and eventually some camera crew. Clearly the crater no longer excuded toxic gasses, or it never really did.
But it does not prove that it was a meteor. I think that downed satellites could also be a severe source of these PAH's if not in more liberal amounts.
They showed a clip on the television news tonight with the people standing around the crater.
One older man stepped forward and told the news crew that he was blown two meters away. Maybe that is how they found the crater. Somebody was close enough to be able to give locate it and warn others and eventually some camera crew. Clearly the crater no longer excuded toxic gasses, or it never really did.
Thank you for that info dj. I see that as a very real possibility indeed. In Belgium and around Brussels we had this incredibly old chimney burning for weeks. It accidently caught fire when they wanted to level it with a torch. The authorities said to let it burn out by itself. But entire regions down wind (well into Gerrmany) had to endure terribly stinky fumes. People complained about nausea, vomiting, and terrible headaches. They found out it was full of - like you mentioned - PAH's or Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons.dj said:
But it does not prove that it was a meteor. I think that downed satellites could also be a severe source of these PAH's if not in more liberal amounts.
No, I am pretty confident that ozone does not cause that kind of symptoms.navigante said:
rs
Dagobah Resident
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070919/ap_on_sc/peru_meteorite_6;_ylt=Amx3mMda_xTEPjQ.y0ySbfIE1vAI
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070919/sc_space/scientistsdoubtmeteoritesickenedperuvians;_ylt=AmEImiKgnGVCn2PkujHmsB8E1vAI
Well, the proverbial plot thickens... This particular news story came out shortly after yet another news story came out about how it was not possible for a meteorite to cause sickness...AP said:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070919/sc_space/scientistsdoubtmeteoritesickenedperuvians;_ylt=AmEImiKgnGVCn2PkujHmsB8E1vAI
AP said:
Zadius Sky
The Living Force
Most likely. Personally, I don't think it is a crater as caused by a meteorite. Perhaps, other than a meteor?Laura said:
If a satellite was hit by a meteor or malfunctioned then fell to Peru, one has to wonder what was inside that satellite, which may have caused those sickness among the locals. But, there's just too many factors to be considered here.
anything it might be, celestial or human-made or nothuman-made ,semihuman , or anything you can't help wonder and feel that connection , or at least my reasoning tries to analyze them both as a sequence , between this event and that earthquake , what about those lights remember?
_http://forgetomori.com/2007/science/earthlights-on-perus-earthquake/
let's see how it evolves...
_http://forgetomori.com/2007/science/earthlights-on-perus-earthquake/
let's see how it evolves...
A
Aries331
Guest
Read this one! Seems as though someone believes we may need to replenish our natural food sources sometime soon. http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/articles/show/140165-Arctic+vault+takes+shape+for+world+food+crops
In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster......
The Gates Foundation, the philanthropic giant created by the founder of Microsoft, has given a $30 million grant to Fowler's effort, including money for packaging seeds in their countries of origin and shipping them to the vault.
Anyone besides me think that as one of the worlds richest men Brother Bill knows something we don't?
What comes first, WWIII or the brightly lit jet contrails of a natural catastrophic disaster? Hmmm, maybe I'll ask the "experts"!!!!
In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster......
The Gates Foundation, the philanthropic giant created by the founder of Microsoft, has given a $30 million grant to Fowler's effort, including money for packaging seeds in their countries of origin and shipping them to the vault.
Anyone besides me think that as one of the worlds richest men Brother Bill knows something we don't?
What comes first, WWIII or the brightly lit jet contrails of a natural catastrophic disaster? Hmmm, maybe I'll ask the "experts"!!!!
I recently looked at impact craters to see just how common they are, and they are a lot more frequent that what we are led to believe.
If the one in Peru was a meteorite, then the size is very similar to the Sikhote-Alin meteorite that fell in Russia in 1947. "The strewn field for this meteorite covered an elliptical area of about 1.3 km2. Some of the fragments made craters, the largest of which was about 26 m across and 6 m deep. Fragments of the meteorite were also driven into the surrounding trees."
Some of the observations that I made about impacts can be found on this blog: _http://whiletheearthrumbles.blogspot.com/
Aeneas
If the one in Peru was a meteorite, then the size is very similar to the Sikhote-Alin meteorite that fell in Russia in 1947. "The strewn field for this meteorite covered an elliptical area of about 1.3 km2. Some of the fragments made craters, the largest of which was about 26 m across and 6 m deep. Fragments of the meteorite were also driven into the surrounding trees."
Some of the observations that I made about impacts can be found on this blog: _http://whiletheearthrumbles.blogspot.com/
Aeneas
GRiM
The Living Force
First thought that went though my head when I say the news (TV, not on sott) was it might be a satellite and radiation poisoning. I think its old nuclear powered satellite's being decommissioned.Zadius Sky said:
edit:
http://yournewreality.blogspot.com/2007/09/peru-meteorite-or-us-spy-satellite-600.html
Peru : Meteorite, Or A Crashed US Spy Satellite? 600 Sick, Showing Symptoms Of Radiation Poisoning, National Emergency Could Be Declared
The aftermath of the meteorite strike in Peru just keeps getting weirder.
Reports from Peru now claim that more than 600 people have fallen ill after coming into contact with the "glowing rock" or having inhaled 'toxic gases' after visiting the massive 30 metre wide crater.
The number of people reporting feeling sick, or showing signs of radiation poisoning is rising fast.
The Peruvian Regional Health Directorate has been forced to set up medical tents near a health centre in Carancas to deal with the casualties, which most reports now claim are well above 600 people.
More than 150 people have shown up with dermal injuries, which include heat burns. Most of the other casualties have reported feeling nauseous, suffering from respiratory problems, dizziness and had been vomiting :
According to Peru's La Republica newspaper, due to the high number of illnesses, district authorities are considering placing the town of Carancas, Puno, Peru in a state of emergency.
According to the townspeople, the illnesses began after the meteorite crashed and they began to touch the glowing rock believing it had some type of monetary value.
(...)
One of the more intriguing theories gathering momentum on the net is that the meteorite might actually be a crashed US spy satellite. The KH-13 'brand' of thermal imaging reconnaissance satellites, purportedly weighing some 20 tons, is being discussed on some satellite watcher chat boards as the most likely candidate.
(...)
UPDATE : BBC News, helped by a prominent link on the Drudge Report, is trying to muddy the reality of this event even further by publishing a Q & A suggesting the 600 plus sick Peruvians could be suffering from mass hysteria :
Symptoms could well be caused in part by what is known as a Mass Sociogenic Illness (MSI).
There are countless examples of this through history and up to the present day.
The BBC then goes on to question whether or not the meteorite even exists :
...there is some debate as to whether this is a meteorite - or indeed an object from space - in the first place.
Some scientists are suggesting that people may have witnessed a fireball, set off to investigate, and found a lake of sedimentary deposit that was already there.
What absolute twaddle. If there is "some debate" it must be within the BBC Science Department, because there's no sign of it online that we can find.
As detailed above, Peruvian scientists have already begun investigations and reached a preliminary conclusion that the meteorite is real.
Graalsword
Jedi Council Member
In such a case I wonder if it fell on its own or it was purposely drop there. And if so, I wonder if they did it just because is a third world country and they don't care, or to spread intentionally some illness, or to experiment something on people.GRiM said:
Or maybe it was a UFO?
K
Kieran
Guest
Well, that’s a refreshingly unequivocal statement!
And ‘with everything I see reported now’ (mainly via SOTT’s meteor and fireball watch pages!) it seems to me that we are in the period analogous to an approaching storm. Namely, the first few scattered raindrops before the deluge sweeps in full force!
I seem to remember Ark calculated about mid-2009 for the arrival date of the main cluster! Give or take 6 months either side. (And the Cs, commenting on the calculation, said he had done well!)
Well, the public panic will be immense! And 6 Billion people in a state of panic - and deprivation ...
... obviously another reason for the 'hidden agenda' of imposing so many draconian laws and organising para-military police forces trained in 'crowd control' ... or should it be 'crowd kill'?
Kieran
And there is still more!!!
And....http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/in-peru-a-crater-and-questions/?hp
September 20, 2007, 9:27 am
In Peru, a Crater and Questions
By Mike Nizza
The hole in Carangas, in the Puno province of Peru, that some say is making hundreds of people sick. (Photo: Miguel Carrasco/La Razon, via AP)
Reports on a small Peruvian town’s plight over the past few days include more than a few elements to boggle the mind — and then to make you wonder whether an episode of “The X-Files” is playing out in real time.
On Saturday night, a fiery object fell from the sky. Stunned residents said they tracked it to a fresh hole in the earth that was more than 60 feet wide, 15 feet deep, filled with boiling water and steaming with noxious fumes, according to a statement from the Health Ministry.
And then people started getting sick: more than 150 reported symptoms like dizziness, vomiting and skin lesions, according to a government statement quoted by Bloomberg News.
The Associated Press reports that a local official confirmed through tests that a “rocky meteorite” created the crater. But a meteorite expert at the Natural History Museum in London, who was interviewed by BBC News, said that “increasingly we think that people witnessed a fireball,” which she said would not be uncommon, and that the hole in the ground was unrelated.
After seeing the fire in the sky, the local people “went off to investigate, and found a lake of sedimentary deposit, which may be full of smelly, methane-rich organic matter,” Dr. Caroline Smith suggested. “This has been mistaken for a crater.”
A NASA scientist interviewed by Space.com agreed, saying of the steaming pond that “statistically, it’s far more likely to have come from below than from above.” Adding to the confusion, the scientist concedes that the meteorite explanation was not impossible, but he would expect it to be a metal one, not the rocky one identified by tests at the scene.
A well-informed blogger also raises the possibility of a mud volcano and voices more doubts that a meteor was responsible.
The local official who confirmed the meteorite strike also said that the water in the crater was boiling for 10 minutes, a detail that first emerged from witnesses in what appears to be the first English-language article about the incident, from Agence France-Presse.
“And this is where the story falls apart,” a blogger at Wired writes, adding to that explanation in a post that started off, “Shades of the Andromeda Strain! How cool is this!” He continues:
Leave it to Pravda, Russia’s state-run a Russian newspaper, to be first to report the most political explosive hypothesis for the hole in Peru. The crater, according to Russian Military Intelligence Analysts, was created when the United States Air Force shot down one of its own satellites, the paper says.
You see, the satellite was spying on Iran, and destroying it helps the United States lay the groundwork for an invasion, Pravda says. For a good conspiracy yarn, go read the rest of the article, which manages to tie together 9/11, the briefly missing nukes from a few weeks ago, and more.
Radiation from the supposed satellite’s fuel cell is what sickened all those people, Pravda asserts. According to Living in Peru, radiation is indeed being looked at as a possibility, and the tests are still being completed.
But it is far from clear what made people sick and where it came from. With residents recovering from their relatively minor ailments, a blogger at Knight Science Journalism Tracker was in a joking mood: “Maybe it’s panspermic alien microbes. Maybe not. Swamp gas?”
It also may be all in their mind. A doctor who visited the area told The Associated Press that the scary event could have “provoked psychosomatic ailments.” Here’s what his team found:
More definitive results are expected later today, so stay tuned.
Update, 6:48 PM Eastern More convincing tests are in: It’s a meteorite, but there’s still no explanation for the boiling water, the odors and the sickness. Also, the hole got smaller in this latest measurement. More details from The A.P.:
Can't help but think of this:
And more:
And...http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-meteor21sep21,1,5605341.story?coll=la-headlines-world
Meteorite causes a stir in Peru
By Liubomir Fernandez and Patrick J. McDonnell, Special to The Times
September 21, 2007
CARANCAS, PERU -- -- When she heard the explosion, Isabel Junquilla said, she was sure that war had broken out.
"We thought the Chileans were attacking," Junquilla, 53, recalled Thursday, referring to Peru's historical rival, Chile. "That's what everyone was saying. It was very loud."
Townsfolk in this desolate, high-plains hamlet not far from Lake Tititaca and the Bolivian border received the shock of their lives -- a meteorite that struck nearby with a thunderous bang just before noon Saturday, leaving a deep crater, an acrid smell and terrified villagers and livestock.
The meteorite strike cast a spotlight on this hardscrabble outpost of perhaps 3,000 Indian peasants who live in mud-brick homes and make a living by growing potatoes, herding llamas and raising scraggly cattle.
The incident took on a magical realism feel like something out of a Gabriel García Márquez tale as residents reported strange illnesses and revolting odors, while rumors swirled of a military attack, radiation leak or a celestial rain of gold.
"The day after it fell, we heard this might be worth some money, so we went to pick up everything that was out there," said Eugenio Vilalla, 30. "But there was this terrible smell, really strong, and it gave everyone a headache.
"So the people picked up a few little stones and went home to rest and take a matecito," Villala said, referring to coca-leaf tea, a common cure-all here.
Since then, hundreds have reported maladies, including headaches and nausea. But experts said the reactions probably were imagined. There is no evidence of radiation at the site, officials said.
"Those who say they are affected are the product of a collective psychosis," said Jorge Lopez Tejada, health department chief in Puno, the nearest city.
Authorities took soil and water samples near the crater for analysis.
After days of doubt, they confirmed Thursday that the object was indeed a meteorite -- not volcanic pumice, space junk, or some other Earthly or extraterrestrial phenomenon.
"We're now convinced this was a meteor," said Ronald Woodman, director of the Peruvian Geophysical Institute, which sent a team to the isolated site, about 600 miles southeast of Lima, the capital. "This kind of phenomenon can be dangerous, if it falls on a town, or on a house or person. Fortunately, this wasn't the case."
The object, metallic in nature, created a crater 41 feet in diameter and produced a seismic shock equivalent to a 1.5-magnitude earthquake, Woodman said.
Authorities say the crater was about 16 feet deep.
Experts from Peru's nuclear energy institute estimated that the meteorite was no more than 3 feet in diameter when it smashed into Earth at an extremely high speed.
That piece may have been all that remained of a much larger object that burned up while streaking through Earth's atmosphere, experts said.
The event has drawn worldwide interest, since few objects from outer space make it all the way to Earth's surface.
And it has caused a sensation in this drowsy corner of the Andean altiplano.
"Even before it fell, there was a strong sound, like an airplane," said Marina Llanqui Mamani, 53. "And when it hit, it felt like an earthquake. Everyone was terrified. Even my animals were running all around in fear. Then there was a loud noise and a lot of smoke."
The pungent odor, experts say, could have been caused when the crashing object fused with such elements as sulfur in the soil.
With the danger seemingly past, some here are thinking big: Why not make the whole deal a tourist site, a small museum and side trip for the many visitors headed to Lake Titicaca and Bolivia?
"Now that various experts from Japan and other countries have assured us there is nothing bad, we have decided this belongs to us," said Benito Mosaja Pari, 56, who called himself the village lieutenant governor.
"We're going to dig it out. The scientists tell us this was part of a world that fell apart. It has some value.
"And now it's ours."
patrick.mcdonnell@ latimes.com
Special correspondent Fernandez reported from Carancas and Times staff writer McDonnell from Buenos Aires. Special correspondent Adriana León in Lima contributed to this report.
