Meteorite in Latvia

[Laura]

Gives crop circles an all-new meaning and really raises the bar for Doug and Dave!

 

[clerck de bonk]

Hrmmh... I do think it looks to tidy, the hole I mean... It looks like it has been dug. If I would have done this I would have used explosives to get the dirt to fly out of the pit. Those rims are... odd. Either they should be bigger or not there at all.
I went off to search the web for some good pictures and presto, didn't find what I was looking but... I did find websites for people who are into bombcraters!! Both making them and photographing real ones... How strange...
I think the PTB would be more than pleased to be able to show this one to be a fake(witch I think it is) because when the real one hits nobody will believe it to be true...
A bit like the AJ case.

 

[sankara]

i am not a specialist about impacts, but if i met one I would ask him: "A lot of earth has been 'excavated' from the so called impact, where has it gone? is that normal, in case of such a violent impact to have only a round of mud around the hole?

Whatever would be his answer, I would follow.

NB: Of course I didn't mean listening to an "expert" on TV. people ;)

 

[Gawan]

The timing is suspect too. This falls right on the heels of the recent Orionid meteor showers:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195256-Orionid-Meteor-Shower

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orionids

Thanks Ryan for that link.
I looked up today some notes from Victor Clubes and Paul Napiers "Cosmic Winter":

[...] in that enveloping the Taurids, Comet Encke and these particular asteriods is a broad tube of meteoric debris. The earth enters this tube in April and does not emerge again until about the end of June, entering again in October and re-emerging in December.

So we are again in a phase of more activity.

 

[Joe]

looks too clean to me. I suspect a hoax

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6890838.ece

when I first saw it it reminded me of this

http://www.popgive.com/2008/03/darvaza-burning-gates.html

 

[ark]

From what I read on Russian news: There is a guy (some kind of a manager of Latvian mobile phone company Tele 2) who admits "We did it". First there were news that Tele 2 will have to pay for the joke. Now the police says "they will not have to pay." How they did it? No clues. How to dig 5 m deep a hole and not leave any traces of getting out of the hole? So, while most of the Russian media follow the official version "It was a hoax", some, very few of them, notice a similarity with the event in Peru in 2007.

But why cover up on such a great scale?

 

[clerck de bonk]

I have to backtrack from my earlier post after seeing more pictures where You can make out(only almost ) almost all of the crater rim...
To answer a few questions:
1. Were is all the dirt? -> out in the field in both scenarios though less of it if it was dug(imo)
2. The "feeble" rim? -> poor resolution in pictures(and deliberate poor cropping of same?) make it hard to determine whats what, also due to same you can't see the dirt in the grass further away(which is there, IMO)

The crater seems to be oval in the latest pictures I've seen and that makes it even harder to fake if you use explosives to "round it off"(imo)

Some questions: Were are the pictures that aren't cropped, shows details, shows the hole crater and with sufficient resolution?
With these pictures that are on the web you still can't make a decision for or against, maybe that is intentional?

 

[RyanX]

looks too clean to me. I suspect a hoax

I've had the experience of digging large, deep holes before (for a water cistern) and I don't see how it could be this clean if digging was the method used. A hand dug hole seems to be the explanation I've read in most of the articles on this incident. There would have to be tracks and paths for wheel barrels or bucket carrying and possibly other signs of tools. Spreading the dirt out over the rest of the field and to create the "rim" to give the impression of an impact wouldn't be an easy task either. When one digs a whole, dirt typically comes out in large clumps (unless one is in mostly sand), which would then have to be manually broken up and sifted out over the surrounding area to remove the smooth shovel marks on one side. It's possible that if the site was left to weather long enough this sort of evidence would be gone perhaps. For a hole this big, a large team of people would have to be employed in the hoax too - at least if they wanted to finish digging in any reasonable time. The fact that it is so clean suggests that it had to have been caused by an impact or an explosive of some sort in a short amount of time.

I'm no expert in explosives, but as clerck de bonk suggests,

[quote author=cdb]The crater seems to be oval in the latest pictures I've seen and that makes it even harder to fake if you use explosives to "round it off"(imo)[/quote]

A single blast explosion is typically of a "V" or upside-down cone shape from what I've read. It would seem that multiple explosives would have to be employed to round it off, as clerck de bonk mentions. Setting this up would be no easy task either. Bore holes would have to be dug to a precise depth and then back filled.

Then there is the video of the burning object/substance at the bottom of the hole. I've read the comments on the various news sites that have carried this story and this is often mentioned as a reason for why this is not a meteor. I agree, this doesn't seem to fit the description of the typical stony/ferric meteor, however I recall that comet fragments are often composed of hydrocarbon-like substances, which may have the potential to burn like this. That was my initial thought anyways.

 

[The Mechanic]

Lots of great pictures here: _http://www.diena.lv/lat/politics/hot/zinatnieki-dosies-petit-vai-mazsalaca-tiesam-nokritis-meteorits

and some really big ones:
_http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/foto/b911ef7e_ANP_11153423.jpg
_http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/foto/b911ef7e_ANP_11153432.jpg
_http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/foto/b911ef7e_ANP_11153434.jpg
_http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/foto/b911ef7e_ANP_11153443.jpg

I think it would be really hard if not impossible to dig such a nice round hole with a shovel. By hand would also be hard work, taking a lot of time. As far as I can see the possibilities are 1) somebody put some explosives in the ground and thus created the hoax, or 2) it's genuine. The media pushing forth the "Tele2 publicity stunt" explanation is interesting. If it's true, one could see it as a deliberate action vectoring people's understanding away from the reality of the increasing number of meteorites falling from the sky. If it's not true and it is an actual meteorite, the Tele2 story actually serves the same purpose, to vector people away from the truth.

This article is also interesting: _http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8326483.stm

Page last updated at 18:18 GMT, Monday, 26 October 2009

Doubts over Latvia 'meteor crash'

Scientists investigating a large crater in a field in northern Latvia, believed to have been caused by a meteorite, now suspect it was a hoax.

Fire crews were called to the scene on Sunday outside the town of Mazsalaca by locals who said something had fallen from the sky and set the land on fire.

One expert who had said the 9m (27ft) wide crater was caused by an impact, said he now thought it was artificial.

The hole was too tidy to have been caused by a meteorite, he said.

It would be unusual for such a large meteorite to hit the Earth, as most objects burn up in the atmosphere and never reach the surface.

In 2007, a meteorite ploughed into the countryside near the Andean town of Carancas in Peru, creating a 15m (50ft) wide crater.

'Pyrotechnic compound'

On Monday, a spokeswoman for the Latvian State Fire and Rescue Service said firefighters had been told by a witness about a fire in a field near Mazsalaca at 1730 (1530 GMT) the previous day.

"We concluded that the impact must have come from the air and this is why we believe it could have been a meteorite," Inga Vetere said.

A military unit sent to the site found normal radiation levels.

Uldis Nulle, a scientist at the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre, said his first impression after visiting the site late on Sunday had been that the crater was caused by a meteorite.

However, on closer inspection in daylight he found that the hole was too tidy to have been caused by a genuine impact.

"This is not a real crater. It is artificial," he told the Associated Press.

Caroline Smith, meteorite curator at London's Natural History Museum, told the BBC that the photographs and video footage of the site, and the material burning in the bottom of the hole, indicated that it was not an impact crater.

"Meteorites are not 'on fire' or even hot when they land on Earth," she said.

"Additionally, there have been no witness reports of any large 'fireball' sightings in the region on Sunday afternoon, when the crater was allegedly formed."

Latvian Geologist Dainis Ozols said he believed someone had dug a hole and tried to make it look like a meteorite crater by burning a pyrotechnic compound at the bottom.

It is thought the meteorite would have to have been at least 1m (3ft) in diameter to create a crater that size.

The owner of the land is now selling tickets to people who want to see the crater, reportedly to pay for wear and tear on the road.

So meteorites don't burn now, suuure...

 

[Regulattor]

This is a photo of a very large hole in Arizona:

And people (smart) are saying it is made by a Meteor!

This is a photo of a bit smaller hole in Latvia:

Do you see any similarities?

 

[treesparrow]

I'd imagine that if this was a true event an impact of this size would been registered by a seismic recording station. I've attempted a search, come up with this addresss, www.isc.ac.uk but it's unavailable to me at the moment for some reason.

Anyone care to take up the baton?