Peruvian Meteorite Sickness Mystery

by gerbil afterburner Wed Sep 19, 2007 16:05

Jorge López is the director of Health for the region of Puna where now 600 have reported symptoms. The Peruvian government is considering a state of emergency. His desciption of "latent danger" has now replaced his statement yesterday (at only 150 people with symptoms) of "no danger". So there is a problem & it is getting bigger.

got that? good.

Dear readers! I used the author name "gerbil afterburner" & now must offer an explanation for such uncharacteristic modesty. Casual readers who confine themselves to gawking at pictures of their mates, trolling the comments & endlessly whining about their deletions [on other sites] wouldn't have got the reference to gerbils. Nor alas would they know the difference between a tupperware party and an alcoholics anonymous creche. Joking aside - In the last ten days there was reference made to 66kg of gerbils or 12 of the little critters each with a life support machine being launched in the direction of mars. Only the day before the Japanese had launched some spanking new toy gadgetry at the Moon to divert attention from domestic political difficulties. Leaving aside the destinations of these two space launches, there was nothing that unusual in the activity. Every week there is a space launch from one of the plethora of space ports across the planet which long ago left the low lattitudes of geographical optimism imagined by Jules Verne. [below 22ºN for the short of a D.Litt. amongst you]

Well now a theory being promoted by a variety of news organisations is that the mystery meteorite of Peru was nothing other than a piece of space garbage of completely terrestial origin. http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/2007/09/19/nacionales/59342 And that is the option I'm going to take.

This was not an act of God as a sort of reminder that Chernobyl (which just got back in the news) fulfilled a chapter of Revelation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_in_the_popular_c...tions God wouldn't get that petulant. Nor is this a reworking of all anglo-saxon science fiction derived ultimately from Lovecraft's "colour out of space" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_out_of_space
Nor indeed does it have much in common with any of the meteorite showers we know of thanks to the global community of astronomers based on descriptions by the locals which we remember were sufficient to attract police looking for a crashed plane's debris. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_meteor_showers If you ever spent time with astronomers you'd know they're a bunch of people who are quick to temper, slow to forgive & will suffer nothing less than a slight on their profession's attention to meteors & suchlike. They really are experts in their field and that's why no-one included stars in the Apollo moon landing photos, because the astronomers would have gone arguing "oh! look at that it's in the wrong place".

So that really leaves us with 2 options. One is really too awful to contemplate :- that a vehicle belonging to our fellow cosmic beings crashed on the Peruvian / Bolivian border whilst on route to the UN building to raygun the reptiles in one world government /& thus bring us all in a jiffy to worldwide peace, Anarchism & my long awaited nightly spot on telly. So we won't go with that.

The case points on one culprit ladies and gentlemen - the Space industry and its waste.

If you go to wikipedia as often as I do, you will by now have found the heirophant of know-it-all sources, I speak of course of the "list of lists". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists
But therein you will not find an upto date list of space garbage. A list produced in 2000 estimated 8,927 man-made objects officially tracked by the Americans accounting for 2 million kilograms of weight and 110,000 total objects 1 centimeter and larger travelling at an average speed of 17,500 mph or 28000 km/h. http://www.space.com/spacewatch/space_junk.html

It's a problem. We have now passed a lits of space debris. There is too much manmade garbage in orbit to keep track of. But normally unless you're considering a space flight or investing in a satelite it's not a problem which will affect you. Except of course you will get the occassional nutter (like me) who wonders how much of that waste is contaminated, radioactive and quite probably poses a global health risk to humans or lichens. Upto this point we have taken it for granted that all returning man-made objects launched into space will either burn up in the atmosphere leaving neglible particles in our clean air, or splash down on the seas which occupy over 361,800,000 sq km, or about 70% of total surface area.

& that's why they [there is always a "they" in space stories] don't tell us what they put up there. Which should be obvious - 12 gerbils do not weigh 66kg even with their life support machines & little gizmos to catch their radioactive smelly droppings.

If this was man-made space debris, then the owners of the material really ought to admit it. Also the media ought to stop discouraging people from approaching meteorites & describe the object for what it was & is. Then we ought call a moritorium on all space exploration!

by gerbil afterburner Wed Sep 19, 2007 17:13

Ever mindful to how thick & impressionable the world's news-consumers are as they enjoy the widest literacy & educational standards in history, the BBC in moving this story from their spanish pages to english pages has thoughtfully included a little health guide. "Do meteors make you sick?"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7002506.stm Basically they don't. You look at them, you make a little wish, & that's it. No triffids no noisome eldritch stuff & definitely no vomiting.

But I know that you lot are less thick & impressionable than the average BBC news-site reader. So I'm going to bring your attention to the video again marking carefully the expert thoughts of a London university man on meteors, Dr Caroline Smith (who as well as being a woman is a curator of the meteor exhibits at the London natural history museum). She maintains the locals have mistaken a "a lake of sedimentary deposit, which may be full of smelly, methane rich organic matter," for a crater. By the way the largest collection of meteorites is to be found in the possession of the Vatican's observatory.

Which brings me to the very first line of my article - 16º34'12"S 72º2'59"W is a reference you can type into google earth & you'll see that with less than 3º adjustment to the west or south, the fireball would have landed in a very deep part of the Pacific ocean. You ought also look at the crater and note that it has no entry side. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7001897.stm For most purposes it looks like a normal explosion crater caused by something blowing up at the base and leaving uniform material on a rim. Craters come in several basic shapes by the way & with a cheap enough telescope you can see examples of all different kinds on the Moon, where they differ from ours for reasons of gravity & lack of an atmosphere & quite probably Selenite tastes in garden design. The object came from the West to Peru, possible travelling at morethan 17,000 mph it would have been a simple navigational oversight for a bit of horrible hush hush space program waste to end up in the Andes and not the abysmal trenches a few seconds to the west. So......................

Who's illegally dumping their waste on the planet?

by gerbil afterburn Wed Sep 19, 2007 21:42

Things have moved very quickly as you'd expect when biblical prophesy meets science fiction, or space industry malpractice meets a bunch of sick peasants. We would hope things would move as quickly were the planet being invaded by hostile extra-terrestial entities.

Dr Caroline Smith the London expert brought in by the english language BBC (see above comment for link) would appear to be a complete and utter bullshitter. Because this afternoon Luisa Macedo, a volcanologist for Peru's Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute (INGEMMET), confirmed that a chondrite meteorite had caused the 17 meter (55 foot) wide and 5 meter (16 foot) deep crater when it landed on earth. Chondrites are the most common of meteorites to be found on earth, nearly 80% of all meteorites recovered belong to the Chondrite class which itself holds as many subcategories as 15. Indeed in one silly article years ago I let it be known that I collect the things
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorites_classification for their magical properties no less.

Although the INGEMMET bunch of experts have declared the object to be harmless they are still going to drain the crater and analyse the water supply of the local area :- "Macedo explained that the chondrite was not radioactive and did not have any toxic gases or substances which could be harmful to peoples health. On the other hand, Macedo stated that it had not yet been established if the water supply in the province of Chucuito had been contaminated or not. Aside from the analysis Macedo is performing, the National University of Altiplano, Peru's Nuclear Energy Institute, the National Institute of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Health and a Bolivian university are all taking part in the analysis of the area."

english language link - http://www.livinginperu.com/news/4730
spanish language link -
http://www.elcomercio.com.pe/ediciononline/HTML/olecult....html

So you'll see we've reached the end of it all. No more good quality video has emerged. I've seen a webcam record of a local news-report which shows some typical indiginous woman pointing at holes in her corrogated metal roof as evidence that the meteorite broke up before hitting the crater.
Anyway - there will it appears be "reports" from 5 weighty Peruvian institues and one Bolivian in time...

by iosaf Thu Mar 13, 2008 09:34

......"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.
The discovery of a water-filled hole, following reports of a fireball in the sky, made headlines around the world. [ & one of the most breathtakingly detailed bits of coverage was right here on indymedia ireland if I say so myself ] Now experts say the event challenges conventional theories about meteorites.......Professor Schultz, from Brown University in Providence, USA unveiled details of research work at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas........he meteorite was travelling at about 24,000km/h (15,000mph) at the moment of impact - much faster than would be expected. "This just isn't what we expected," said Professor Schultz, from Brown University in Providence, US. "It was to the point that many thought this was fake. It was completely inconsistent with our understanding of how stony meteorites act."........."Dr Thomas Kenkmann, from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, offered an alternative view of the Carancas impact. His modelling of the event suggests it was probably caused by a meteorite travelling at low speed and a slanting angle. Under this scenario, the space rock would have broken into just a few pieces rather than many - the largest of which would have gouged the crater".............."Some scientists, however, remain doubtful of either interpretation......"...........[have yet to find one who will stake their academic reputation & research budget supporting my theory it was a bit of toxic space garbage]............"Professor Schultz said he hoped his work would "distinguish fact from fiction".
He commented: "Reports about arsenic, bubbling [of water in the crater] and sickness were probably overblown. People were frightened, but some were also afraid they were under attack from a nearby country." Eyewitnesses reported a cloud of dust travelling outwards from the impact site after the meteorite fell. Reports of numerous livestock deaths are believed to have been exaggerated, though the researchers confirm that a bull's horn was ripped off in the impact.[!?!?!?!?!] Professor Schultz added that the Carancas event raised the possibility there were many other small craters caused by stony meteorites which go unrecognised.......... "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7292863.stm

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