Mystery illness strikes after meteorite hits village

[fuckwit]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=296907

Tuesday Sep 18 12:51 AEST

Villagers in southern Peru were struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite made a fiery crash to Earth in their area, regional authorities said today.

Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located 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 odor," 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 hospitalized, Lopez said.

Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 30-metre-wide and six-metre-deep crater, 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.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/img/2007/scitech/1809_meteor_lg_a.jpg

[LiddyRules]

http://www.supermantv.net/superman/smallville/logo2.JPG

[Creampier]

http://www.supermantv.net/superman/smallville/logo2.JPG

That's what I was gonna post.... Tell 'em Fred... Hoo Hoo!

[BCH]

Fuck that! Find that mother fucker, you know what those things are worth?

[wes mantooth]

I think a cocaine lab exploded. Meteorite my ass.

[FAZ8218]

That is some fucked up shit. :icon_eek:

[Deadbent]

Smallville references!? Pff, you newschoolers.

How about...

Did the person who first touched it sit in their hut, growing moss on themselves until they blew their head off with a shotgun?

[Jambi]

I blame martianvirus.

[WhiskeyWhispers]

Smallville references!? Pff, you newschoolers.

How about...

Did the person who first touched it sit in their hut, growing moss on themselves until they blew their head off with a shotgun?

http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-m/cs/cs_shot3l.jpg

[Budyzir]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v676/Budyzir/084_2.jpg

[THE FEZ MAN]

that has happened before in that part of the world. last time it was a Russian satalite with a nuclear reactor, the villagers used the radioactive contains as glow paint. it killed most of them.

[martianvirus]

The end is near.

[THE FEZ MAN]

The end is near.

oh god i hope. this shit is getting old.

[WhiteHonkyDevil]

Smallville references!? Pff, you newschoolers.

How about...

Did the person who first touched it sit in their hut, growing moss on themselves until they blew their head off with a shotgun?

Damnit. I came in here to say that.

[LiddyRules]

Oh I know there are better, more obscure references. I just liked the Smallville one.

[martianvirus]

Did people even watch smallville? It always looked like a stupid show to me.

[Cunt Smasher]

Didn't "war of the Worlds" start this way?

[d0uche_n0zzle]

Oops, that'll learn them.

[sniper]

http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-m/cs/cs_shot3l.jpg

ahahah first thing i thought of! :clap:

[martianvirus]

Didn't "war of the Worlds" start this way?
No, war of the worlds was about aliens planting life on earth so they can eat us later. They put machines in the earth millions of years ago. Then they wait till we populate the world, then the machines wake up and take our blood.

For the record, I hate war of the worlds. It's a dated idea and should have never been made into a movie.

[Cunt Smasher]

What was the one Tobe Hooper made the re-make of with the meteroite crashing down and the Aliens taking over people?
EDIT: Invaders from Mars

[Angelfuck]

ha, I wouldnt be surprised if the meteorite just exposed an illegal dumping site, I wonder if they have plumbing in that village... shit'll make you sick

[stillbornstew]

smoke 'em if you got 'em.

[Cunt Smasher]

http://www.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=66641&newsChannel=wtMostRead

[SuperGolfer]

Didn't "war of the Worlds" start this way?

No, but THE BLOB did!

[fuckwit]

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/in-peru-a-crater-and-questions/index.html?hp


September 20, 2007, 9:27 am
In Peru, a Crater and Questions

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. (To set the spooky mood, just watch this short video.)

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 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:

Mid-sized meteorites are not hot. I’ll say it again: Mid-sized meteorites are not hot. First, meteoroids are naturally cold. They’ve been out in the frigid blackness of space for many billions of years — these rocks are cold down to their very center. Second, because of its size there’s a good chance that this meteorite was originally part of a larger meteor that broke up anywhere between 60 and 30km above the surface. If that is the case, the larger meteor’s cold interior would become the smaller meteor’s cold exterior. Since hardly any surface heating takes place lower than about 30km, this cold surface doesn’t warm up by any appreciable amount. Some meteorites, located soon after landing, have actually been reported to have frost on the surface due to their still cold interior.

Leave it to Pravda, Russia’s state-run 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:

A team of doctors sent to the isolated site, 3 1/2 hours travel from the state capital of Puno, said they found no evidence the meteorite had sickened people, the Lima newspaper El Comercio reported Wednesday.

Modesto Montoya, a member of the team, was quoted as saying doctors also had found no sign of radioactive contamination among families living nearby, but had taken blood samples from 19 people to be sure.

More definitive results are expected later today, so stay tuned.

[fuckwit]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070921-meteor-peru.html

Meteor Crash in Peru Caused Mysterious Illness

José Orozco in Caracas, Venezuela
for National Geographic News
September 21, 2007

An object that struck the high plains of Peru on Saturday, causing a mysterious illness among local residents, was a rare kind of meteorite, scientists announced today.

A team of Peruvian researchers confirmed the origins of the object, which crashed near Lake Titicaca, after taking samples to a lab in the capital city of Lima (see Peru map).

Nearby residents who visited the impact crater complained of headaches and nausea, spurring speculation that the explosion was a subterranean geyser eruption or a release of noxious gas from decayed matter underground.

But the illness was the result of inhaling arsenic fumes, according to Luisa Macedo, a researcher for Peru's Mining, Metallurgy, and Geology Institute (INGEMMET), who visited the crash site.

The meteorite created the gases when the object's hot surface met an underground water supply tainted with arsenic, the scientists said.

Numerous arsenic deposits have been found in the subsoils of southern Peru, explained Modesto Montoya, a nuclear physicist who collaborated with the team. The naturally formed deposits contaminate local drinking water.

"If the meteorite arrives incandescent and at a high temperature because of friction in the atmosphere, hitting water can create a column of steam," added José Ishitsuka, an astronomer at the Peruvian Geophysics Institute, who analyzed the object.

By Wednesday, according to Macedo, all 30 residents who felt ill reported feeling better.

"People Were Extremely Scared"

Locals described the meteorite as a bright, fiery ball with a smoke trail. The sound and smell rattled residents to the point that they feared for their lives, Ishitsuka said.

The meteorite's impact sent debris flying up to 820 feet (250 meters) away, with some material landing on the roof of the nearest home 390 feet (120 meters) from the crater, Ishitsuka reported.

"Imagine the magnitude of the impact," he said. "People were extremely scared. It was a psychological thing."

The meteorite's crash also caused minor tremors, shaking locals physically and emotionally.

"They were in the epicenter of a small earthquake," Montoya, the nuclear physicist, said.

The resulting crater resembles a muddy pond measuring 42 feet (13 meters) wide and 10 feet (3 meters) deep.

Solving the Mystery

Even as meteorite samples arrived in Lima Thursday for testing, Peruvian scientists seemed to unanimously agree that it was a meteorite that had struck their territory.

"Based on the first-hand reports, the impact and the samples, this is a meteorite," Macedo, of INGEMMET, said.

Tests revealed no unusual radiation at the site, though its absence didn't rule out a meteorite crash.

"Everything has radioactivity, even underground rocks," Montoya said. "But nothing out of the ordinary was found."

Preliminary analysis by Macedo's institute revealed no metal fragments, indicating a rare rock meteorite. Metal stands up better to the heat created as objects enter Earth's atmosphere, which is why most meteorites are metallic.

(See related news photo: "Mysterious Space Object Crashes Into House" [January 5, 2007].)

The samples she reviewed had smooth, eroded edges, Macedo added.

"As the rock enters the atmosphere, it gets smoothed out," she said.

The samples also had a significant amount of magnetic material "characteristic of meteorites," she said.

"The samples stick to the magnet," Ishitsuka, the astronomer, confirmed. "That shows that there is iron present."

Water samples at the crater proved normal, but the color and composition of soil were "unusual" for the area, Macedo noted.

José Machare, a geoscience adviser at INGEMMET, said x-ray tests conducted on the samples earlier today further confirmed the object's celestial origins.

He said the group's findings put to rest earlier theories that the object was a piece of space junk or that the crater had formed by an underground explosion.

"It's a rocky fragment," Machare said, "and rocks that fall from the sky can only be meteorites."

[wes mantooth]

Illness solved. Mass Hysteria.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070927/sc_space/meteoritecrashbreedsmasshysteria

[BCH]

Ha ha! Stupid Peruvians.

[martianvirus]

Ha ha! Stupid Peruvians.

It's more like stupid doctors. They can't figure it out so they take the easy route.