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