Meteorite Crash Causes 'Mystery Illness' in Peru Tuesday , September 18, 2007 AP LIMA, Peru — A supposed meteorite that crashed in southern Peru over the weekend has caused hundreds of people to suffer headaches, nausea and respiratory problems, a health official said Tuesday. Local media have reported eyewitness accounts of a fiery ball falling from the sky and smashing into the desolate Andean plain near the Bolivian border Saturday morning. Officials have said it was a meteorite. Jorge Lopez, director of the health department in the southern state of Puno, told The Associated Press that 200 people have been sickened by "toxic" fumes emanating from the resulting crater, which is some 66 feet wide and 16 feet deep. "This is caused by the gas they have inhaled after the crash," Lopez said. He added that some 1,500 people live nearby. But meteor expert Ursula Marvin, cast doubt on that theory, saying, "It wouldn't be the meteorite itself, but the dust it raises." A meteorite "wouldn't get much gas out of the earth," said Marvin, who has studied the objects since 1961 at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts. "It's a very superficial thing." Three geologists from Peru's Geophysics Institute are expected to present a report on the incident on Thursday. Hernando Tavera, a geophysicist at the institute, said similar cases were reported in 2002 and 2004 elsewhere in southern Peru but never confirmed as meteorites. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297145,00.html
Never seen anything like it. I was at the local high school track here in Houston when I saw a fireball streak across the sky and then disappear in an exploding flash. This was around 7:45 PM on Sunday evening. Looked like a shooting star/meteor but much bigger and much brighter.
I got into a brief geophysics kick few months ago, looking up info on matter entering into Earth and the possible destruction it could cause (impact events). Objects enter into the atmosphere all the time. Just not always visible enough to be seen in the air, or rarely ever solid enough to touch the earth.
holy crap, i saw the same thing!!!! where were you, specifically?? i was very near memorial & dairy ashford intersection...just west of that, pulling out of a neighborhood...facing south. i'm thinking it was about 8:15. but it was definitely sunday night. i was thinking i've seen shooting stars before, but never one that big.
I was able to find this photo of one of the victims who unfortunately lived close to where the incident occurred:
This reminds me of something I saw in the sky back in the 80's... perhaps some of you did as well... I don't remember many details, only that i was in the Brooksmith Heights area at the time, it was late at night (well at least after dark), and it was still during the cold war... perhaps around '85-'87?? But we looked up and saw what appeared at first to be about 10 or 12 fireballs close together streaking across the sky... As it came directly overhead, we realized that it was something huge, making no sound whatsoever, and the fireballs may have been either pieces coming off (my dad guessed) -or perhaps separate things launching out of it (I guessed, of course I was a kid growing up with a nuclear war awareness and had seen films about it at school, etc). As it flew at what seemed to be directly over our head at around 500 feet altitude, it lasted several seconds... along the lines of 45 seconds or so... all the way across our field of vision in the sky. Of course I started freaking out, saying "watch the horizon! Watch downtown! That had to be missiles!" I was sure it was WWIII beginning. My dad went into my grandmother's house, as we had just been dropping her off on the way back to L J, and got on the phone with HPD. He was on a busy signal, or a long unanswered ring for seemed like an eternity. When HPD finally answered he prefaced his call by saying, "Okay, first of all, I'm not drunk or high... but my family and I just witnessed something very huge with no sound streaking across the night sky over the city... it looked like ten or so fireballs, or afterburners even, but may have been one object." They responded that it was being reported by thousands of people. They said the switchboards were jammed all over the city... many describing it similarly, and that officers had reported it as well... also that they'd not heard anything from any government agencies, but to watch the news and stay tuned to the radio. My goodness.. now for the 52 mile ride home I was watching intently out of the back window of the car facing north. I was thinking about every minute as I looked at my watch that perhaps we'd seen the US counter strike launched from NORAD or something, and if that was about 15 minutes ago, then we'd have about 10 minutes or so until the flashes started showing up on the horizon behind us. My dad began to be concerned that it was war as well... because my details of what I'd read and learned at school about nuclear preparedness was making sense. He sped up to try and beat out the blast, should there be one. I had told them that I had heard the blast radius should be mostly be within a 40 miles range... if Houston was the only target area, and with the right wind, we should at least be able to survive the initial attack. Tension was high, we got home in time for the news... and... nothing. Not a single report. Next morning there was no red dawn going on. There was no war. I went to school wondering what in the world it was. I new all 4 of us, even grandma, had seen this thing. A couple of days later, finally, a ten second story with one single photo shown as a negative image went up on the screen... "And now this. Perhaps you observed this image a couple of nights ago. Officials at NASA and the US Military have confirmed what thousands reported as a UFO to be a failed Soviet Space Station weighing in at nearly 78 tons. It lost orbit and re-entered the earth's atmosphere over the central Unites States. Calls were received by local authorities from Arkansas to Arizona, with the majority coming from the Houston and Dallas area. Officials believe that all of the space station burned up in the atmosphere due to the angle of re-entry. Sports is next." Whew... and... Huh? That's it? We were relieved and surprised at the lack of a story at the same time. Man the cold war era was intense for a kid who'd recently seen War Games, Red Dawn and most of the other propaganda films out, and had practiced "duck and cover" -and kiss it goodbye- drills at school all his life. But I never heard anything about it again. Anyone else remember that? Or know more about the exact date it happened? We didn't have the interwebs back yonder year. Was it in '83? Salyut 7? Or a piece of it?
bwahaha! I just watched that movie for the first time a couple weeks ago. The first one is still the best one... I WANT MY CAKE!!!
Sorry to answer myself... but I think I may have found it... this would have made sense to be seen in CA as well... given the time zone difference it works... so maybe it was similar what I saw.. it seems like it was close to the holiday season though, and Nov.6 would be right around Thanksgiving. " FIREBALL MARKS RE-ENTRY OF SOVIET ROCKET BOOSTER Source: Mercury News Staff and Wire Reports A Soviet rocket booster fell into the atmosphere late Wednesday as a multicolored fireball that blazed hundreds of miles across the Western sky as a startling string of lights, officials and witnesses said. ''It looked like 100 stars all falling together -- it was moving very fast and appeared to be like a comet with bright debris falling off it," said Adrienne Berry, a controller at the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nev. The fireball, Published on November 6, 1986, Page 1C, San Jose Mercury News (CA) " link BTW- My guess on this "METEOR" is that it was an old Soviet Mini-Nuclear Reactor that was used in the '70s-'80s to support their space stations... they had some fail back in the day. One landing in Canada years ago and could cause sickness or even death within 2 hours of exposure... I found that story at Space.com.... Cover up.
I wonder if there was something in the ground where it hit that turned into a gas with the heat of the object...that or it could be the Andromeda Strain.
I was driving back to Houston from ACL with the top down and on dark stretch of I-10 near Sealy. I saw the brightest shooting star I have ever witnessed. It appeared to be heading ENE. This was around 2am.