Hi,
What's fascinating to me is that what we have at
this point is (maybe) just one notch above the kind
of accounts we find in folklore and ancient myth:
a roaring glowing object falls from the celestrial seat
and smashes into the earth, foul vapors issue forth
and the people are sickened, cows miscarry, a boiling
miasma is seen in the hellish pit, evil influences are
emitted (radiation), and so forth. The usual, more
or less fitted to the local cultural conceptions. Only
the UFO's are missing.
And we are no more able, on the basis of the data
presented so far, to judge this event than we are able
to judge the likelihood of a real event behind the stories
found in ancient annals, legends, and myths (a topic
that has recently come up on this List).
I do note, in the NYTimes photos, evidence that some
sections of the rim are upturned or tilted, evidence of
a mildly explosive event below the surface. Note also that
the crater is only 600 yards from the very large Lake
Titacata and the water in the crater is likely ground water
that flowed in shortly after formation.
Lake Titacata's level has been dropping for a long
time (you can see elevated ancient shorelines on the
hills around it). The initial bubbling reported could
be explained as turbulance from water that came
flooding in from an underground stream or source.
Likewise, the reported odors could be from mineral
salts (the accumulation of which in soils of the irrigated
platform agriculture of the ancient civilization that was
once quite extensive in the area doomed it).
Purely ad hoc hypotheses put forward in case
this turns out to be the real deal... I will have to say
that the crater looks more like a large impact pit
than a crater. The 3:1 width/depth ratio is characteristic
of very loose materials (like soil and sand) in mild
impacts. Harder target materials and higher velocities
produce deeper transient craters that then slump and
rebound to shallower depths. The material seen in the
photos is good old Altiplano dirt and an occasional
flat rock.
Despite its size, the crater looks like a low-energy
event, and not a thermal event, but the result of a large
and slow (for a cosmic body) impactor. Simple holes
in the dirt are called impact pits; one is described here:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek/ellemeng.html
A witness saw a 970 gram weight fragment of the
meteorite, measuring approximately 10 centimeters in
diameter, impact in a meadow: this fragment generated
a half meter deep impact pit. The diameter of the pit is
not given, but would (or should) be 1 meter or more. The
fragment was intact.
Scaling that event up to the size of the reputed
Peruvian pit, also in dirt) you get an 0.8 to 1.0 meter
meteorite (which would weigh about 1.0 to 1.3 tons, by
the way) sitting there, or one helluva lot of fragments.
Do you see it (or them) in the photos? The Jilin main
mass of 1.77 tons produced an impact pit 6 meters
deep, only slightly bigger than this pit. The one-ton
Sterlintamak crater of 1990 is roughly the same size
as the Peruvian Pit. Hard to miss a one-ton meteorite,
I would think.
Interestingly, the other vital datum -- the WIDTH of
the impact pit -- is seemingly never reported, I discover
after hours of Googling. It is never present in either
historic accounts nor contemporaneous ones, even by
scientists, or even accounts of actual finds made by
otherwise wise, wonderful and virtuous members of
this List. Both numbers matter, guys. Useful fundamental
data going to waste.
Here's an interesting article of fundamental research
on impact carried out in a high-tech sandbox:
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:7oX3prQ_bsAJ:www.nature.com/physics/highlights/6938-1.html+impact+pit+meteoritehl=enct=clnkcd=31gl=us
Sterling K. Webb
---
- Original Message -
From: Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2007 9:10 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] More articles on Peruvian Event and
PossiblePicture
Some recent articles of interest about the Peruvian explosion.
1. Meteorite causes a stir in Peru: The explosion near Carancas
frightened and awed residents and (they say) made them sick. Los
Angeles Times, September 21, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-meteor21sep21,1,5605341.story?coll=la-headlines-world
This article has some detail about local reaction, including
hopes to bring in tourists.
2. In Peru, a Crater and Questions By Mike Nizza and Mike Nizza
New york Times bloggers, who visited the crater, September 20, 2007,
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/in-peru-a-crater-and-questions/index.html?hp%20
3. Peruvian Meteorite Has Sci Fi Twist By Bill Christensen,
Space.com, September 19, 2007
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070919_technovel_peru_meteorite.html
4. Space object or meteorite that fell in Peru causes
