(ORDO NEWS) — Late in the evening of September 15, 2007, residents of the Peruvian province of Puno, located by Lake Titicaca, heard a loud rumble in the sky, as if a crashed plane was falling on them. Following this, they saw a ball blazing in the dark sky, which rushed at breakneck speed towards the Earth. Moments later, the ball crashed into the rocks and exploded. People living 20 kilometers from the explosion felt the ground shake under their feet.
Gassed
And a few hours after the explosion, mysterious events began. About one and a half thousand people live in the area surrounding the place where the celestial body fell. Soon they all felt that a strange smell was spreading from the “scene of the incident”, because of which people began to watery eyes, and a headache began. About two hundred people sought medical help. It soon became known that a crater 13 meters wide and six meters deep had formed at the site of the meteorite’s fall, which was filled with boiling water!
Several police officers arrived at the scene and lost consciousness after inhaling the poisonous gas. However, some of them managed to report that they needed medical assistance. Specialists who came to the call were equipped to repel the gas attack, as well as oxygen bags intended for the police. It was possible to establish that local residents and representatives of law enforcement agencies suffered due to toxic fumes coming from the fragments of the fallen space body.
Access to the scene is prohibited
Experts examined the crater and concluded that an ordinary meteorite was the cause of the events described : when it fell, a chemical reaction began, as a result of which gas was released. It is not clear only why the water in the funnel boiled. Also surprising
the fact that such a huge funnel was formed as a result of an explosion comparable in power to a nuclear one. However, seismic sensors in different countries of the world did not register it! The radioactive background in the area of the fall was normal. But experts recommended that the authorities prohibit curious citizens from accessing the site of the meteorite, at least until the samples sent for examination to the capital of Peru, Lima, are examined.
Similar cases have already been reported in Peru in 2002 and 2004, when meteorites also fell in the south of the country, after which the local population felt unwell.
Source of the epidemic
It is worth reminding our readers that meteorites can be fragments of comets, which sometimes contain a fairly large percentage of poisonous substances, for example, cyan (a colorless mixture of nitrogen and carbon with a bitter smell).
After the samples were examined, Renan Ramirez, an expert at the Peruvian Institute of Atomic Energy, said that there was no particular reason for concern, since we are talking about the most ordinary meteorite, during the fall of which a chemical reaction occurred and gas was released. Analysis of the crater water revealed no radiation or unfamiliar organic inclusions. The collected fragments of the meteorite are pieces of rock interspersed with iron without any unknown elements.
True, people living in the area of the meteorite fall do not trust the expert opinion too much. They are afraid that microorganisms that could cause a new disease unknown to earthly doctors could get to Earth from space with a meteorite. And where did the fountain of boiling water come from? In addition, people believe that the fragments of the space guest remaining at the bottom of the funnel continue to react with water, and the substances formed as a result of the reaction may be harmful to people. Old people remember the legendary flu that swept the entire globe at the beginning of the 20th century, the so-called Spanish flu. It is known that a pandemic of this terrible disease began after the Earth crossed a cloud of cosmic dust that followed Halley’s comet. However, since two years have passed since the fall of the meteorite in Peru, and no epidemic has arisen in those places, the population calmed down. The only puzzling thing is that access to the place where the meteorite fell is still prohibited.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.