[meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article

[Jerry]

True, rather poor choice. I'm just quoting.
Jerry Flaherty
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sean T. Murray" <stm at bellsouth.net>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 4:52 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article



> So... a Ford Taurus is an example of a vehicle with miminal friction?

>

> ----- Original Message ----- 

> From: "Jerry" <grf2 at verizon.net>

> To: <cynapse at charter.net>; <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>

> Cc: <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>

> Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 3:39 PM

> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article

>

>

>> "It's like having a Volkswagen turn into a Ford Taurus," Schultz said, 

>> adding

>> that this sort of reshaping is well known to geologists who study islands 

>> and

>> land-water interaction. "If you put a big pile of dirt in a stream, that 

>> mound

>> will eventually turn into a teardrop shape. It's trying to minimize the

>> friction."

>> Just wht Sterlng has been proposing for the last few months.

>> Jerry Flaherty

>> ----- Original Message ----- 

>> From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse at charter.net>

>> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>

>> Cc: <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>

>> Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 12:25 PM

>> Subject: [meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article

>>

>>

>>> Hey, Mike, did you know that you and your team of poachers recovered 10 

>>> kilos of

>>> Carancas?

>>>

>>> http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2008/04/04/Features/Professor.Solves.A.Meteor.Mystery-3304236.shtml

>>>

>>> Professor solves a meteor mystery

>>> By: Chaz Firestone

>>> Posted: 4/4/08

>>> Last September, something strange landed near the rural Peruvian village 

>>> of

>>> Carancas. Two months later, so did Peter Schultz.

>>>

>>> One was an extraterrestrial fireball that struck the Earth at 10,000 

>>> miles per

>>> hour, formed a bubbling crater nearly 50 feet wide and afflicted local 

>>> villagers

>>> and livestock with a mysterious illness. The other is the Brown 

>>> geologist who

>>> may have figured out why.

>>>

>>> The fiery mass shot across the morning sky bursting and crackling like

>>> fireworks, villagers said after the Sept. 15 impact. An explosive crash 

>>> tossed

>>> nearby locals to the ground, shattered windows one kilometer away and 

>>> kicked up

>>> a massive dust cloud, covering one man from head to toe in a fine white 

>>> powder.

>>> Many thought the streaking fireball - brighter than the sun, by some 

>>> accounts -

>>> was an aerial attack from neighboring Chile.

>>>

>>> Curious shepherds and farmers approached the crash site to find a 

>>> smoking crater

>>> reminiscent of a Hollywood film, laden with rocks and stirring with 

>>> bubbling

>>> water that emitted a foul vapor. But curiosity turned to fear when 

>>> unexplained

>>> symptoms began to crop up in Carancas: headaches, vomiting and skin 

>>> lesions

>>> struck more than 150 villagers, Peru's Ministry of Health stated days 

>>> later.

>>> Locals reported that their animals lost their appetites and bled from 

>>> their

>>> noses. Children were restless and cried through the night.

>>>

>>> But according to Schultz, the professor of geological sciences who 

>>> visited the

>>> site last December, the true mystery in Carancas is how any of this 

>>> happened in

>>> the first place.

>>>

>>> Sophisticated theory and conventional wisdom have long agreed that most 

>>> meteors

>>> break into fragments and fizzle out before they can reach the Earth's 

>>> surface.

>>> Even those large and durable enough to make it through the atmosphere 

>>> hit the

>>> ground as ghosts of their former selves, "plopping out of the sky and 

>>> forming a

>>> bullet hole in the Earth," Schultz said. "This meteor crashed into the 

>>> Earth at

>>> three kilometers per second, exploded and buried itself into the 

>>> ground."

>>>

>>> Last month, Schultz delivered a highly anticipated lecture at the 39th 

>>> Lunar and

>>> Planetary Science Conference in League City, Texas. And if he's right, 

>>> the bold

>>> theory he proposed there may shake loose a "gut response" entrenched 

>>> within the

>>> geological, physical and astronomical sciences: "Carancas simply should 

>>> not have

>>> happened."

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>> A Web of speculation

>>>

>>> The handful of shepherds who happened to lead their Alpaca herds near 

>>> the arroyo

>>> that day may have been the first humans ever to witness an explosive 

>>> meteor

>>> impact. But the rest of the world quickly got its chance, if 

>>> vicariously,

>>> through a flurry of activity in the blogosphere.

>>>

>>> Hundreds of scientists, journalists and captivated amateurs weighed in 

>>> on the

>>> bizarre events as they unfolded, offering scores of pet theories and 

>>> radically

>>> revising them as more information streamed in from Peru.

>>>

>>> Pravda, a Russian online newspaper born out of a print version run by 

>>> the

>>> country's former Communist Party, ran the headline "American spy 

>>> satellite

>>> downed in Peru as U.S. nuclear attack on Iran thwarted" five days after 

>>> the

>>> impact. The story attributes the villagers' illness to radiation 

>>> poisoning from

>>> the satellite's plutonium power generator.

>>>

>>> Other proposed explanations were less sensational. Nevadan wildlife 

>>> biologist

>>> and amateur geologist David Syzdek wrote a Sept. 18 blog post titled 

>>> "Meteorite

>>> strike in Peru gassing villagers? Maybe not." In it, he proposed that a 

>>> mud

>>> volcano producing toxic gases was responsible for both the illness and 

>>> the

>>> crater.

>>>

>>> "The Andes are very active geologically so I think there is a good 

>>> possibility

>>> that this crater was caused by an outburst of geothermal activity," he 

>>> wrote.

>>>

>>> As for the blinding light shooting across the sky, Syzdek chalked it up 

>>> to

>>> coincidence.

>>>

>>> "Fireballs are quite common," he wrote. "One possible scenario is that 

>>> the

>>> people who saw the fireball just happened on a recently formed mud 

>>> volcano while

>>> they were out looking for the fireball impact site."

>>>

>>> Though Pravda and Syzdek drew radically different conclusions from the 

>>> reports,

>>> what they shared with each other, many bloggers and even some scientists 

>>> was a

>>> healthy skepticism about reports coming out of Peru. Pravda and Syzdek 

>>> both

>>> pointed out in their posts that an explosion powerful enough to create 

>>> such a

>>> large crater would be equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT, or a tactical 

>>> nuclear

>>> strike.

>>>

>>> "When I first saw the news reports, they just didn't seem right," Syzdek 

>>> later

>>> said in an interview. "Explosive impacts like this just don't happen."

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>> 'A hyperspeed curveball'

>>>

>>> Gonzalo Tancredi, a Uruguayan astronomer who collaborated with Schultz 

>>> in

>>> Carancas, said initial reports of the impact confounded amateurs and 

>>> Ph.D.s

>>> alike. Bewildered scientists even entertained the possibility of a hoax 

>>> as

>>> rumors floated around the scientific community.

>>>

>>> "At the beginning, there were some doubts about what really happened 

>>> there,"

>>> Tancredi said. "We thought maybe it was a meteor fall or maybe it was 

>>> something

>>> else, even something fake."

>>>

>>> But when Tancredi visited Carancas a few weeks later, what he observed 

>>> silenced

>>> the conspiracies and pointed unequivocally to one conclusion.

>>>

>>> Tancredi interviewed locals, who reported a large mushroom cloud that 

>>> formed

>>> over the crater and compression waves that knocked villagers to the 

>>> ground. He

>>> also found pieces of soil and rock that had been launched over three 

>>> football

>>> fields from the crater - one piece even pierced the roof of a barn 100 

>>> meters

>>> away. Combined with analyses of infrasound detectors and the patterns of 

>>> crater

>>> "ejecta," the evidence pointed to a genuine and very powerful meteorite 

>>> impact.

>>>

>>> But the question that remained on everyone's mind was how the meteor got 

>>> there

>>> at all - a scientific riddle that was made even more challenging by 

>>> Michael

>>> Farmer.

>>>

>>> Farmer is a controversial figure in the geological community. He is a 

>>> meteorite

>>> hunter, a poacher of alien rocks who travels to impact sites around the 

>>> world -

>>> usually the "bullet hole in the Earth" type mentioned by Schultz - and 

>>> collects

>>> whatever he can find, often brushing up against authorities and other 

>>> hunters.

>>> Meteorite hunting is Farmer's full-time job; he profits from selling 

>>> what he

>>> finds.

>>>

>>> Farmer, who said he is "totally self-taught" when it comes to meteors, 

>>> said he

>>> was as skeptical as the rest when he first heard the reports coming out 

>>> of Peru

>>> while on hunt in Spain. But 16 days later, he and his partners found 

>>> themselves

>>> staring into the Carancas impact crater, the first Americans on the 

>>> scene - and

>>> they stumbled on an extraterrestrial gold mine.

>>>

>>> "We got there and just started picking up pieces off the ground," Farmer 

>>> said.

>>> "The entire ground was white, just white powder which was all meteor."

>>>

>>> Farmer and his team eventually accumulated 10 kilograms of small 

>>> meteorite

>>> fragments and sold them to private collectors and universities for an

>>> astronomical $100 per gram.

>>>

>>> But despite his rocky past with the geological community, Farmer and his

>>> expensive fragments made a priceless contribution to scientists. Within 

>>> minutes

>>> of arriving on the scene, Farmer discovered that the Carancas meteorite 

>>> was a

>>> chondrite, or stony meteorite, as opposed to an iron meteorite.

>>>

>>> Though far more common than iron meteorites, chondrites are highly 

>>> vulnerable to

>>> ablation - the cracking, eroding and even exploding that occurs when a 

>>> meteor

>>> enters the atmosphere and undergoes extreme changes in temperature and 

>>> pressure.

>>> As a result, chondrites are far less likely than the more durable iron

>>> meteorites to make it to the Earth's surface in large pieces - which 

>>> makes the

>>> Carancas meteorite all the more baffling.

>>>

>>> "For a while, the only information we were getting was from Farmer's Web 

>>> site,"

>>> Schultz said. "This was not the type of object you'd expect to get 

>>> through the

>>> atmosphere in a tight clump."

>>>

>>> With most pieces of the geological puzzle on the table, the stage was 

>>> set for

>>> Schultz to visit the site for himself. But when he arrived there in 

>>> December

>>> with a Brown graduate student, Tancredi and Peruvian astrophysicist Jose

>>> Ishitsuka, a budding geologist actually made the crucial discovery. 

>>> Scott Harris

>>> GS said he collected some soil samples "initially out of curiosity" to 

>>> look for

>>> evidence of shock deformation, which occurs when an object rapidly 

>>> decelerates

>>> in cases like impacts or explosions. When Harris looked at the material 

>>> under a

>>> microscope, he found tiny mineral grains that had turned into glass 

>>> because of

>>> heat and massive shock forces, indicating a very high-speed impact. Here 

>>> was yet

>>> another mystifying piece of evidence.

>>>

>>> "At the minimum," Harris said, "this would support a velocity of three

>>> kilometers per second - a real high-velocity explosion instead of just a 

>>> plop in

>>> the ground."

>>>

>>> By this time, more reputable scientific theories of the impact had 

>>> supplanted

>>> the initial speculation, the most popular of which came from a group in 

>>> Germany

>>> and Russia. They proposed that the meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere 

>>> at a

>>> very shallow angle, allowing it to reach the surface gradually and avoid 

>>> a

>>> sudden increase in pressure - "the difference between diving in and 

>>> doing a

>>> belly flop," Schultz said.

>>>

>>> But their theory's relatively low impact velocity of 180 meters per 

>>> second, or

>>> about 400 miles per hour, was consistent with every piece of evidence 

>>> but

>>> Harris', which pointed to a velocity of about 10,000 miles per hour at 

>>> impact.

>>>

>>> "This was nature's way of throwing us a curveball," Schultz said. "A 

>>> hyperspeed

>>> curveball."

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>> Changing shape, changing theory

>>>

>>> Back home in Providence, Schultz was now faced with the task of fitting 

>>> the

>>> puzzle pieces together into a cohesive theory. And to do it, he looked 

>>> to

>>> Earth's closest planetary neighbor, Venus.

>>>

>>> "Our models make predictions about what kind of objects can make it to 

>>> the

>>> surface at what velocity, and the Carancas meteor isn't usually one of 

>>> them,"

>>> Schultz said. "But Venus has a much denser atmosphere and we still find 

>>> craters

>>> on its surface. How did they get there? I think it might be the same 

>>> thing

>>> here."

>>>

>>> To explain the alternative theory he developed, Schultz compared a 

>>> typical

>>> meteor's descent to a waterskier behind a boat.

>>>

>>> "Normally when you're on the outside of the wake, you're pushed out 

>>> further,"

>>> Schultz said. "From my experience looking at Venus, I realized that 

>>> there was a

>>> certain condition where the waterskier will stay inside the wake, and 

>>> actually

>>> get pushed inward."

>>>

>>> At last month's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Schultz proposed 

>>> that

>>> the meteor did break up into pieces, but shock waves created by the 

>>> speeding

>>> mass may have kept them close together. And since the meteor descended 

>>> as a

>>> clump of fragments instead of one large piece, it reshaped itself along 

>>> the way

>>> to become more aerodynamic, like a football or a javelin cutting through 

>>> the air

>>> instead of a poorly shaped hunk of rock.

>>>

>>> "It's like having a Volkswagen turn into a Ford Taurus," Schultz said, 

>>> adding

>>> that this sort of reshaping is well known to geologists who study 

>>> islands and

>>> land-water interaction. "If you put a big pile of dirt in a stream, that 

>>> mound

>>> will eventually turn into a teardrop shape. It's trying to minimize the

>>> friction."

>>>

>>> Tancredi, who co-authored the paper with Schultz, Harris and Ishitsuka, 

>>> said

>>> Schultz's theory is gaining popularity but is still being debated, even 

>>> among

>>> the group that proposed it.

>>>

>>> "This is the hot question right now," he said. "We still have to 

>>> demonstrate

>>> that this phenomenon is possible."

>>>

>>> In the meantime, another hot question had remained without a definitive 

>>> answer -

>>> the etiology of the strange illness that afflicted the people of 

>>> Carancas. But

>>> the group may solve that mystery, too.

>>>

>>> Schultz, Harris and Tancredi all dismissed the possibility of the 

>>> meteorite

>>> emitting harmful gases that would sicken villagers. Instead, they 

>>> proposed a

>>> simpler cause: the power of the mind.

>>>

>>> The meteorite impact sent out a powerful compression wave that knocked 

>>> nearby

>>> villagers and animals to the ground and injected the soil with air, 

>>> which later

>>> bubbled up through the crater. Shepherds and cattle may also have 

>>> breathed in

>>> the thick dust thrown up by the crash and smelled the sulfurous gases 

>>> produced

>>> as water reacted with iron sulfide in the meteor.

>>>

>>> But what the group thinks later spread through the town was not disease, 

>>> but

>>> panic.

>>>

>>> "We think it was probably more of a psychological response," Harris 

>>> said, adding

>>> that commonplace symptoms like headaches and nausea could easily have 

>>> been

>>> caused by the disorienting impact and then mirrored by frightened 

>>> villagers.

>>>

>>> Harris also admitted the possibility of the meteorite releasing arsenic

>>> deposits, which are known to exist in Peru, but said it would be very 

>>> unlikely

>>> for those gases to have caused the illness.

>>>

>>> "In order to really get arsenic poisoning, you'd need high 

>>> concentrations," he

>>> said. "You'd have to be there inhaling the vapor filled with the stuff 

>>> right

>>> after the meteorite hit."

>>>

>>> Poisonous or not, the Carancas meteorite could have important 

>>> implications for

>>> public safety. Tancredi said there's no reason an impact like this 

>>> couldn't

>>> happen in a major city, wiping out a few city blocks. He also pointed 

>>> out that

>>> today's most advanced meteor detectors aren't nearly powerful enough to 

>>> detect

>>> an object as small as the Carancas meteorite.

>>>

>>> "Near-Earth detectors detect objects that could create a global 

>>> catastrophe,

>>> something maybe a kilometer across," he said. "We don't have any kind of

>>> technology that could detect this object before reaching the atmosphere, 

>>> so it

>>> will not be possible to know when and where one of these objects could 

>>> strike

>>> again."

>>>

>>> But Schultz said the most important lesson to learn from Carancas is 

>>> that the

>>> foundation of good science is hard empirical evidence, even - and 

>>> especially -

>>> when it contradicts established principle.

>>>

>>> "We tried to understand what the rocks told us rather than looking at 

>>> the

>>> theory," he said. "Nature trumps theory, every time."

>>> ______________________________________________

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