[meteorite-list] New, long, Carancas article

[Michael Farmer]

At least 5 to 6 kilos was dust, I know of about 4
kilos of fragments.
Mike
--- Jeff Kuyken <info at meteorites.com.au> wrote:


> Hey Mike & all. Is there any idea how much of that

> ~10kgs was in the dust 

> form? I heard that there was more dust than decent

> fragments but don't know 

> if that's true.

> 

> Cheers,

> 

> Jeff

> 

> 

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

> From: "Michael Farmer" <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>

> To: <cynapse at charter.net>;

> <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>

> Cc: <meteoriteguy at yahoo.com>

> Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2008 2:46 AM

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

> article

> 

> 

> > Yeah, like most reporters, they always mess things

> up.

> > I told them that a total of ~10 kilos was

> recovered.

> > mike

> >

> >

> > --- Darren Garrison <cynapse at charter.net> wrote:

> >

> >> 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

> 

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