Pravda readers: Peruvian meteor mystery solved. In reality-land.

[Beelzebud]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070921-meteor-peru.html

No it wasn't an evil American spy satellite with Plutonium on board, that had the same qualities of an airborne virus.

It turns out when actual scientists arrived, they realized it was a natural pocket of arsenic in the ground. The meteor hit, vaporised the ground water, and released the arsenic in the air, which caused the villagers to get sick.

Not everything is a conspiracy, and this should be yet another example of why you don't link to Pravda, and expect people to take you seriously.

[daninthemoon]

1. Cool, but the article doesn't specifically state that arsenic was found

at the site, only that arsenic deposits occur naturally in the area. Probably the correct explanation, but I would like to see this last loose end tied up. Thanks for the post.

[krispos42]

2. But the theorizing was so much FUN!!!!

:cry:









:rofl:

[Buzz Clik]

15. Yeah, I agree. But all that tinfoil was becoming toxic, too.

[krispos42]

23. Good thing it's recyclable!

:-)

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

3. pravda or rupert murdoch's news corp

tough choice on whom to believe?

[Algorem]

4. Sure,actual Trilateral Commission scientists.

!!!11!!111!11

[Buzz Clik]

16. Do Trliateral Commission scientists ride dinosaurs to church on Sunday?

Have a pure line of genetic code that, unlike normal humans, bears no resemblance to other primates?

Just asking...

[donsu]

5. whose actual scientists arrived?

nt

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Not surprising, only in detail. Witnesses reported the smell of sulfur, and ...

bits of lead and silver ore thrown out of the ground. Sulfur and/or selenium (toxic) are often associated with heavy metals such as these (PbS is the major ore of lead), and arsenic is a frequent contaminant. The fact that people got sick almost immediately makes chemical poisoning (especially by inhalation) much more credible than either infection or radiation exposure, either of which would take longer to show effects. So poisoning by heavy metal ores, or compounds formed from them, such as H2S or maybe H2Se, should have been a first guess.

Silver actually forms a lovely ore containing silver, arsenic, and sulfur -- proustite, Ag3AsS4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proustite

[Zandor]

7. K & R

and another example of the lunacy of Pravda.

[Peace Patriot]

8. The article reads like the 9/11 Report, if you know what I mean.

Confused muck, riddled with black holes of un-information.

Red flag in the very first sentence. A "rare kind of meteorite." Uh-huh.

The lead: "An object that struck the high plains of Peru on Saturday, causing a mysterious illness among local residents, was a rare kind of meteorite, scientists announced today."

The "team": "A team of Peruvian researchers" described as researchers for Peru's Mining, Metallurgy, and Geology Institute (INGEMMET). Bear in mind that Peru has one of the most corrupt governments in South America (currently kissing Bush's butt for "free trade" and "war on drugs" military aid). No more reason to trust their report than to trust Bush-dominated EPA or NASA.

The collaborator: "...a nuclear physicist **who collaborated with** the team" (my emphasis) avers that, "Numerous arsenic deposits have been found in the subsoils of southern Peru." The article writer continues (attribution fuzzy), "The naturally formed deposits contaminate local drinking water." This follows the article writer's statement that, "The meteorite created the gases when the object's hot surface met an underground water supply tainted with arsenic..." 1) Who is this "nuclear physicist" affiliated with? 2) Other articles have quoted local people as saying this is their drinking water supply--would they be drinking arsenic? why weren't they getting sick from the arsenic before? (--oh, cuz the meteorite fell on it, stirring shit up--that's their THEORY).

The number of sick people: This Peru "team" spokesman claims "30 people" were sick; all other articles have mentioned hundreds, as much as 600.

But were even these 30 really sick? The "mass hysteria" card: "The meteorite's impact sent debris flying up to 820 feet (250 meters) away, with some material landing on the roof of the nearest home 390 feet (120 meters) from the crater, Ishitsuka reported. // "Imagine the magnitude of the impact," (the "team" spokesman) said. "People were extremely scared. It was a psychological thing."

It was a "psychological thing."

Read on, if you want. The rest of it is similar (garbled, uninformative, quicksandy). I am not convinced. In fact, the "red flags" in this article make me even more suspicious. Could be a poorly written article. Could be a coverup of a pollution scandal, related to global corporate predator mining. Could be something even worse--coverup of U.S. bioweapons testing, or some other military scandal. (Big Bush doings in Peru re the phony U.S. "war on drugs," including Blackwater training camps, as in Colombia--the other Bush Cartel client state in South America.) Also, I have lots of reason to distrust National Geographic on U.S. Bush disinformation on South America. (They did a hit piece on Hugo Chavez.) All in all, the article arouses suspicion, rather than allays it.

[Beelzebud]

10. I think it makes more sense than the Pravda article posted the other day...

Being open minded is great, but not so open that your brains fall out...

Wow, witnesses to an emergency situation gave conflicting reports? Gee that NEVER happens, because rumors don't exist.

The other articles you mention that claim as many as 600 illnesses are the same ones that were speculating that this could be a plutonium-powered US spy satellite...

[Peace Patriot]

14. Yeah, the 600 figure was Pravda. But other articles did say hundreds. I checked.

One was BBC. Conflicting reports and rumors--true, definitely a phenomenon. Can't argue with that. But how many meteorites make hundreds of people sick? (Nausea, vomiting, diahrrea, respiratory problem needing oxygen and hospitalization, and, in later reports, skin lesions.) I just don't trust this article and its bizarre "explanation." Could be true, yeah. Not convincing.

[WinkyDink]

19. ITA, but the government has made me cynical.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. A NATURAL pocket of arsenic, huh? Yeah, a likely story.

Clearly, the arsenic was put there by Israeli agents! There was no satellite! That crater was created by a bomb!

There's a Web site that proves all of this, but I won't even bother linking to it because you'd just scoff.

[leftofthedial]

11. yeah, but who put that "natural pocket of arsenic" there?

and who aimed the projectile at it, in order to kill that particular bunch of Peruvians?

I'll bet that if you really dug into it, you'd find that one or more of those dead Peruvians knew the truth about 9-11 or George Bush's links to lizard people from outer space or some such!







please, please, please tell me I don't need a :sarcasm: smiley.

[NoPasaran]

17. Karl Rove, silly!

And he steered the meteorite into it using the same machine he uses to control the weather!

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

12. photos from site of crash exclusive OMG

[distantearlywarning]

13. I'm not saying I believe Pravda or anything, but...

...frankly the "hit a natural pocket of arsenic" explanation sounds just as far-fetched to me as the "spy satellite fell out of the sky" explanation.

[Peace Patriot]

18. I agree. And, more and more, I'm wondering who's been mining there.

The indigenous people have been complaining and protesting for years, in the Andes region, regarding vast pollution of their environment by global corporate predators. Also, where are "war on drugs" polluters and killers, and Blackwater training camps, in relation to this site? I don't know the answer to either, but that is one thing I would LIKE to know (--in the process of ruling things out). Another possibility: the "silly" explanation (Pravda's) could be disinformation for something else. And this more "scientific" explanation could be cover for that as well. Maybe the whole thing is just a natural weirdism. That's possible, yeah. But no explanation has been convincing.

[CGowen]

20. I don't understand why Pravda and now Novosti report a 30m crater while AP reported 12.8 m (42 feet)

early reports reported a 30 m crater (98 feet)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7001897.stm

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Tatyana Sinitsyna) - The recent fall of the meteorite in the district of Desaguadero in Puno, Peru, has already evoked many rumors and speculations.

Eye-witnesses have reported that the enflamed ball collided with the Earth and went inside to the depth of six meters, leaving a crater of about 30 meters with a gushing fountain of boiling water. After some time people felt an acrid smell and began to suffer from nausea and headaches.

A representative from the Peruvian Health Ministry hastened to blame this on poisonous fumes from fragments of meteorites, which contain cyanide.

Dr. Mikhail Nazarov, head of the meteoritics laboratory ay the Vernadsky Institute of Geo- and Analytical Chemistry, said that the reports from Peru describe phenomena typical for meteorites. But he pointed out that reports of the meteorite-linked "strange disease" sounded dubious: "In the past 250 years, 102 large meteorites have been registered; 70 of these have been found and 50 are kept in the Meteorite Collection of the Russian Academy of Sciences. But none have had any adverse effect on human health."

No consequences were produced even by the unique Sikhote-Alin Fall (February 12, 1947), when a whole stream of meteorites with a general mass of up to a hundred tons crushed the Ussuri taiga in the Far East, covering a territory of 35 square km.

...

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070924/80570359.html

[WinkyDink]

21. I guess that it could be true. LINK:

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/arsenic.html

[frylock]

22. NYT told us saddam had WMD..

should we take people who link to that fishwrap seriously? I'm not trying to defend Pravda or the original story, I'm just sayin...