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Thursday, September 20, 2007

METEORITE MAY HAVE CAUSED PERU CRATER

Experts now say a rare meteorite likely caused Peru crater

Thursday, September 20, 2007
By EDISON LOPEZ
Associated Press Writer

LIMA, Peru (AP) Peruvian astronomers said Thursday that evidence shows a meteorite crashed near Lake Titicaca over the weekend, leaving an elliptical crater and magnetic rock fragments in an impact powerful enough to register on seismic charts.

As other astronomers learned more details, they too said it appears likely that a legitimate meteorite hit Earth on Saturday an rare occurence.

The Earth is constantly bombarded with objects from outer space, but most burn up in the atmosphere and never reach the planet's surface. Only one in a thousand rocks that that people claim are meteorites turn out to be real, according to Jay Melosh, an expert on impact craters and professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona.

Melosh was skeptical at first, initially calling it a ``non-meteorite'' and suggesting that the crater might have possibly come from below as a volcanic eruption. Then scientists learned of more details about the crater, as well as witness descriptions of a thunderous roar and a rain of smaller rocks coming down.

``It begins to sound more likely to me that this object could indeed be a meteorite,'' Melosh said Thursday.

Such impacts are rare, and astronomists still want to do other tests to confirm the strike.

Other details don't add up, they said such as witness accounts of water in the muddy crater boiling for 10 minutes from the heat. Meteorites are actually cold when they hit Earth, astronomists say, since their outer layers burn up and fall away before impact.

Experts also puzzled over claims that 200 local resideof meteor strike, and that given the crater's size, the original meteoroid had to have been at least 10 feet in diameter before breaking up.

``With everything I see reported now, it seems to me like we just got hit,'' Schultz said.

Justina Limache, 74, told the Lima daily El Comercio that when she heard the thunderous roar from the sky, she abandoned her flock of alpacas and ran home with her 8-year-old granddaughter. She said that after the meteorite struck, small rocks rained down on the roof of her house for several minutes and she feared the house was going to collapse.

Modesto Montoya, a member of the medical team, told El Comercio that fear may have provoked psychosomatic ailments.

``When a meteorite falls, it produces horrid sounds when it makes contact with the atmosphere,'' he said. ``It is as if a giant rock is being sanded. Those sounds could have frightened them.''

Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein in Washington and Monte Hayes in Lima contributed to this report.

In the interest of timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain occasional typographical errors.

Source: http://wcbstv.com/worldwire/Peru-Meteorite/resources_news_html

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