Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

A meteorite fell Saturday night in the Peruvian area of Puno, close to the border with Bolivia, forming a crater with a 30 meters diamater, and six meters in depth, the local press reported today.

A luminous object fell a little before midnight of the day before yesterday in the town of Carancas, in the province of Chucuito, about 1.300 kilometers to the south of Lima.

According to sources of the Territorial Direction of the Police, the alarmed inhabitants of the area heard a great noise, similar to that of an airplane falling.

Later, the witnesses saw a luminous object in fire in the sky that hit the ground, producing an explosion that left the earth charred.

The meteorite didn’t hurt anyone, but the authorities are investigating if the remains found in the area are of animals that may have died because of the explosion.

The farmers of the place fear the appearance of some disease, since chips of lead and silver were liberated in the shock of the meteor with the soil, the local broadcasting station “RPP” informed.

The member of the National Academy of Sciences, Modesto Montoya, told to the “Andean” state agency that the fall of meteorites in Peru doesn’t present any danger, unless they hit some structure.

“None of the several meteorites that fall in Peru and make perforations of varied sizes are harmful for people, unless they fall over a house”, Montoya said.

In June, another meteorite fell in the Mascapampa hill, in the province of Arequipa (south), leaving the population alarmed.
[source: EFE, UOL news]

Curiously, the meteorite fell exactly one month after the terrible earthquake that hit Lima, on August 15.

UPDATE: Peru crater: meteorite, secret satellites and zombies

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Don’t know what a meteorite is?  How about an online degree in Astronomy?  There are plenty of online college courses to help fill in the gaps. You can even apply for education grants to help pay for your studies.

There have been many doubts about the recent Osama Bin Laden videos, with people questioning for instance why his references to current events are audio only — the video freezes for most of the time. As a “proof of concept” supporting the idea the videos were faked, the above video was created with a surprise: Bin Laden says he’s very SCARY, in plain English.

It’s indeed very possible that the Bin Laden videos could be faked. The technology exists. Besides conventional and mostly manual computer manipulation, there are techniques like the ones developed by Volker Blanz:

With more resources, it’s not only plausible but extremely probable that the Bin Laden videos could be faked. But the obvious and important question is: were they?

We unfortunately live in times in which such important questions are not subject to open and scientific analysis. For instance, recently the identity of a white plane seen flying over Washington on 9/11 was pretty much confirmed by CNN as an E-4B. But as CNN also mentioned, nowhere in the 9/11 Comission report the plane is mentioned.

Obviously, the Comission knew about it — otherwise, it would have been an unthinkable level of incompetence –, but for national security reasons, deliberately omitted it.

Even if 9/11 wasn’t an “inside job”, which I don’t think it was, with such secrecy mistakes and manipulation are bound to happen. And those who doubt official statements are fully justified in doing so.

“On Sept 13th at approximately 3 o’clock in the morning MDT, an extremely bright fireball streaked over New Mexico, “It was terrifying,” says eyewitness Susan K. Burgess. “I was stargazing outside my house near Santa Fe when the landscape started becoming very bright, as if a brilliant full moon was quickly rising from the southwest. The fireball itself [slowly moved] over the house and disintegrated with a great deal of scatter in the northwest sky.”

Seen above, at the Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, a Sentinel all-sky video camera captured the fireball in flight.

Based on data from the video, the visual magnitude of the fireball was -14.6, about four times brighter than a full Moon!

“The fireball was a pure emerald green, uncomfortably bright to look at,” adds Harald Edens located in the Magdalena Mountains west of Socorro, NM. “The object was disintegrating when I saw it, with pieces parallel-tracking and trailing the fireball. Those smaller pieces had all different colors–most notably red. I think it has been a piece of space junk.”

Amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft not only photographed the fireball, but also recorded echos of a distant radio station bouncing off the meteor’s ionized trail:

“This fireball turned night into day!” he says.

[From SpaceWeather.com]

A nod to the MuseumofHoaxes. Continue reading for more photos. 

Continue reading

The Aztec UFO hoax has been mentioned recently in the discussion about Sparks and Greenwood paper on MJ12, and for those wanting to know more about it, Professors John L. Cotton and Randall J. Scalise have a very nice page about it:

Flying Saucers and Frank Scully. It includes a summary of the book that started it all, and full scans of the articles that thoroughly debunked the hoax.

Seen above, material alleged to be from a crashed flying saucer that turned out to be common aluminum, along with the mysterious superscientist “Dr Gee”, aka Leo GeBauer, proprietor of a radio and television parts store in Phoenix.

Incidentally, a drawing by Chan Johnson, which illustrated “UFO Crash at Aztec”, by William Steinman, published in 1987, very probably inspired special effects artist John Humphreys to create the alien in the infamous Alien Autopsy.

Note the profile. The body is not similar, except for the legs, and Humphreys was probably inspired by progeria (warning: Graphic images!) at that.