Peruvian Mystery

According to reports, a meteor crashed to Earth last weekend in Peru, creating a crater 18 feet deep and 90 feet across. Further, some 200 people, including seven police officers who investigated the reports, have fallem ill. Nome of the illnesses seem serious, however.

Scientists, being scientists, aren't sure a meteor even fell. Some argue geological activity is more likely to be behind the event; gases from inside Earth, they say, are more likely to be the source of the odor reported as well as the illnesses. If it was a meteorite (that is, a meteor that struck the ground), Dr. Donald Yeomans, chief of NASA's Near Earth Object program, says it was probably a small metal meteor. Small, because the supposed impact crater is small, and metal because stony, small meteors burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. If Yeomans is correct, the reported gas would've been released from Earth by the impact; it would not have come from the meteor.