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Meteorite Causes Illness in Peru
eldavojohn writes "A meteorite struck in Peru on Saturday leaving cinders, rock & water boiling out of the ground. Villagers nearby reported headaches & vomiting and attributed it to the event. From the article, 'Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said. Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) and 20-foot-deep (six-meter-deep) crater, said local official Marco Limache.' It's not yet clear whether this is from the meteorite, gas trapped underground that was released or a chemical reaction between the two."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,,2171920,00.html
I read Usenet for the articles.
Better article with a photo of the impact site. Quite an impressive hole. One hopes it's just some underground gas, and not the realization of Andromeda Strain...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
...or this... http://www.livinginperu.com/news-4723-environmentnature-perus-geologists-physicists-sent-study-crater-left-meteorite
Titanic design was good, hubris caused bad operation. Chernobyl was a know bad design before it was built.
And the Titanic was built to not sink, and Chernobyl was built not to melt down, and Challenger was built not to explode, and the Tacoma Narrows bridge was built not to collapse, etc, etc, etc...
Ok, let's refute your specious points one by one.
The Chernobyl reactor that failed was not built to not melt down - and it was being operated outside of its designed normal operating envelope which is what actually caused the catastrophic failure. Hell, the thing didn't even have a containment vessel.
The Space Shuttle Challenger didn't initiate the explosion, the solid rocket boosters did, which was because they were being used at too cold of an environmental temperature and, against warnings from the manufacturer, the shuttle was launched anyway (human error once again, but not in the design, in the use of the machine in question).
The Tacoma Narrows bridge apparently was not designed not to collapse - the designer failed to factor in the high wind speeds in the Tacoma Narrows and the resulting resonant effect on the structure into the bridge design.
In other words, your post is a bunch of pointless fear mongering along the lines of "humans can't do anything right". That is complete and utter nonsense - humans design things that work in extreme circumstances all the time. You might as well have said "Won't somebody think of the children!?!?".
Putting moderation advice in your
If the meteorite was of Iron/Nickel composition there's a good chance a fair amount of nickel was boiled off and carried into the area, possibly some produced by the head of the impact and blast.
Please see: Toxicity Summary for NICKEL AND NICKEL COMPOUNDS
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No, sorry. That's horrendously incorrect. There have only been a handful of missions that used RTGs as power sources. Most satellites rely on Solar Power and batteries to operate. The reasoning is simple: Nuclear materials are EXPENSIVE. Far too expensive for anyone other than NASA to use. And NASA only uses them for very specific missions where no other option is feasible. (For example, while the current rovers have a few grains of plutonium to keep the joints from freezing on Mars, they are still powered by solar panels. The follow-up mission was supposed to use RTGs to provide a longer-lasting robot, but that's being reevaluated in light of the longevity of Spirit and Opportunity.)
Wikipedia has a list of RTGs and their missions here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#RTG_models
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
You might be right about a fungus being released, but Anthrax is not a fungus. I expect better from /. to know the difference between a bacterium and a fungus ought to be trivial.
Watch Reuters video. It is a Greek site, but the video is English.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
There is an exception to this rule though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#Use
By comparison, only a few space vehicles have been launched using full-fledged nuclear reactors: the Soviet RORSAT series and the American SNAP-10A.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RORSAT
Radar-equipped Ocean Reconnaissance SATellite or RORSAT is the western name given to the Soviet Upravlyaemyj Sputnik Aktivnyj ( ) (US-A) satellites. These satellites were launched between 1967 and 1988 to monitor NATO and merchant vessels using active radar. RORSATs were launched under cover name of Cosmos satellites. Because a return signal from a target illuminated by a radar transmitter diminishes as the inverse of the fourth power of the signal emitted, for the surveillance radar to work effectively, RORSATs had to be placed in low earth orbit. Had they used large solar panels for power, the orbit would have rapidly decayed due to drag through the upper atmosphere. Further, the satellite would have been useless at night. Hence the majority of RORSATs carried type BES-5 nuclear reactors fuelled by uranium-235. Normally the nuclear reactor cores were ejected into high orbit (a so-called "disposal orbit") at the end of the mission, but there were several incidents, some of which resulted in radioactive material re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.MANY diseases, chemical exposures, etc. induce nausea and headaches. If radiation is causing these people to have headaches so soon after their being exposed to the meteor (I'm assuming the headaches started soon after, like within hours) they'll be dead inside of a few days. Headaches and nausea from radiation--ASSUMING, and that's a big assumption, that these are radiation-related--indicate either the gastrointestinal or the cerebrovascular stages of ARS. If it's the latter, people will die in days; the former, inside of weeks. If they ARE radiation-damaged, chromosomal analysis could be done to show it.
Given the amount of information we have to go on from the articles, there is little chance this is ARS. More information may come to light later, but for now I think it's premature to try to blame radiation.
The Tacoma Narrows bridge apparently was not designed not to collapse - the designer failed to factor in the high wind speeds in the Tacoma Narrows and the resulting resonant effect on the structure into the bridge design.
Before you re-write history, check the news reports of the day. It wasn't a very windy day. The bridge was stable at much higher winds. The moderate wind and the direction was just right to produce a resonant feedback. It wasn't high winds that too the bridge down. It was steady mild wind that kept putting more motion into a resonant system.
References;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/meetsusp.html
At the time it opened for traffic in 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the third longest suspension bridge in the world. It was promptly nicknamed "Galloping Gertie," due to its behavior in wind. Not only did the deck sway sideways, but vertical undulations also appeared in quite moderate winds. Drivers of cars reported that vehicles ahead of them would completely disappear and reappear from view several times as they crossed the bridge. Attempts were made to stabilize the structure with cables and hydraulic buffers, but they were unsuccessful. On November 7, 1940, only four months after it opened, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in a wind of 42 mph--even though the structure was designed to withstand winds of up to 120 mph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge
The wind-induced collapse occurred on November 7, 1940 at 11:00 AM(Pacific time), due partially to a physical phenomenon known as mechanical resonance. [4]
And for sake of balance here is a modern study stating it wasn't resonance but instead a negative feedback;
http://www.ketchum.org/wind.html
" . . . in many undergraduate physics texts the (1940 Tacoma Narrows bridge) disaster is presented as an example of elementary forced resonance . . . Engineers, on the other hand, have studied the phenomenon . . . and their current understanding differs fundamentally from the viewpoint expressed in most physics texts. In the present article the engineers' viewpoint is presented . . . It is then demonstrated that the ultimate failure of the bridge was in fact related to an aerodynamically induced condition of self-excitation or "negative damping" . . . This paper emphasizes the fact that. physically as well as mathematically, forced resonance and self- excitation are fundamentally different phenomena.
The one common thread in all the above is it was not a high wind that took the bridge down. It was the feedback pumping energy into the motion.
The truth shall set you free!
The object's surface can become very hot and vaporize without having a significant effect on the core temperature of the object. You have to consider the object's surface-to-volume ratio, the length of time it's exposed to atmospheric heating, and the heat dissipated by erosion of the surface material.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It comes full circle. According to the Memory Alpha episode summary you cited, the episode bore a very close resemblance to actual events in Brazil in 1987 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident.
I am not a crackpot.
Actually the winds were moderate when the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsed.
It could be said that the bridge was designed to collapse, but not intentionally. The designers failed to take in to account the effect of resonance. From the wikipedia article here:
The winds were considered moderate for the day 40-42mph, however they were steady allowing the destructive resonance to build. The bridge was considered strong enough to withstand hurricane force winds. It was not the strength of the wind but the design of the bridge that led to the collapse.
So while I don't know much about plutonium, satellites or vomit-inducing meteors, but after the fuss NASA made about the plutonium-carrying Galileo, it sounds like satellites (even satellites of distant planets) carrying plutonium are the exception rather than the rule.
Worse if it hits a guano site, town dump or septic landfarm.
Note that "lower dose" in this context is 50-100 REM within a short period. Which is a LOT of radiation to be emitted from a SNAP reactor. I don't think anything in orbit has a reactor large enough to do that these days.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm no expert on Chernobyl, but I thought the test actually required low power. In fact, when they started the test, they slowed the reactor down so much that they were worried about accidental shutdown and subsequent startup procedure. So, to get things going again, they ended up bringing out too many control rods (more than the allowed limit) -- this, of course, got the reaction going too quickly which caused the coolant to steam and explode.
And yes, the Russian word for "wormwood" is Chernobyl.
Or maybe not.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
partially true, but what supposedly caused the major problem afair was the technicians noticing the runaway chain reaction and dropping the control rods in a panic, which happen to have graphite tips (a pretty exclusively used moderator material). This caused a sudden and massive spike in reaction, and heat generation which was not removed because of the fact that the reactor was almost shut down. This caused the explosion.
The Russian word for wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) is 'polyn'.
'Chornobyl' (note spelling) refers to mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris).
The wormwood and revelations story is more interesting though, so it has become truthy.
Chernobyl was an RBMK design. Because it was configured to convert on demand to a military apps operation mode that could produce lots of Plutonium 239 for quickly building bombs, it was built without a containment vessel, at a time when all U S commercial reactors were already encased in multiple meters of steel and concrete.
The soviet union deliberately compromised safety for military advantage, and yes it was a known bad design.
"The test in question was meant to determine how much power could be extracted from a nuclear plant in meltdown."
Not exactly - the test initially conducted was an extreme low power test, where the reactor was being run at such a low level it didn't provide enough power to run all the feedback systems designed to control the reactor itself. Extra power to run control systems was supposed to come from outside sources. A reactor near meltdown under some configurations may be producing much less power than usual and so this test had applicability to some meltdown research, but this particular design, in weapons production mode, would also have greatly reduced spare power for control in normal operation, so this test was probably to confirm the military applications of Chernobyl 4.
Here's a link to Gordon Prather's page, which is a good explanation for the non-technical. Note Dr. Prather's credentials at the bottom if you think he's just some guy spouting off.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=20062
Who is John Cabal?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Wiki is your friend. I won't even try to summarize, just read the article. It's an interesting study in the confluence of poor design choices, poor training, and bad luck.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Here's (what appears to be) a picture of the actual crater.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Perhaps to clarify a little - countries like Indonesia make huge use of satellite for inter-island communications. If you point a dish at near any satellite in the clark belt you'll see they are almost all loaded up with packet switched networks, E1's, or T1's - In the case of the latter two systems, these are generally filled with compressed voice trunks - including loads of cellular stuff. I think it's still fairly safe to say that a decent percentage of voice calls are routed via satellite depending upon the daily deals that carriers negotiate. They are not in it for call quality, low latency, pathways, or any other advantage the users might gain, it's simply how cheaply they can get your call to its destination.
--
Ex 3 letter agency drone.
(LIP-ir) -- Peru's official government news agency reported this afternoon that scientists which went to the town of Carancas in the Region of Puno, Peru, have confirmed that the glowing object which fell from the sky on Saturday afternoon was indeed a meteorite.
...
Volcanologist for Peru's Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute (INGEMMET), Luisa Macedo, confirmed that a chondrite meteorite had caused the 17 meter (55 foot) wide and 5 meter (16 foot) deep crater when it landed on earth.
http://www.livinginperu.com/news-4730-environmentnature-scientist-confirms-meteorite-in-puno-peru-is-a-chondrite