The X on this file seems to be fading fast. Many theories floated around in the first few days of this Andromeda strain-ed news story. But some tests are in, and they point to a perfectly convincing explanation.

First, the crater outside a Peruvian town near Lake Titicaca was caused by a meteorite, not a mud volcano, crashed American satellite, Chilean missile attack or “a lake of sedimentary deposit.” 

Tests confirmed that the crater contained telltale magnetic fragments of a meteorite, and Peru’s Geophysics Institute recorded a large tremor in the area at the moment of impact, according to The Associated Press.

Secondly, the mystery illness is probably not due to “panspermic alien microbes” or other space-based bacteria, as much as some had hoped or feared, however unseriously. It came from the soil, a Peruvian researcher who has visited the site tells National Geographic:

The illness was the result of inhaling arsenic fumes, according to Luisa Macedo, a researcher for Peru’s Mining, Metallurgy, and Geology Institute (INGEMMET), who visited the crash site.

The meteorite created the gases when the object’s hot surface met an underground water supply tainted with arsenic, the scientists said.

Numerous arsenic deposits have been found in the subsoils of southern Peru, explained Modesto Montoya, a nuclear physicist who collaborated with the team. The naturally formed deposits contaminate local drinking water.

“If the meteorite arrives incandescent and at a high temperature because of friction in the atmosphere, hitting water can create a column of steam,” added José Ishitsuka, an astronomer at the Peruvian Geophysics Institute, who analyzed the object.

“That sounds plausible,” another astronomer agreed. It also sounded a lot like an explanation offered by a local journalist in the first dispatch from BBC News :

Martine Hanlon told the BBC experts did not believe the meteor would make anybody sick, but they did think a chemical reaction caused by its contact with the ground could release toxins such as sulphur and arsenic.

Keeping score on the story was a Slashdot commenter who deserves a gold star for noting that “some people were on the right track from the start.”

(While we are keeping score, only 30 were sickened, the researcher told National Geographic, not the hundreds as previously estimated. Presumably, the remainder had the “provoked psychosomatic ailments” that one scientist diagnosed.)

Read the rest at - NY TIMES 

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