Carancas, 15 September 2007: A Crater, a Smell and a Sick Village
A stony meteorite hit the Altiplano near Lake Titicaca and blasted a water-filled crater. Villagers who went to look fell ill. Peruvian officials and scientists confirmed the impact; the illness is usually put down to arsenic-rich groundwater vapour and anxiety.
Sources Tancredi et al., 'A meteorite crater on Earth formed on September 15, 2007: The Carancas hypervelocity impact', Meteoritics & Planetary Science 44 (2009), doi 10.1111/j.1945-5100.2009.tb02006.x; Meteoritical Bulletin Database, 'Carancas'; Wikipedia, 'Carancas impact event'
Just before noon on 15 September 2007, people in the village of Carancas, near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru, heard a roar and saw a fireball. Something hit the ground nearby, throwing up debris and leaving a crater about 13 metres across that filled with boiling, foul-smelling water.
A real crater
Peruvian geologists and international teams confirmed it was a meteorite impact. Fragments were an ordinary stony chondrite. What made Carancas unusual, as Gonzalo Tancredi and colleagues reported in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, is that a stone meteorite of this size is normally slowed by the atmosphere and should not have excavated a crater. Its survival changed models of how such bodies break up.
The sickness
Villagers and police who went to the crater reported headaches and nausea, and international headlines spoke of a mystery illness. Officials pointed to vapour from groundwater rich in arsenic, which is common in the area and would have been boiled by the impact, and to the anxiety of the moment. No lasting harm was confirmed.
Ledger status
Marked cited. Map position is village level.
Sources
- Tancredi, G., et al. (2009), Meteoritics & Planetary Science 44 — doi:10.1111/j.1945-5100.2009.tb02006.x
- Wikipedia, “Carancas impact event” — en.wikipedia.org
Part of the World Ledger, batch 1. Original text; no images are used.
Evidence ledger
Each claim in this file, the source it rests on, and how well it holds up: 4 corroborated. What the labels mean.
| Claim | Source | Type · date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| A meteorite struck near Carancas, Peru, on 15 Sep 2007, forming a crater about 13 m across. | Tancredi et al. (MAPS 2009); Meteoritical Bulletin | scholarly · 2009 | corroborated |
| The meteorite was an ordinary H4–5 chondrite. | Meteoritical Bulletin; Tancredi et al. | scholarly · 2009 | corroborated |
| It was unusual for a stony meteorite this size to reach the ground fast enough to excavate a crater. | Tancredi et al. (2009) | scholarly · 2009 | corroborated |
| Dozens of villagers reported headaches and nausea after visiting the crater.Arsenic-bearing groundwater vapour and stress are the usual explanations. | Peruvian health officials, press | press · 2007 | corroborated |
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