The Peruvian people are sick with meteorites

Dozens of people in a town in Peru, near Lake Titicaca, reported vomiting and headaches after seeing a sudden formation of a hole, apparently caused by a meteorite last week.

After hearing a loud noise, the people rushed to see what happened and found a 20-meter-wide, 6.5-meter-wide crater on an uninhabited plateau in Puno area.

Experts from the Peruvian Institute of Geology are on their way to the area, about 1,200 km south of Lima, near the border with Bolivia, to determine if it is a meteorite. Analysis of soil samples from pits will show results.

"We tested about 100 people who had come close to this hole, they all vomited and had a headache because of the gas coming out of it," said Jorge Lopez, medical director in Puno.

Luisa Macedo, a geologist at the Institute of Metallurgical and Mineralogy in Lima, said the reaction between elements in meteorites and the earth's surface can produce gases and then dissolve. Meteors once fell into the Andean region in southern Peru in 2002 and 2004.

Crater in Peru. (Photo: Ukpress.google.com)

T. An