Argentina Meteorite Impact
Site May Have Been Found
From Scott Corrales

Diario 'Los Andes' - Mendoza
By Teresita Sancho
Corresponsalia Sur
The area where the meteor which frightened residents in southern Mendoza last Friday morning has been logged. The place was determined through the account of a rancher on the banks of the Diamante River, who described in detail the direction of the possible impact site of at least one of the sizeable chunks of rock.
"A brightness with a reddish blue light almost left us blind. It was followed by a very loud report and the earth shook. In the early morning we saw lots of smoke which lingered until lunchtime," said the famer, a privileged witness to the phenomenon. "It wasn't far from the house. Some leagues, maybe two days' on horseback," he added, when asked about the distance. This description agrees with the one given by some fishermen at the Agua del Toro dam.
The explanation--particularly the reference regarding the smoke, which no one had mentioned as of yet--gave Hector Correas, the head of Civil Defense, the possibility to determine the impact site: "It would be in the southern part of Cerro El Diamante, facing the Picasa Mine, some 100 km south in a straight line from the city of San Rafael," explained the official, noting that this is a rough, mountainous area where several private ranches can be found.
Meanwhile, astronomer Jaime Garcia of the Instituto Copernico spend all day combing the area on a 4x4 alongside scientists from the Pierre Aucer cosmic ray laboratory. The purpose of the trip is to determine the exact impact site by confecting a map based on eyewitness accounts, bearing in mind "the time difference between the flash of light and the explosion." They covered ranches in La Jaula and Las Aucas, upstream of El Diamante, leaving the Agua del Toro dam behind and going into "the most extreme areas that can be reached with a four-wheel drive vehicle."
Parallel to this, there is a certain amount of mystery to the event, and there has been an increase in various stories and remarks about "something strange" having occurred that night, even though scholars of the cosmos do not believe that anything supernatural occurred. Daniel Matoz, 18, a member of the Asociacion de Astronomia del Sur is convinced of this. That morning he was watching the sky, as he usually does on clear nights. For two hours, his attention had been consumed by the planet Mars and he suddenly found a beam of light "that flew very low, followed by noise and a tremor." He calculates that 20 seconds elapsed between the sheen, which he describes as an "expansion wave", and a noise similar to "a person screaming inside a pipe."
The fact is that the mystery that envelopes this phenomenon has a reason: astronomers and Civil Defense do not wish to furnish further details to protect the rock fragments from the greedy hands of collectors of these items, which are greatly sought after all over the world.
Translation (C) 2003 Scott Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU).
Special thanks to Gloria Coluchi.



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