Friday, August 26, 2011

Peru Meteor Just a Contrail?

The video of a suspected meteor crashing to Earth near Cusco, Peru is flaming its way across the internet. Some say the video isn't what it seems. To brief you, here it is:




CBS News, the BBC and other sources reported on this phenomena. Early reports cited officials saying that the fireball may have ignited forest fires in the drought-stricken region.

Not so fast, says Daniel Fischer, AKA @cosmos4u, who quickly corrected me on Twitter. He's a pretty savvy guy, and when queried, he quickly tweeted:

"This mistake happens again and again and ... see http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~dfischer/news/760.html#753 for the 'classic' from 2003 - lessons not learned, though ..."

Unfortunately, I don't speak (or read) German, so Daniel's link didn't help me much. But here's the key thing: when is seeing believing?

What establishes proof? Take a good look at the video. What do you see?

A meteor or a contrail?

BTW, you can read Daniel's blog at Cosmos4u. His lead for today is a supernova in galaxy Messier 101.