Latvia meteorite claims crash to earth as hoax is revealed
Scientists have announced that a large crater in Latvia that was claimed to be the results of a meteorite crashing to earth is, in fact, a hoax.
Experts had rushed to the site after reports that a meteorite had landed late on Sunday in Latvia’s Mazsalaca region, near the Estonian border, and footage of the flames caused by its landing were widely shown after being posted on YouTube.
Unfortunately, it turned out it was just a hole someone had dug in the ground. The video (see below) was shot by a group of film-making students, which might be seen as something of a gievaway.
// ‘This is not a real crater. It is artificial,’ Uldis Nulle, a scientist at the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Center, said after inspecting the site on Monday.
Uldis and other experts who examined the hole in daylight said it was too tidy to have been caused by a meteorite.
‘It’s artificial, dug by shovel,’ said Girts Stinkulis, a geologist at the University of Latvia.
Earlier Uldis had said his first impression of the 27 foot wide and nine foot deep crater was that it had indeed been caused by a meteorite. He said there was smoke coming out of the hole when he arrived.
Dainis Ozols, a nature conservationist, said he thinks the perpetrators tried to make their freshly-dug hole look like a meteorite crater by burning some kind of pyrotechnic compound at the bottom. He added he would analyze some samples taken from the site.
Inga Vetere of the Fire and Rescue Service said they received a call about the alleged meteorite on Sunday evening from an eyewitness. She said a military unit was dispatched to the site and found that radiation levels were normal.
Experts outside Latvia said it would be unusual for such a large meteorite to hit the Earth. The planet is constantly bombarded with objects from outer space, but most burn up in the atmosphere and never reach the surface.
Asta Pellinen-Wannberg, a meteorite expert at the Swedish Institute of Space Research, said she didn’t know the details of the Latvian incident, but that a rock would have to be at least three feet in diameter to create a hole that size.
Henning Haack, a lecturer at Copenhagen University’s Geological Museum, said when it comes to alleged meteorite crashes, ‘there always is a pretty large margin of error.
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