...or not. Our collective psychology is fascinating. I know CNN reported the meteor was making people sick at least a few times;would somebody let us know if they provided this followup? I think this phenomenon is at work in many situations in our sophisticated society-toxic black mold, silicone breast implants causing illness, sick building syndrome, etc.
'Meteorite' Crash Breeds Mass Hysteria Andrea Thompson
SPACE.com
1 hour, 2 minutes ago
'Meteorite' Crash Breeds Mass Hysteria
Andrea Thompson
SPACE.com
On what started as a normal Saturday night one week ago, residents of a small, remote Peruvian town saw a bright light streak across the sky, heard a resounding bang and suddenly found themselves at the center of a media frenzy.
Initial suspicions of an airplane crash quickly spiraled into widespread reports that a meteorite had plummeted to Earth and left a smoking, boiling crater whose supposedly noxious fumes were reported to have sickened curious locals who went to peer at the hole.
Despite doubts expressed by geologists that the crater was actually caused by a meteorite and firm explanations that a meteorite would not even emit fumes and that the "sickness" was likely a case of mass hysteria, numerous onlookers far and wide were fascinated by the idea that this event could be some real-life "Andromeda Strain" (the 1969 novel by Michael Crichton), where a mysterious rock falling to Earth from outerspace made anyone who went near it ill.
So what is it about things falling from the sky that fills us with such fear that we can make ourselves sick with panic?
Mass hysteria
Media reports of the number of locals afflicted by a "mysterious disease"--with symptoms such as nausea, headaches and sore throats--after visiting the crater figured in every news article about the Aug. 15 event, with some reporting that as many as 600 people had fallen ill.
But doctors who visited the site told the Associated Press they found no evidence that the crater had actually sickened such a large number of people.
If noxious fumes did emanate from the crater, they were most likely the result of a hydrothermal explosion that could have actually formed the crater, or were released from the ground when the meteorite struck, if in fact one did, according to many geologists.
Arsenic is found in the subsoil in that area of Peru and often contaminates the drinking water there, according to Peruvian geologists quoted on Sept. 21 by National Geographic News. Arsenic fumes released from the crater could have sickened locals who went to look, said one geologist who examined the site.
Some health officials suggest that the symptoms described by the locals, the large number of people reporting symptoms, and the apparently rapid spread have all the hallmarks of a case of mass hysteria.
"Those who say they are affected are the product of a collective psychosis," Jorge Lopez Tejada, health department chief in Puno, the nearest city, told the Los Angeles Times.
This psychosis could have begun as a result of fear of the meteorite and the mysterious "disease" on the part of the residents and spread as official and media reports seemed to confirm it and give it credence.
"The Peruvian event seems to be a rare case where we may be witnessing collective anxiety that is approaching near hysteria," said Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at John Moores University in England. "The major[ity] of the affected Peruvian town hinted that some of the mass anxiety is due to fear of imminent impacts and psychological stress which is not surprising given the premature speculation and media hype."
Fear of outer space
Fear of a meteorite impact is nothing new--humans have long looked to the heavens with a wary eye.
"The fear of cosmic disaster, in particular cometary impacts, has existed in all cultures for millennia," Peiser told SPACE.com
But the space age revealed just how many dangers, including comets, meteors, asteroids, and cosmic rays, await us in the final frontier.
"Only since the late 20th century, humankind has become aware of the risk posed by asteroids and comets," Peiser said. "Unfortunately, this risk has been wildly exaggerated by popular culture."
Our curiosity and fear of impact events has increased their coverage by the world media, Peiser says, which in turn has increased the number of meteorite impact reports, even when the evidence doesn't point that way.
"In recent years, there have been numerous cases where alleged meteorite falls were linked to mysterious explosions on the ground--only to be proven wrong," Peiser said. "One of the main reasons for the significant increase of such claims is almost certainly due to the growing media interest in the cosmic impact risk. It is part of human nature-- and extremely tempting for the news media--to hype any event that initially looks mysterious."
While this fear is normal and understandable, it's been blown out of proportion so that the public thinks that impact risks are higher than they are, Peiser argues.
"Most people are simply not aware that we are making enormous progress in finding and identifying the population of Near Earth Objects and that the impact risk is thus diminishing year by year," Peiser said.
And when meteorites have struck, they have never carried any hint of some mysterious space disease.
"I don't know of any known record of a meteorite landing that emitted odors so noxious that people got sick from it," said geologist Larry Grossman of the University of Chicago.
Replies
4Beach Fanatic
HOLY CRAPOLA!~
Beach Fanatic
People do seem to fall in line with many things. It is hard to know what is true.
To study the effects of space flight, Nickerson and colleagues sent specially contained tubes of Salmonella in an experimental payload aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. The tubes of bacteria were placed in triple containment for safety and posed no threat to the health and safety of the crew during or after the mission.
During the flight, astronaut Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper activated growth of the bacteria in sealed hardware and ?fixed? the cultures after a day of growth to determine changes in gene and protein expression levels.
?The bacterial cultures were taken up into space and activated to grow in a separate compartment of the tubes called the growth chamber,? said Nickerson. ?The bacteria didn?t have access to the growth chamber until Heide pushed down on a plunger which introduced the bacteria into the growth media. Then they were grown for 24 hours, and at the end of 24 hours, Heide pushed down on the plunger again, which either ?fixed? the bacteria with chemicals that preserved the gene expression message, or else introduced fresh media to keep the bacteria growing to perform the virulence studies.?
As a synchronous control experiment back on Earth, Nickerson?s team grew an identical set of bacteria in the same type of tubes used for flight and incubated them in a special room at the NASA Kennedy Space Center called the orbital environmental simulator. ?This simulator is linked in real-time to the shuttle, and duplicates the exact temperature, humidity and growth conditions of the shuttle, with the exception that they are not flying in space,? said Nickerson. ?In addition, we were also linked via real-time telecommunications with the shuttle crew when they were activating and terminating our experiments in flight, and we did the exact same things at the same time to the ground samples that the astronauts did to the flight samples ? thus we had perfectly matched synchronous ground controls.?
After the bacteria returned to Earth, the group performed the first global analysis of Salmonella to measure the effect of space flight on gene and protein expression and virulence. By measuring the gene and protein patterns, the researchers could hone in on the key molecular players necessary for virulence from among thousands of potential candidates.
?We chose to measure gene expression at the mRNA level since the technique to do this, called microarray analysis, is a highly advanced and convenient way to quantitatively measure the expression of every gene in a single experiment,? said Wilson, who coordinated the team?s molecular profiling efforts for the Nickerson lab, and played a central role in the performance of these experiments, including data analysis. ?It is a very powerful technique that was very applicable to the spaceflight experiment. The isolation of mRNA poses particular challenges since it is very sensitive to degradation, but we designed the experiment using a fixative that preserved the mRNA very well.?
After logging in millions of miles in space, the invaluable and well-traveled bacterial samples were analyzed back on Earth, and for the protein profiling studies, were taken to the University of Arizona?s core proteomics facility at its Center for Toxicology to measure the level of every protein that had been subjected to space flight.
?Working with the UA group was great and we obtained very nice data that complemented the microarray analysis very well,? said Wilson. ?Keep in mind also that our body of mRNA and protein expression data from this experiment is precious, since comprehensive analysis of an organism?s molecular genetic response to space flight is very rare.?
Compared to bacteria that remained on earth, the space-traveling Salmonella had changed expression of 167 genes. After the flight, animal virulence studies showed that bacteria that were flown in space were almost three times as likely to cause disease when compared with control bacteria grown on the ground.
The study discovered that an important regulatory protein, Hfq, may be a key molecule responsible for the increased virulence due to space flight. ?Hfq is a protein that binds to and regulates a number of regulatory RNAs, which in turn, control gene expression,? said Nickerson. ?Our studies suggest that there may be a role for these regulatory RNAs in the cellular response to the physical and mechanical forces found in spaceflight, which are relevant to conditions that cells encounter here on Earth during the normal course of their lifecycles.?
These results have important implications for human health since Salmonella (and other gut-related bacterial pathogens) are a leading cause of food-borne illness and infectious disease, especially in the developing world. Nickerson?s group further highlights Hfq as a potential therapeutic target, since no vaccine currently exists for Salmonella food-borne infections in humans. In addition, the space flight studies may shed new light on why Salmonella has become increasingly resistant to antibiotic treatment.
?We also studied the morphology of the bacteria in response to space flight, and the change that we observed is consistent with what looks like formation of a biofilm. The ground grown samples did not show biofilm formation. Biofilms are associated with increased pathogenicity because the immune system can?t clear the bacteria effectively and antibiotics don?t treat them effectively.?
The group will embark on another space shuttle mission likely next year to further understand the risks and mechanisms of infectious disease agents during space flight and how microbes cause infections on Earth.
To study the effects of space flight, Nickerson and colleagues sent specially contained tubes of Salmonella in an experimental payload aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. The tubes of bacteria were placed in triple containment for safety and posed no threat to the health and safety of the crew during or after the mission.
During the flight, astronaut Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper activated growth of the bacteria in sealed hardware and ?fixed? the cultures after a day of growth to determine changes in gene and protein expression levels.
?The bacterial cultures were taken up into space and activated to grow in a separate compartment of the tubes called the growth chamber,? said Nickerson. ?The bacteria didn?t have access to the growth chamber until Heide pushed down on a plunger which introduced the bacteria into the growth media. Then they were grown for 24 hours, and at the end of 24 hours, Heide pushed down on the plunger again, which either ?fixed? the bacteria with chemicals that preserved the gene expression message, or else introduced fresh media to keep the bacteria growing to perform the virulence studies.?
As a synchronous control experiment back on Earth, Nickerson?s team grew an identical set of bacteria in the same type of tubes used for flight and incubated them in a special room at the NASA Kennedy Space Center called the orbital environmental simulator. ?This simulator is linked in real-time to the shuttle, and duplicates the exact temperature, humidity and growth conditions of the shuttle, with the exception that they are not flying in space,? said Nickerson. ?In addition, we were also linked via real-time telecommunications with the shuttle crew when they were activating and terminating our experiments in flight, and we did the exact same things at the same time to the ground samples that the astronauts did to the flight samples ? thus we had perfectly matched synchronous ground controls.?
After the bacteria returned to Earth, the group performed the first global analysis of Salmonella to measure the effect of space flight on gene and protein expression and virulence. By measuring the gene and protein patterns, the researchers could hone in on the key molecular players necessary for virulence from among thousands of potential candidates.
?We chose to measure gene expression at the mRNA level since the technique to do this, called microarray analysis, is a highly advanced and convenient way to quantitatively measure the expression of every gene in a single experiment,? said Wilson, who coordinated the team?s molecular profiling efforts for the Nickerson lab, and played a central role in the performance of these experiments, including data analysis. ?It is a very powerful technique that was very applicable to the spaceflight experiment. The isolation of mRNA poses particular challenges since it is very sensitive to degradation, but we designed the experiment using a fixative that preserved the mRNA very well.?
After logging in millions of miles in space, the invaluable and well-traveled bacterial samples were analyzed back on Earth, and for the protein profiling studies, were taken to the University of Arizona?s core proteomics facility at its Center for Toxicology to measure the level of every protein that had been subjected to space flight.
?Working with the UA group was great and we obtained very nice data that complemented the microarray analysis very well,? said Wilson. ?Keep in mind also that our body of mRNA and protein expression data from this experiment is precious, since comprehensive analysis of an organism?s molecular genetic response to space flight is very rare.?
Compared to bacteria that remained on earth, the space-traveling Salmonella had changed expression of 167 genes. After the flight, animal virulence studies showed that bacteria that were flown in space were almost three times as likely to cause disease when compared with control bacteria grown on the ground.
The study discovered that an important regulatory protein, Hfq, may be a key molecule responsible for the increased virulence due to space flight. ?Hfq is a protein that binds to and regulates a number of regulatory RNAs, which in turn, control gene expression,? said Nickerson. ?Our studies suggest that there may be a role for these regulatory RNAs in the cellular response to the physical and mechanical forces found in spaceflight, which are relevant to conditions that cells encounter here on Earth during the normal course of their lifecycles.?
These results have important implications for human health since Salmonella (and other gut-related bacterial pathogens) are a leading cause of food-borne illness and infectious disease, especially in the developing world. Nickerson?s group further highlights Hfq as a potential therapeutic target, since no vaccine currently exists for Salmonella food-borne infections in humans. In addition, the space flight studies may shed new light on why Salmonella has become increasingly resistant to antibiotic treatment.
?We also studied the morphology of the bacteria in response to space flight, and the change that we observed is consistent with what looks like formation of a biofilm. The ground grown samples did not show biofilm formation. Biofilms are associated with increased pathogenicity because the immune system can?t clear the bacteria effectively and antibiotics don?t treat them effectively.?
The group will embark on another space shuttle mission likely next year to further understand the risks and mechanisms of infectious disease agents during space flight and how microbes cause infections on Earth.
SkunkyAuthor
Lightworker, I saw that experiment a few days ago! That is fascinating research. Remember though, I don't think any organism we know of could survive an unprotected plunge through the Earth's atmosphere (thank goodness for that!).
hmmmm......can't remember
I spent 21 days in Peru in 2003. They don't need meteorites to get sick. The water makes people sick, the mosquitos make people sick. I spent most of a day in a hospital in Iquitos because of some sort of brief, acute illness--my blood pressure went nuts, nausea, severe headache. The possibilities were endless: food poisoning, food washed in contaminated water, something that got me when I was bathing in the river, etc.
Never mind that there was also very recently a ginormous earthquake that made their problems with plumbing/sewer that much worse. I got an email from a guy down there who said that they had unlocked the gate to their pool so their neighbors could have drinking water.
So I'm sure it's the meteorite that's causing the sickness..
Never mind that there was also very recently a ginormous earthquake that made their problems with plumbing/sewer that much worse. I got an email from a guy down there who said that they had unlocked the gate to their pool so their neighbors could have drinking water.
So I'm sure it's the meteorite that's causing the sickness..
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