Geological Survey Discounts NASA's Long-Distance Theory on Vellore Rock
CHENNAI: Amid discussions round the world about the nature of the mysterious object that apparently fell from the sky and killed a bus driver at an engineering college in Vellore last week, geologists who visited the spot have retrieved more fragments of the object on Thursday.
They said it had all the characteristics of a meteorite but chemical analyses should be conducted to confirm this.
This observation came at a time when the US space agency, NASA, has said that it was unlikely to have been a meteorite and described it more likely the result of a land-based explosion.
Visiting the Bharathidasan Engineering College at Natrampalli in Vellore, the deputy director general of the Geological Survey of India, S Raju and his team recovered a 61-gm sample on Thursday. It has magnetic and carbon properties, he said.
“We will take the samples to Chennai after getting permission from the district administration and the police. The samples will be sent to our head office in Calcutta for a detailed scientific study. Within four to five days, we will able to confirm whether it is a meteorite or not,” he said.
Discounting NASA’s statement that the object that fell on the engineering college campus was not a meteorite, he said, “Without visiting the spot and analysing the samples, one cannot say what it is.”
Meanwhile, professor Anupama G C of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, who along with her team is conducting tests on the material found at the Vellore site, remained non-committal about the nature of the object.
“Our analysis is not complete yet; until we have concrete results, we would not like to say anything,” she said.
Professor Anupama said the tests would take a few days to complete and they had reached out to other research labs as well.
“Let us have some days to complete the analyses and then we can say what it is or what it is not, backed by scientific evidence,” Prof. Anupama added.