Mystery has deepened over a blast in a college near Vellore in Tamil Nadu, with experts questioning the conclusion of the state government which had said that the blast was caused by a meteorite.
Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa had said the blast, which killed one and injured three, was caused by a falling meteorite. However, experts who have examined rock pieces from the site claimed that the samples may not be part of a meteorite
Kamaraj, a bus driver of the Bharathidasan Engineering College located near Natrampalli, had died in the mysterious explosion on Saturday.
The impact of the blast left a large crater in the ground and shattered window panes in a nearby building.
A few media reports had quoted the local people as saying that they had seen an object falling from the sky just before the explosion.
However, the scientists said the pieces of rock handed to them by the Tamil Nadu police were light in weight unlike meteorites.
Scientists from the NASA also said in a public statement that the photographs posted online were more consistent with “a land based explosion” than with something from space.
Meteorites are often cool to the touch when they land, and the object recovered from the site in India weighed only a few grams and appeared to be a fragment of a common earth rock, a New York Times report said on Tuesday.
