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Mining for Meteorites - Part 1 of 12

Hello List,

When Mike Farmer's Ourique and Tinnie specimens arrived, he kindly
included a copy of the Smithsonian, March 1999, edition (Thank you
once more Mike!). This magazine features a very interesting article
about meteorite hunting and collecting. It is so exciting that I have
already read it twice and the catchy title readily indicates that you
"are in for a special treat" because I'd like to share it with you.
Please enjoy :-) or delete :-(


Best wishes,

Bernd

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KRAJICK KEVIN (1999) Mining for Meteorites (Smithsonian, March 1999, pp.
90 -100):

It was the morning of June 13, 1998, when a 4.6-billion-year-old
extraterrestrial object passed the moon's orbit, streaked into earth's
atmosphere and blew to pieces in the sky somewhere in the neighborhood
of Nelda Wallace's backyard. Wallace, a grandmotherly art teacher who
lives outside the small farm town of Portales, New Mexico, was just
sitting in her living room. She and her brother-in-law were about to sip
morning coffee. They heard two huge aerial explosions, jumped to their
feet and dashed out to the porch. A dark basketball-size object dropped
at a steep angle from the southwest with a loud ssshhht and landed 150
feet away in a dried-up garden. The sky hadn't yielded so much as a drop
of rain since January; now this. The impact sounded like two cars
colliding and raised a cloud of dust as big as a house. Wallace grabbed
her shoes, and she and her brother-in-law ran over to look. They were
about to become among the few humans to recover a freshly fallen
meteorite.
Fragments pelted other properties, too - only the first of many strange
things soon to occur in town. For a meteorite belongs to whoever owns
the spot where it lands. And folks quickly learned that the objects are
more than just stars of big-budget movies regarding the end of the world
(a plausible concept, it turns out). Scientists covet them, while
competing private dealers scoop them up for resale at spiraling prices.
The most valuable type, a dislodged piece of the moon, sells for $25,000
a gram - 2,500 times the price of gold. Professional searchers travel
the world over to hunt them down or otherwise acquire them. Some will
use any means possible, from satellites to simple theft. Portales was
about to be invaded by meteorite dealers, meteorite fans, meteorite
poachers, university and government meteoriticists, and other alien
life-forms.
Before we tell the rest of this story, let's get our terms straight. A
meteoroid is an extraterrestrial object that hits earth's atmosphere. A
meteor is not an object at all, but the phenomenon that ensues: the
classic "shooting star" light streak produced when air friction and
pressure cause the meteoroid to melt, vaporize or explode - the fate of
almost all such falling objects. The rare fragment that survives and
actually lands on earth - that is a meteorite.

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