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Mining for Meteorites - Part 10 of 12

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

The scientists, however, are first to complain when dealers and
collectors want high prices for specimens, or split them into pieces.
"Science is being threatened when a meteorite gets chopped up, because
you can't see what surrounded it," says Harry McSween, a professor of
geology at the University of Tennessee. "They have an interesting
history and great scientific value - but $1,000 a gram? Come on, they’re
just rocks. We're getting priced out of the market," complains Roy
Clarke, curator emeritus of the Smithsonian's meteorite collection.
"Jealousy - that's all it is," snaps Haag. "I drove out here ten hours
for this meteorite and they didn't even twitch. Unless there's money
involved, people won't waste their time, and the meteorites will sink
into the ground and be lost forever." Privately, many scientists admit
he is right; they need the Haags of the world.
Not that all scientists stay indoors. In August a small, highly trained
team sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Research braved crevasses, melt
streams and moulins to search for a meteorite thought to have just
landed on a remote mountain glacier in Greenland. They found nothing;
the main victory was that everyone came back alive.
Until now scientists also have had exclusive run of the true meteorite
happy-hunting ground: Antarctica. It is not that more meteorites land
there; they are just better preserved and easier to find. The continent
is coated with ice, so meteorites that may rust to nothing in a few
centuries elsewhere last for eons there. And since the surface is ice,
the only rocks to be seen probably fell from the sky. The only earthly
geology breaking the surface are the tops of nunataks, mountains
surrounded by glacial ice. These actually help concentrate meteorites:
ice sheets lumbering seaward bump against them; the meteorites embedded
in the ice get stuck. High winds then excavate the ice surface, leaving
distilled piles of stones sitting in depressions.
Japanese glaciologists discovered this by accident in 1969. Since then
Japan and the U.S. National Science Foundation regularly send collecting
teams. They have found 20,000 fragments from up to l0,000 falls - far
more finds than in all previous history. It could soon be a scientist's
paradise lost: last year the first private collectors showed up, having
paid $25,000 each for an eight-day trip.

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