[meteorite-list] Moss, Norway meteorite laws and news

From: meteoritehunter_at_comcast.net <meteoritehunter_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Aug 15 10:39:06 2006
Message-ID: <081420062219.7744.44E0F70D0005DEB500001E4022007614389D0A9B029A080A9B079D010A9B0A03_at_comcast.net>

Hi everyone, I am in Chigcago, on my way home after a travel day from hell with stops in the UK and the chaos at the airports there. My advice, AVOID THE UK at all costs right now. Pretty much strip searches, plastic baggie with passport and money was all I could carry on, overflowing bins of goodies taken from people, thousands of bags on the ground sitting in the rain, endless lines and no-one seemed to have a clue what to do.
My bags made is somehow, and I now have the Moss meteorites safely in my hands again, it was hard to sleep wondering if some airport lackey had deemed them as dangerous and tossed them in the incinerator!

Now on to this Norwegian article condemning myself and my fellow meteorite hunters. I am dissapointed in reading it, since I had a meeting with the people from the National museum regarding the laws and was told that I was welcome to take anything I found or bought, since Norway had no law against it. Now it seems, that while true, they did not want to cooperate hunting with me as they suggested, but rather were just gathering information to use in harrasing me. I searched for 8 days in Moss, and never once ran into a scientists, museum curator, or any other official out hunting meteorites in the forest, mosquito-infested bogs, or streets of Moss. I met the museum people at my hotel for two hours, then they promtly took a bus back to Oslo. I guess hunting meteorites is not their forte, just complaining about those of us who save them from destruction and preserve them.
The piece that Morten Bilet and I found was in a parking area at a large factory. Many pieces had been run over and crushed into grey piles of dust by the time we discovered it and saved over 800 grams of extremely rare material from further destruction. Now I am called a thief for legally removing it from Norway. I have already submitted pieces for classification, and the thin sections are being made and we will have perhaps preliminary classification by the end of the month. I have museums around the world already slated for pieces, and collectors as well. There is enough material for both the museums in Norway, the scientific world, and the private collection community to share.
I am proud of what I do, the risks I take, and the time and energy I spend chasing these falls. Until I see legions of scientists out there doing it beside me, I know who is the one who provides them with their study material, and who saves the meteorites from destruction or loss. If Morten and I had not found our specimen when we did, it would be 800 grams of grey mud right now, not a pristine meteorite already in the lab!
Michael Farmer
Received on Mon 14 Aug 2006 06:19:57 PM PDT