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meteorite

tim

Lasiorhinus latifrons, Combat Division
tim
Joined
Jan 12, 2003
Messages
11,148
Last night, about 2am gmt, a friend of mine who lives in Southeast England was awoken by a bang. He looked out of his window - nothing.
This morning at 8am he went into his garden (back yard to most of you I think) and found a crater about a foot across and 18 inches deep, in which he found a dark grey or black object. Roughly ball shaped, it's about 4.5 inches across, has a pitted surface and weighs about 6 to 8 pounds. It was cool to the touch.
Around about there are smaller marks which he feels may conceal other objects, but he has not investigated.
That's all I know at the moment I'm afraid and I haven't seen the object. I've asked him to look after it and preserve the crater by putting a sheet of wood over it (after photographing it of course). I've suggested he borrow a metal detector to check the other possible areas.
All I can think of is that this is a meteorite - in which case he's a lucky bast**d!
Anyone got any ideas?
 
1) Contact the geology or astronomy department of the nearest university, they might be interested. See if there's a way your friend can "loan" them the meteorite for study while retaining ownership.

2) Sell pieces of it to New Age woowoos as alternative medicine.

Guess which would pay better? :rolleyes:
 
Penguin, the bugger's already counting the cash! The best I can hope for is a look at it and perhaps one of the fragments, if they exist. What's the going rate for an 8lb meteorite? more than I can afford, I suspect!
 
tim said:
Penguin, the bugger's already counting the cash! The best I can hope for is a look at it and perhaps one of the fragments, if they exist. What's the going rate for an 8lb meteorite? more than I can afford, I suspect!
Click to expand...

Meteoritic material is QUITE pricey- they're rare and very much in demand by collectors. Tell the fellow to get it authenticated by a geologist, though.
 
I'm only posting to say I think this is way cool.

By all means post any photos you might get hold of.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Just as well that Feng Shui consultant had him move the house!
Click to expand...
Wow! How did you know about that - can you read minds/see into the future/fortell meteor showers? I'm impressed. Claim the $1,000,000!
 
Given where your friend lives, he should take it to the Natural History Museum in London. The mineralogy department have meteorite researchers and are used to examining samples brought in by members of the public. The usual deal is that, if it does turn out to be for real and valuable, the owner agrees to make a specimen available for scientific study. If so, verification will be free.

But it might not be worth anything. The most common meteorites don't fetch big prices. Martian and lunar meteorites are the most valuable, and they come in at $500 - $1000 per gram, but the chances are not good that this is one. 'Bog standard' chondrites are worth about the same as any random lump of rock (though an observed fall in England might have some novelty value for a collector).

And that's if it is a meteorite at all. A meteorite the size you describe wouldn't necessarily leave a crater - by the time it got to the surface it would be falling at terminal velocity. Would you expect it to leave that size a crater if you'd dropped it onto that ground from a skyscraper? Cold to the touch is right though.

We get a few people a year who have seen or heard meteorites fall - the rocks they bring have been an odd selection of things, mostly blast furnace slag.
 
Hi Beausoleil
Now I'm guessing here, but with a name like that and your last paragraph you have some professional connection with the field.
Welcome to the forum. If you get as much interest and fun from it as I do you're in for a good time! Nearly all the people on the forum are great and very keen to help, so any questions - ask! (But probably not me because I'm still learning too).
All I have on this is my friends' description. There must be a hole in the ground, but I dunno if it's a crater or not. That's what he called it. Some event took place, the hole appeared, so probably the object isn't slag found in a garden. Anyway, there's no heavy industry near by.
I'm hoping to see it maybe Monday or Tuesday, and I'll take some photographs of it (which I'll post here) and try to get it weighed.
Thank you for your interest and advice!
 
Yes, I study meteorites and other things for a living. Though I'm not really qualified to identify a meteorite visually, especially not from a picture (they're usually in very small bits when I get them), I'll be interested to take a look. However, I picked my forum name from a group playing on the radio when I had to choose one for another forum a few years ago - they're a cajun band popular in the US.

If you get a chance to see it, take a careful look at the black 'crust' on the outside. On a real meteorite it will be very thin - similar to potato skin, with a clear demarcation between it and the inside. If it's thicker than that, it's most likely a weathering crust such as you'll see on many ordinary rocks.

I probably see a couple of people with 'meteorites' a year. It's a fine example of how the human mind spots a pattern - a weird noise causes a search, any careful inspection stands a reasonable chance of finding something odd-looking to do with a stone, hence a meteorite.
 
If it is indeed an 8 pound iron meteorite, then it is worth quite a lot. Perhaps not as much as lunar/Mars meteorites, as pointed out, but may still worth something like $1/gram (US), or more. Canyon Diablo, the meteorites associated with Meteor Crater in Arizona, go for something like that, I believe. Prices have gone up lately due to poaching, I hear.

Anyway, at 454 grams/pound, an 8 pounder is worth at least $4000, especially since the fall is known. Bear in mind, this may not pan out. I have gotten lots of calls from people, and it usually does turn out to be slag. Don't get his hopes up.
 
Only about 1 in 20 meteorite falls is an iron.

If it's a typical L6 chondrite he'd probably get something for the novelty value of an observed fall, but not enough to retire on!
 
My sincere thanks to all who have posted replies on this thread. Much to my annoyance the gentleman concerned seems to have cut me out of the loop and become very secretive all of a sudden! But thank you very much for your replies - they were interesting to me, and very informative.
Cheers!
Tim
 
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