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| Meteorites could be worth big bucks |
| Meteorites could be worth big bucks
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 16-February-2013
9:21:25 AM |
| As Russia assesses the damage from the meteorite shower that rained down on Friday on the central region of the country, experts in the United States said the fragments of space rock could bring a small fortune in hidden treasure to those quick enough to find and scoop them up.
"A relatively small piece is worth maybe a few hundred dollars, but a large chunk can be up to $100,000 or even more," said Joseph Gutheinz, a specialist on meteorites and a former senior special agent with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in an interview with RIA Novosti.
"We literally have meteor shows here in the US on a regular basis," he added.
As for the meteorite fragments that landed in central Russia on Friday morning injuring hundreds of people and damaging thousands of buildings, Gutheinz said: "I expect people to be out there with metal detectors all over the place. They might even come in from Moscow to search."
The catch is to find the right chunk of rock.
Size matters, but the value of a meteorite is also based on its rarity, where it came from and what it's made of.
"The most common is called a stony-iron, and it's made up of minerals that are pretty common on Earth, so a small piece might be worth 20 bucks," said Chris Palma, a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University, in an interview with RIA Novosti.
"But the composition can tell you something about where it came from, so if it has a composition that suggests it likely came from Mars the value goes through the roof," he added.
One of the largest sales on record came from a 1.9 kg moon rock called the Dar al Gani 1058, found in Libya in 1998 and sold last year at an auction in the US for $330,000.
A 161 kg meteorite found in Argentina and believed to have come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter sold for $93,000 on eBay in 2006.
Anyone who finds what they think is a meteorite should have it assessed by an expert, said
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