Posted on 10/23/2012 1:10:36 AM PDT by LibWhacker
This is exciting: a meteorite from last week’s fireball over northern California has been found! NBC is reporting a small chunk, 4-5 centimeters across and weighing about 60 grams, struck a house in Novato, California shortly after the fireball was seen.
They’re reporting Peter Jenniskens, a SETI astronomer and meteorite expert, confirmed the find. That’s critical: a lot of rocks are mistaken for meteorites by people (and the media) who aren’t familiar with them. This chunk is small, though, and given how bright the fireball was and how it was seen to fragment, I’d think bigger pieces must have fallen. That area is fairly well-populated – I used to live not far from there and cursed traffic every time I had to endure it – so hopefully more pieces will turn up.
The beauty of this is that because it was seen by several cameras and dozens of witnesses, the path across the sky can be well-determined. That can be backtracked in space to see where in the solar system it came from. And with an actual piece of that asteroid in hand, we can learn more about what conditions are like in parts of space we would otherwise have to send probes to explore.
It’s planetary science, and we get it essentially for free! And we got a really cool light show to go along with it. Everyone wins.
Well, he’s got a heck of material for sermon’s now!
All the way from fire & brimstone to circumstances not always what they seem. “First I thought some kids at thrown a rock through my $200 window, and then it turns out it was a $20,000 meteorite!”
target practice!
Not everyone wins; there are those that need to repair things like cars and houses.
So does this guy get to keep it?
When they inspect it, they will find it’s really a module for obamma and clan to climb into and return to the mother ship
True and homeowners insurance doesn't cover space related accidents. Fortunately meteors, especially notorious ones, are very valuable.
Just wait, the mooslimes will want to confiscate it so they can worship it.
Are you talking about full-size meteors? City killers?
No, if a meteor breaks your window or punches a hole in your roof, you are not covered.
I figured that much about home insurance, but you said meteor, and the article referenced a meteorite. They’re different things, and I remember that much from high school science class because that was my favorite subject.
Yeah, it’s early and I’m not fully awake. I certainly should have said meteorite.
I’m 62 right now and remember back in grade school we took a field trip to an old lady’s house (we lived in VERY small town in Western PA)and her house was a virtual museum. She showed us items from the Revolutionary War, REAL shrunken heads from New Guinea and SA (her brother was a missionary and I thought one of those heads was his but I was wrong), lots of stuff from the civil war, etc. She had this chunk of molten “iron” also which she said was a meteor that had hit her grandfathers pasture, ricocheted into the barn, killed a cow and hit a plow and disintegrated it and ended up in the middle of the spring house. It was found this thing was, I think, almost pure nickel,years later. I always wondered what that would have been worth now, because back then space was something you looked up at and didn’t understand. Always wondered what happened to it, too. Probably some relative said “Yeah, old Gramma picked up rocks every day.” Then threw it in the ditch.
Any evidence of a swaddling baby linen?:-)
lol
However, if it is deemed to be priceless, you are just plain out of luck. They are going to take it away from you and give you some number of dollars they've conjured out of thin air (like I said, it's sort of like eminent domain).
OTOH, if it is an ancient meteorite, and on your property, and not of too much interest to NASA (I doubt you would have been allowed to keep a significant chunk of the Chicxulub impactor, for instance, if NASA was dying to get its hands on it for some reason), then it's all yours, to do with as you please, minus taxes. It's sort of like the Wild West of astronomy and law. :-)
I did find this article. They make it sound like you can keep a meteorite if it lands on your property.
Ownership battle brews over Virginia meteorite
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012804235.html
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