No, there aren't meteorites made of gold, but close to where I live there is a huge amount of interest in a meteorite that broke up and crashed, leaving meteorite everywhere. So now folks, including scientists, academics, NASA, and fortune hunters have descended on the area to try and find the valuable space rocks.
Sacebee
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Scientists say the meteorite is probably the most significant event of its kind since the late 1960s. That is because it likely is composed of carbonaceous chondrite, the earliest solid material to form in our solar system more than 4 1/2 billion years ago, before the planets took shape.
This means the fragments littering the Gold Country may contain carbon, amino acids, sugars and even evidence of water that are the very "building blocks of life," said Brad Bailey, a staff scientist at the Lunar Science Institute.
These basic components eventually combined over eons to produce water, oxygen, algae, plants and animals. Amino acids, for instance, are the basic elements of our own human DNA. Among other things, the scientists are hoping to understand how these elements produced life on Earth.
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In honor of the location, scientists have dubbed it the Sutter's Mill Meteorite. They estimate it must have been about the size of a minivan, and weighed around 150,000 pounds, before it broke up.
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One woman found a piece valued at $20,000. Now ideally you would hope folks would hand the meteorites over to science, but that isn't always happening. I am debating whether to go over there (about 30 minutes away) and see what its like, but I also suspect it is a bit of a zoo.
05-04-2012, 01:35 PM
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