Physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot investigated and, after interviews and mineral analysis, confirmed the rocks were, indeed, extraterrestrial. Then, in the early afternoon of April 26, 1803, hundreds of stones bombarded the French market town of L’Aigle. His hypothesis was ignored for more than a decade. While other cultures, around the world and across the centuries, have shown similar fascination with this otherworldly material, it was only in 1794 that German physicist Ernst Chladni proposed that meteorites came from outer space and plunged down to Earth in fiery flashes of light. More than 1,500 years ago, across what’s now Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the Hopewell culture included beads and earrings fashioned from meteorites in the burial mounds of their high-ranking dead. In ancient Greece, Apollo’s temple at Delphi enshrined a space rock. It creates something of a waiting game-will this fireball be the 1-in-200 chance to hit the jackpot?Įarly civilizations saw fireballs as portents of good or evil, of military victories or the death of kings. Every hunter has to weigh the financial gamble of the hunt. “Me personally, I like to wait until the first couple have been found,” says Vargas, and he’s not alone. By some estimates, 99.5 percent of meteors that flash across the sky burn up in our atmosphere without ever making it to the ground as meteorites. “You’ve got so many things working against you, including time.”Įven several days after the Mississippi fall, no one knows for certain whether any space rocks crashed to Earth that Wednesday morning. “It’s just like a giant race,” says Humphries. Not moving fast enough also carries risks, including losing out to other hunters. “I can spend $2,000 going to and hunting for five days and accommodations and everything and then we find nothing,” which has happened more often than not. Oftentimes meteorite hunters shell out thousands of dollars during their search only to return home empty-handed. Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images In 2021, this slice of the Fukang meteorite, from China’s Xinjiang Province, sold at auction in London for almost $560,000. And competition to find these space rocks can be fierce. Famous meteorites, like the 15.5-ton Willamette Meteorite, the largest ever found in the U.S., are valued in the millions. Now, meteorites sell at major auction houses for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Back then, once hunters found a meteorite, they had to find a buyer, which was easier said than done-there wasn’t much of a globally-connected market for space rocks at the time. It’s a massive shift from the previous approach: relying on word of mouth, putting up flyers, and catching local news stories to learn about falls. NASA satellites, weather radar, and the internet have changed meteorite hunting forever particularly in the United States, enthusiasts and entrepreneurs now have unprecedented access to technology that can tell them just where to go looking for rocks. But these hunters will need to act fast if they want a piece of it-literally. If there really are meteorites on the ground, hundreds of thousands of dollars could be on the line. In Connecticut, Roberto Vargas looks into flights. In Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Steve Arnold contemplates hopping in his pickup truck. In Tucson, Arizona, Ashley Humphries starts making travel plans with her friend Mark Lyon. And all around the country, meteorite hunters take note: There might just be space rocks on the ground in Mississippi. Online Facebook groups, like the Meteorite Club, start posting news stories about the event. Over 70 eyewitnesses file reports about the fall on the American Meteor Society website. Nearby weather radars picked up the unique signatures of falling meteorites near the small, unincorporated town of Cranfield, Mississippi, just east of Natchez. Hours later, NASA confirmed that the disturbance was a fireball, a bit of outer space hurtling toward Earth at more than 25,000 mph.
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