Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/05/man-finds-out-the-rock-he-used.html
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http://meteorites.wustl.edu/what_to_do.htm
I’m sorry, but you have not found a meteorite. Yes, your rock is funny-looking and different from other rocks in the area where you found it, but it doesn’t have a fusion crust or regmaglypts, so why do you think it’s a meteorite at all? Your rock has a rough exterior, unlike the smooth appearance of most stony meteorites. It’s got vesicles (holes, bubbles), which don’t occur in meteorites. Your rock is loaded with quartz or calcite, minerals that don’t occur in rocks from other bodies in the solar system. The density isn’t right for a meteorite. On the basis of my experience with the various meteorwrongs that I’ve examined, you probably have a hematite concretion or some kind of industrial by-product (slag). I have heard many wonderful stories from people who swear that they saw the rock fall, that the rock wasn’t in their driveway yesterday, or that it split their tree in two. I can’t explain how your rock got to be where you found it, but I can say that it is not a meteorite. [Nearly every rock that someone has described as “it wasn’t there yesterday” was just the right size for throwing. Really.] Not everything that falls from the sky is a meteorite. Or, as one of my correspondents put, most things that fall from the sky are not meteorites.*
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This is crazy…
I had a teacher in highschool who had a meteorite about the size of a loaf of bread. A relative gave it to him after finding it in a field. The University of Michigan verified that it was a meteorite and took a sample of it.
Anyhow, it served as a teaching aid and also his classroom door stop. Now I’m wondering if it’s a $100k door stop? I wonder if this story is actually related to my teacher? The one that he had didn’t look like the one in the video. His was cut and polished on one or two sides, I can’t remember. Hmmm…
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I wonder if Korotev is aware of reader’s possible augmentation of his “new policy” and its requirements, and how readers may personally include another requirement… to not have anything to do with him, much less meteorites.
Who was it who had said “There are no rocks in the sky; therefore rocks do not fall out of the sky”?
– R.A. Wilson
Pennies from heaven.
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Meteorites vary incredibly in value depending on the type, the aesthetic appeal, the provenance, whether it has a unique story attached to it, and whether or not it’s been examined by scientists and had its vital statistics published (publishing adds value, a rare example of the market and science not being at odds).
Values range from fifty cents per gram to hundreds of dollars per gram.
eta: so a 1kg doorstop sized meteor would be worth at least $500 on up. Definitely worth having it assessed before your teacher keeps on using it as a doorstop.
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What if I just have a plain rock? Could I get money for that?
Idiot, now he’ll sell it for 100k or maybe even more. But he’ll never have another door stop like that one. It could have kept holding his barn door open for another 30 years… now look at him with all that money. Chump.
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how much would it have been worth 30 years ago?
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Yeah, clearly the actual geologist that authenticated this rock is full of shit.
https://www.cmich.edu/news/article/Pages/CMU-prof-examines-meteorite.aspx
she took it to one of the labs in Brooks Hall and examined it under an X-ray fluorescence instrument to determine that it was an iron-nickel meteorite with about 88 percent iron and 12 percent nickel, a metal rarely found on Earth.
Iron meteorites typically consist of approximately 90-95 percent iron, with the remainder composed of nickel and trace amounts of heavy metals including iridium, gallium and sometimes gold.
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I knew it! Even rocks have consciousness.
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Measurements, weight, turn-ons, turn-offs.
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He’ll get a cheap briefcase, fill it with $20 bills, and use that as his new doorstop?
($100k in hundreds is only about 2 pounds, so it has to be a smaller denomination because his barn door is probably heavier than that.)
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