EBay Becomes a Real Meteor Market By Kristen Philipkoski| Also by this reporter
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/space/0,71477-0.html?tw=rss.index Lunar meteorites are so rare that scientists and collectors are turning to unconventional sources, even one that sometimes attracts fraudsters: eBay. Moon rocks have been in scientific demand since the Apollo program first started carting them to Earth in 1969. But the 800 pounds of astronaut-carried moon rocks and dirt became property of the U.S. government -- which is notoriously stingy in doling out samples -- and the supply dried up after the last landing in 1972. Fortunately, some moon rocks have found their own way to Earth, and a government-sponsored expedition began identifying lunar meteorites in the early 1980s. In 1990, Robert Haag became the first private dealer to stake claim to a lunar rock found at Calcalong Creek in western Australia. That spurred fortune hunters to search for their own stony treasures. The advent of online auctions fueled the meteorite boom, and today scientists are going to the internet in search of study samples -- sometimes paying upward of $70,000 for a smallish rock. "I check eBay pretty regularly, as goofy as it is to have to buy samples from dealers," said Randy Korotev, a lunar geochemist at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied moon rocks for 30 years. "In a sense I don't mind. I think these finders are doing a wonderful thing for the scientific community. It's far cheaper than going to space and bringing the rocks back." Most dealers on eBay are reputable, Korotev said, because meteorite dealers are aggressively self-policing. Prospectors who want a stamp of approval for their meteorites register their rocks with The Meteoritical Society (which presently lists 89 lunar meteorites) or the meteorite catalog at the Natural History Museum in Britain. Finders must send several grams of dust from their meteorite for analysis and registration. Without this authentication, scientists can't use information drawn from the samples in a scientific paper. "Begrudgingly, most (dealers) cough up their amount because as soon as it becomes official, in my opinion it becomes more valuable -- it's to their advantage," Korotev said. Meteorites that don't come from the moon also have value: A dealer in Britain, Trevor George, has turned rock collecting into a $500,000-a-year enterprise by selling these more-common meteorites, as well as terrestrial fossils that go for about $45 each. He said his record price for a rock is $5,000. About 40 percent of his revenue comes from his eBay store, which he launched in 2001. "It was good fun," George said. "Then I eventually turned my hobby into a multinational business." Many of George's meteorites are from northern Africa, or from the Nantan meteor strike recorded in 1516 in Guangxi, China. Scientists who purchased some of George's Nantan samples recently published a paper in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Communications showing evidence that reactive, water-soluble phosphorus was present on the very early Earth. As with any eBay market, some sellers try to buck the system -- though unauthenticated extraterrestrial rocks are still less common than, say, bogus sports memorabilia. S. Ray DeRusse claims to have found lunar meteorites in Texas. If that's true, it would be the first such find in North America. DeRusse recently put up for auction a small amount of dust from one rock for a "buy it now" price of $75,000. The auction expired with no bids and many skeptical questions about authenticity. DeRusse said he believes scientists see him as a threat and want to discredit his find. "There is no legal nor moral requirement that we register samples with the Meteoritical Society," DeRusse said. "It does no compelling good to us, the public, or the Meteoritical Society in submitting samples to those scientists." But until he allows scientists to examine his rocks, DeRusse's $75,000 asking price seems like shooting the moon. Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
