Paper: The Frederick Post
City: Frederick, Maryland
Date: Monday, September 9, 1985
Page: C-9
Collectors of meteorites helped by farmers, animals, children
TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) Thank heaven for cows, farmers and children, says
Arizona State University geochemist Carleton Moore.
Without animals and people, Tempe would not be home to the world's
third-largest collection of meteorites, according to Moore, who directs the
ASU Center for Meteorite Studies.
Case in point: In the 1840s, a meteorite now "No. 202sb" in an ASU
file fell in New Concord, Ohio.
It hit and killed a cow.
The incident drew attention to a rock that otherwise might have been
part of 10,000 unnoticed tons of meteorite material which fell on the Earth
that day.
A farmer, probably upset over his dead cow, turned the rock in to local
scientists, who in turn have passed it on to ASU, Moore says.
"We get a lot of our meteorites this way," Moore says. "Usually, some
professor will go out to some farmer's home and ask him i£ he has any
interesting rocks.
"The farmer usually will say, 'Nope,' and the professor will ask,
'Well, what's that thing over there holding the trashcan lid down?' "
Drawing his thumbs up to his chest to hold imaginary suspenders, Moore
completes the tale: "The farmer usually comes back with, 'Well, don't know.
Dug it up plowing a while back.
"Sometimes it's a meteorite," Moore says.
Finding meteorites is a "human aspect," by Moore's accounts.
In 1969, the same year ASU researchers were analyzing 200 moon rocks
brought back by Apollo 9, impoverished youngsters in northern Mexico found a
way to make a year's wages in a day scouring the desert for unusual rocks.
What they found was one of the oldest meteorites known, containing ash
thought to have come from the theoretical Big Bang, which supposedly set
formation of the universe in motion.
ASU paid the children about $500 for the find, enough to feed their
entire family for a year. The university continues to pay for some
meteorites researchers consider valuable. .
Other meteorites in Moore's cluttered collection are in the shape of
anvils, knives and crow bars some fashioned by ancient Indians, others
fashioned by poor people in South America, eager to make use of a metal they
would not be able to buy.
Today, ASU houses 1,300 meteorites worth between $4 million and $5
million, Moore says. Many meteorites are kept in unmarked rooms. They are
snipped worldwide to researchers hoping to learn more about the universe.
Inside, their chemical composition hasn't changed in millions of years,
giving scientists clues to the origin of the universe and planets.
Rocks from Mars share a chemical composition similar to ancient Earth.
Other meteorites have carried amino acids from outer space, giving some
scientists reason to believe the basis for life was spawned in outer space.
(end)
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