With chunks of meteorites fetching thousands of dollars on the commercial market, news of the spectacular meteor that soared over parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania early Monday has touched off a cosmic treasure hunt.
Professional meteorite hunters and collectors are scrambling to track down, grab (or buy if they must) any pieces of the Mason-Dixon meteor that might have survived the fall to Earth.
"This is the Super Bowl," Steve "Meteorite Man" Arnold said Wednesday night after flying in from Arkansas to join the hunt. Meteorites can sell for hundreds of dollars per gram, he said, making some worth far more than their weight in gold, which now sells for about $30 a gram.
There is some scientific interest, he insisted; he gives 20 percent of his finds to scientists. And "there is a real mix of the fun and the treasure hunt." But it is mostly a race for the money. "It is an entrepreneurial effort," he said.
Before anyone begins tramping the fields and farms, however, "the race is to get information while people have it, while they can remember," he said.
A full-time meteorite hunter and dealer for 17 years, Arnold, 42, learned soon after landing at BWI-Marshall Airport that at least one competing team was working to get a fix on where the meteor hit.
Others across the country, including Elton Jones, a longtime field investigator in Knoxville, Tenn., were poring over sighting reports to the American Meteor Society and blog posts to reconstruct the meteor's path and pinpoint its likely impact zone.
Others tried to cash in from afar. Don Stimpson, a meteorite dealer in Kansas, sent a notice for posting on The Baltimore Sun's Weather Blog: "Did you know meteorites that fall on your land are valuable and belong to you! If you want discreet, immediate payment for meteorites, contact ..."
After a five-year drought, this is the sixth meteorite hunt Arnold has joined in the past year, he said. But the best lead anyone had on the meteorite's whereabouts at mid-week was a few seconds of video from a security camera at a rural water pumping station southwest of York, Pa.
The murky images showed an empty driveway and a distant streetlight. Seconds later, the sky above the camera and a bit to the right begins to glow. A brilliant light drops across the frame, flares, dims and falls behind a row of trees. But how far behind? A mile? Ten?
