Update: Still More On Reward for Finding Meteor

Robert Haag still wants to buy the first 1 kilogram chunk (2.2 pounds) of the meteor for $10,000, despite possible legal problems with the offer:

[according to] Canadian law, the meteorite will need to stay in Canada no matter who finds it, but that hasn’t stopped him from putting up his price.

“It’s a shooting star that fell, and it’s my dream to follow it,” he said.

Haag said he grew up around rocks and minerals, searching for them around Tucson and hanging out at his family’s rock shop. He would like to see a large fragment of the meteorite brought here, but because of Canadian law, he predicts he will be forced resell or trade the space rock in that country — if he ever gets his hands on it.

“Maybe I can resell it for $12,000 or maybe just sell it back for $10,000 and have a Canadian adventure in the process. I want to be a part of the buzz. This is like Meteorite-stock,” he said, comparing the excitement to that of Woodstock.

The Canadians agree it’s exciting.

“It’s dramatic,” Semmens said. “Our lead researcher has said this is the largest public response he’s seen in his career.”

Meteor-stock?  We like that.

You can read the rest of the article here.

And check out our other posts on “Meteor-stock” here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Update: Another Canadian Meteor Spotted!

Canada becomes meteor hotspot as BC flashed by streaking debris

by Stevie Smith – Nov 27 2008, 13:00

With asteroid experts currently searching out an impact point for the dazzling chunk of space rock that was visible form Alberta to Saskatchewan as it passed through the atmosphere earlier this week, residents of British Columbia have become the latest to witness an incoming meteor as it broke up in the Canadian skies.

Making its flaming arrival in the late afternoon on Tuesday, a number of onlookers in the Vancouver area contacted the news desk of Canadian broadcaster CBC regarding the meteor, which they claimed was clearly visible in the darkening sky for around two seconds.

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These posts have been brought to you by the Ghost Radio blog.  The official blog of the terrifying new novel Ghost Radio by Leopoldo Gout from William Morrow/Harper Collins.

Update: More on Reward for Canadian Meteor

This story seems to be a favorite with our readers.  So we’re offering two new articles updating the story.

Residents in rural Sask buzzing about meteor rocks and bidding war

SASKATOON — Residents in rural Saskatchewan near the Alberta boundary are buzzing with speculation 10 tonnes of meteorite rocks are scattered across their small patch of the Prairies.

And with a bidding war brewing between meteorite hunters in the United States, many expect the sparsely populated area could soon find itself in the middle of an astronomical circus.

“It could turn into quite a fiasco,” Mike Casper of Ithaca, N.Y., said Tuesday.

The private collector, who is also curator of the meteorite collection at Cornell University, said he has seen hundreds of rock hunters pull into towns in Arizona and Texas where meteors were spotted in the past few years.

On Thursday, a large fireball brightly lit up the night sky and was reportedly spotted by tens of thousands of people across all three Prairie provinces. Witnesses reported it was as bright as the sun and some heard sonic booms.

The fireball was as big as a desk, say experts, and meteors that size occur over Canada only once every five years.

Alan Hildebrand, a University of Calgary researcher, has since pinpointed an area of farm fields near Manitou Lake, where possibly hundreds of chunks from the meteor may be found.

Robert Haag of Tucson, Ariz., the self-declared “Indiana Jones of meteorite hunters”, earlier announced a $10,000 reward for the first one-kilogram chunk located.

“I will up that to $12,000 US,” Casper said. “When they find it and the smoke clears, somebody’s gonna phone me, cause they know they’re looking for a bidding war.”

He said he paid $225,000 for a rare meteorite in 1997. He owns hundreds of others.

“It’s just the romance of owning something that did not originate on this planet,” he said.

Read the rest of the article here.

Search is on for Meteor that lit sky over western Canada

MONTREAL (AFP) — Scientists and amateur astronomers have been combing the prairies in western Canada for a 10-ton meteorite that lit the sky and exploded with the force of 300 tons of dynamite, according to experts from the Canadian Space Agency.

The meteorite, seen on Thursday by thousands of people in a 700 kilometer (435-mile) radius, fell southeast of Lloydminster, near the border between Saskatchewan and Alberta provinces, astrophysicists Alan Hildebrand and Peter Brown said in a statement.

At the moment it entered the atmosphere, the asteroid fragment weighed approximately 10 tonnes, from an energy estimate derived from infrasound records, said Brown, professor of meteor physics at University of Western Ontario.

“The indicated energy is approximately one third of a kiloton of TNT,” he added.

Hundreds of fragments of the meteorite weighing more than 50 grams (1.76 ounces) were likely strewn over a wide area since its the speed of entry, some 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) per second, was well below the average 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) per second of most meteorites, said University of Calgary researcher Hildebrand.

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Also check out our other posts on this story here,  here , here, here, here and here.