latimes: Meteor hunters strike pay dirt: A different kind of rush hits California’s Gold Country after the recent shower of rocks from space, which scientists crave and can fetch $1,000 a gram. Eight hundred miles away, while windows were still rattling, Robert Ward in Prescott, Ariz., was getting alerts. A 35-year-old professional meteorite hunter and dealer, he pays for tips and keeps a bag packed, ready to go anywhere in the world to chase a meteorite. On Tuesday, after 16 hours of driving, he scanned a parking lot in Lotus in the pre-dawn not knowing what type of rock he was seeking. But when he spotted a dark space pebble, he immediately recognized it as carbonaceous chondrite, meteorites containing water and carbon — the type scientists long to study for insights into how life began on Earth and possibly in other places. “I was trembling,” Ward said. “It’s the rarest of the rare. It’s older than the sun. It holds the building blocks of life.” Photo: Jason Utas, a geology student at UC Berkeley, holds a 7.5-gram fragment of a meteorite called CM chondrite he found Friday in Coloma, Calif. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

latimes:

Meteor hunters strike pay dirt: A different kind of rush hits California’s Gold Country after the recent shower of rocks from space, which scientists crave and can fetch $1,000 a gram.

Eight hundred miles away, while windows were still rattling, Robert Ward in Prescott, Ariz., was getting alerts. A 35-year-old professional meteorite hunter and dealer, he pays for tips and keeps a bag packed, ready to go anywhere in the world to chase a meteorite.

On Tuesday, after 16 hours of driving, he scanned a parking lot in Lotus in the pre-dawn not knowing what type of rock he was seeking. But when he spotted a dark space pebble, he immediately recognized it as carbonaceous chondrite, meteorites containing water and carbon — the type scientists long to study for insights into how life began on Earth and possibly in other places.

“I was trembling,” Ward said. “It’s the rarest of the rare. It’s older than the sun. It holds the building blocks of life.”

Photo: Jason Utas, a geology student at UC Berkeley, holds a 7.5-gram fragment of a meteorite called CM chondrite he found Friday in Coloma, Calif. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

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  3. davidbyrneownsmysoul reblogged this from latimes and added:
    So this is a thing?
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    GEOLOGY/GENERAL SCIENCE BONER
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  17. trinidadvoice reblogged this from latimes and added:
    This is very interesting.
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