He then immediately preserved and documented the entire scene using disposable gloves and aluminum foil to place the meteorite fragments in glass jars.
Maybe chunks hit many people, but you only hear about the ones who are prepped and ready.
„Your bug out backpack is not enough, you need space bug out backpack”.
If this had happened to me, I would probably use Ziplock bags in the best scenario.
Hacknews is like an organism, and you have been subject to the immune system.
Who should one contact if this happens?
Does this happen often in the US?
I mean often enough that folks happen to know the legality of it?
In which case I find it extremely frightening that one could be sitting on their porch, minding their own business, browsing HN, and then get unexpectedly head-shotted by a meteorite.
Not sure if we should count Tunguska, which killed at least three people.
so you should be able to sell meteorites that land on your property
only thing you can't own/sell is NASA Moon Rocks
"National dairy. All other use prohibited!"
If you ever watched Hardcore Pawn it looks like they would buy just about anything for the right price :)
You contact NASA because you found a meteorite with clear signs of alien life, a black helicopter will pick you up, you get put in a dark cell, interrogated, and then told to forget all about it or G-Men will disappear your family. You try to sell the news to mass media, but rumours start to spread about you. Your life work get discredited, you lose your job and family, end up wandering the streets in an alcohol daze muttering about aliens.
I guess it depends if you've drank the kool aid about the US government being the good guys, or not.
You have to suspend your disbelief harder at the 8 o’clock news nowadays.
I don't doubt it, but that's an astounding trajectory estimation...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fireball_Network
* https://pawsey.org.au/researchers/desert-fireball-network-te...
> The dark flight trajectory of a meteoroid is significantly affected by the atmospheric winds, especially by the jet stream. As a result, the meteorite fall position can be shifted by up to several kilometers compared to a scenario with no winds.
That network is mostly interested in where it falls, not where it came from. A few degrees for finding an origin is a huge variation.
The less public precursors were and still have an interest in both projected targets and sources.
Still better than nothing, though!
Evolution (2001) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0251075/)
Both fun movies, in completely different ways!
Are we sure the guy who picked it up didn't just wash it with some sort of detergent after it cooled off?
The amino acids have a central C (Carbon) that is connected to 4 parts, a COOH (acid), a NH2 (amino) and H (Hydrogen) and a R (rest, that is a polite way to say whatever). [I'm ignoring some less usual cases.]
The 4 parts can be arengad in two ways, "L" and "D" that are mirrors of each other. Living things (and corpses) almost have only the "L" version. But in the meteorite they found a 50% and 50% mix of L and D that is a clear thing that they were made by chemical reactions instead of living thing.
Also, in living things (and corpses) the possible/usual R are like 30. The meteorite has a few of the usual ones, and also a few unusual ones that is another clear thing that they were made by chemical reactions instead of living thing.
Also, the R they found can be explained by the expected chemical reactions on a meteorite. I don't understand the details, but IIUC there is HCN (Cyanide) and in some conditions it likes to react with itself and make the stuff they found.
So unless the guy is a mad scientist making weird experiments in his attic that are not very useful to rule the word, it's probably a mix made in the meteorite by chemical reactions.
You lost me there.
Is recovery possible only if a house is hit??
Presumably other fragments landing outdoors with no one around taking similar steps to preserve them, even if they were to be recovered, would not be as valuable for study because of their exposure to the natural environment of Earth.
I have little doubt that, given the infinite size of the universe, that extraterrestrial intelligence (of some sort) exists, the question is whether we will ever detect it... It perhaps even exists as close to us as Europa, should we attempt a landing there...
Even a few light years away, it’s almost infeasible to build a radio transmitter that could be detected above the noise floor. The amount of energy you’d need would be absurdly wasteful.
If you’re an alien civilization with several dyson spheres, surely at some point you’d have sufficient energy/resources even for such a “hopeless” science-y project, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper
The landing plan was scrapped last year. :/