Money Meteorite?
Last Monday, St. Louis held its breath as a meteorite shot across the sky, lighting up many neighboring cities. Now pieces of the meteorite are in high demand, as a museum in Maine is offering a $25,000 prize to the first person to bring a chunk of it to them.
The Maine Mineral and Gem Museum is hosting this contest to try to secure a very unique artifact for their new exhibit building opening next month. The chunk must weigh one kilogram, or a little over two pounds. This may seem like nothing, but some scientists are doubtful of the existence of a piece this big, as they believe the meteorite entered Earth’s atmosphere as only the size of a fist or baseball.
However, it is very possible the meteorite may exist, as NASA scientists disagree and have stated that the rock was the size of a basketball and weighed about 200 pounds when it entered our atmosphere. Scientists have collectively guessed that the fall site is around Wellsville, Missouri, which is to the northeast of Columbia and about an hour and a half from St. Louis.
The museum suggests looking up tips online if you’re a novice meteorite hunter, and they require further testing to make sure what someone has found is actually from outer space.
“If it’s fresh, it’s going to have this thing called a ‘fusion crust’… It’s a black coating on the outer part of the meteorite from burning its way through the atmosphere,” Barbara Barrett, the museum’s executive director, told New England Cable News.
Whether you choose to make a trip to Wellsville to hunt for the meteorite or not, the opportunity to have seen and heard a meteorite is a special experience St. Louis will not forget.
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Alyssa Buchheit is a senior here at St. Dominic. She is involved in soccer, book club, National Honor Society, ambassadors and many other clubs. Outside...
