British hunt for meteorites

By MICHAEL McCARTHY

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Or is it perhaps a great big bundle of cash? If it's a meteorite that fell through the sky and landed in your back garden in Britain, it could well turn out to be the latter, and this week Britons will be given a few handy tips on how to find it.

For the Great British Meteorite Hunt starts today, a quest to track down the elusive space rocks - which can be worth thousands of pounds - all across the country.

Each year more than 30 meteorites are thought to fall on British soil, yet only 20 have ever been found, and scientists believe there must be thousands more just waiting to be discovered.

The challenge to locate them has been set by the new BBC 2 and Open University astronomy series Stardate, which will feature successful meteorite prospectors in a programme in September.

A new website - is offering tips on where to look and how to recognise a rock from space, and the organisers hope that thousands of members of the public will take part. The scientific value of meteorites, which may be billions of years old, is enormous.

"These are the oldest objects you can handle," said Richard Greenwood, the Open University's meteorite curator.

"They tell us about the formation of the solar system and the stars that lived and died before the solar system formed."

But their manna-from-heaven aspect of meteorites may be the biggest encouragement to searchers in the coming hunt. For as well as being of great scientific interest, they can make those who find them rich. Depending on their composition, appearance, and where they come from, meteorites can be worth anything from £20, to many thousands of pounds, per pound in weight.

In 2000 an American farmer, Gary Wennihan, found an unusual rock weighing a little over four pounds in his field of soya beans in Fairfax, Missouri. It turned out to be a rare meteorite that could be worth up to $1 million.

Many meteorites are sought after by private collectors, with meteorites from Mars - chunks of rock blown off the planet into space by asteroid or comet impacts - among the most valuable. Others fetching a good price are linked to historical stories about how they fell and were discovered.

"Collecting meteorites is certainly one of the most unusual hobbies," said Britain's leading meteorite dealer, Rob Elliott, based in Fife, Scotland.

"But holding a piece of four-and-half-billion-year-old space rock in your hand can really stir up the imagination with a sense of awe and wonderment."

In the past authenticated meteorites have been found in Middlesbrough, Wold Cottage, Appley Bridge, Rowton, Barwell, Glatton, Aldsworth, Ashdon, Launton, Hatford, Danebury and Stretchleigh in England; in Glenrothes, Strathmore, Perth and High Possil in Scotland; in Pontlyfni and Beddgelert in Wales; and in Bovedy and Crumlin in Northern Ireland.

"There are two approaches to finding a meteorite," said Dr Greenwood. "You could either look where other meteorites have been found, as statistically there is a higher chance of finding a meteorite there, or, if you are hoping to find something unique, search in a place where no meteorite has previously been found.

"One of the top places in the world to find meteorites is North America, due to its featureless landscape, which allows meteorites to be spotted easily. Therefore, looking in similar landscapes in the UK could also be lucrative."

Any meteorite found in the hunt will be classified by experts and named by the International Meteorite Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society.

The meteorite will then be listed in the Meteoritical Bulletin and the meteorite catalogue of the Natural History Museum, together with the name of its finder. Under UK law, a small sample of the meteorite - 20 per cent of the total mass, or 20 grams, whichever is the smaller - must be donated to an institution. The remainder stays the property of the finder, and/or landowner.

- INDEPENDENT