Huh, this is literally in my aunt's backyard.

Charlie Freak: Huh, this is literally in my aunt's backyard.

Time to visit her, dude!

Just eat a piece for the super powers. I'm a scientist, so I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

My father watched a meteor crash down pretty close to him lately. I was so pissed he didn't go looking for it.

Just watch your step, any wrong move can result in instant death.

/Thanks, Two Guys from Andromeda.

Where does TFA mention $1000/gram?

And it doesn't even matter that Hoagland dug it up.

/I really hope that's obscure

$1000/gram? Cop math?

THE BIBLE:

Jesus Wrote it.
I believe it.
That settles it.

Makh: Just eat a piece for the super powers. I'm a scientist, so I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Nah, just standing near it makes you an immortal caveman

FTA: Experts from NASA and the SETI institute are en route to Sacramento this morning aboard a zeppelin provided by Airship Ventures

"Some broad gets on there with a staticy sweater and its... OH THE HUMANITY!"

Lotus has been crawling with people walking slowly and looking at the ground. I'm surprised they're not walking right into trees

/I drive past the park where most of it has been found every day

Just be careful and don't get it wet, lunkhead!

METEOR SHIAT!

"predate our solar system...."

You do realize that the guy in the picture is holding a piece of Abe Vigoda?

I must have bought ten pounds of rocks, from Sacto to Fresno to Bakersfield and it all looks like broken glass chips.

$1000/gram.

Chondrites are the most commonly recovered type of meteorite. The record holding fragment, which fell in China in 1976, weighs 1770kg.

$1000/gram for space rocks

"And all this does is get me to normal"

The guy in the picture:


Looks sort of like a composite of Drew with Robert Redford:

How does one go about dating something that originates outside earth? I understand the methods we use for stuff we find here, but they all rely on knowing something about the history of said object.

I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven!

I don't feel so bad about $14/yd^3 for pea gravel now.

SitsinShadow: How does one go about dating something that originates outside earth? I understand the methods we use for stuff we find here, but they all rely on knowing something about the history of said object.

No offense, but you don't understand the methods as well as you think; they don't all rely on already knowing something about the history of the object.

Simplified: Isotope dating has to do with the halflife of various isotopes, and various processes embed various isotopes into different kinds of objects at different rates and times. Take the object, measure the levels of the isotopes, and you can backtrack.

But that's for objects, per se. The headline says "materials". Technically, everything on this planet 'fell from the sky' and predates this solar system. We're a second-stage system. Pretty much every atom on this planet, except maybe some of the hydrogen, was formed in stars elsewhere long ago.

No offense, but you don't understand the methods as well as you think; they don't all rely on already knowing something about the history of the object.

Simplified: Isotope dating has to do with the halflife of various isotopes, and various processes embed various isotopes into different kinds of objects at different rates and times. Take the object, measure the levels of the isotopes, and you can backtrack.

But that's for objects, per se. The headline says "materials". Technically, everything on this planet 'fell from the sky' and predates this solar system. We're a second-stage system. Pretty much every atom on this planet, except maybe some of the hydrogen, was formed in stars elsewhere long ago.

What??? You must know something about the previous process that embedded the isotopes, that is at the basis of all isotope dating, we understand the process here on earth that have historically embedded those isotopes, so you are incorrect, you must know something about the history and time frame of the object to date it accurately. That's where I get confused with stuff not from this planet, we don't know or understand the process of isotope embedding as you put it, so any guess as to the age of the object is a shot in the dark isn't it?

We know (or have reasonable conjecture) about the formation of extraterrestrial objects like meteorites. It's accepted (if not proven) that they're unlikely to have been compacted like snowballs by aliens who then chuck them at the planet.

Beyond that, it's believed there are only a few characteristic types of meteorites, yadda yadda. Frankly, most of them will be asteroidal material that probably formed before the solar system formed, if only because the bar is lower for "formed" in that case. But that's semantic.

Again, the solar system formed from materials that (obviously) predate the solar system. Any rock on the ground contains materials that predate the solar system. So does a meteorite-hunter's ass. It's the arrangement of the materials that makes them rare objects.

Some materials themselves are pretty rare and/or rare down here, like iridium or osmium or anything with a short halflife. That sometimes makes them valuable or not.

Whatever.

It's certainly possible, in the lab, to make rocks that don't occur naturally on Earth, that we know of. If not mass-produced, those could be just as valuable as a rare meteorite. As far as we know, artificial purpose-made objects like those (or, hell, coffee mugs) are much rarer in our solar system. The meteorite might have scientific value if studied in a lab. So collect rare coffee mugs and leave the meteorites to science.