Joshua Howgego (Oneworld (UK, on sale now; US, 13 May))
One evening in July last year, a couple from Prince Edward Island in Canada returned home after walking their dogs to find grey, dusty debris near their door. At first, they thought something had fallen off the roof, but the footage from their doorbell camera revealed something different. They鈥檇 had a lucky escape.
While they were out, a space rock 鈥� thought to have been somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a baseball and travelling at many thousands of kilometres an hour 鈥� had struck the place where they had been standing not long before, with a crash and a noise like shattering glass. Their , widely publicised in January after the meteorite was officially registered, is believed to represent the first time the complete sound of a meteorite hitting Earth has been recorded on video.
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This landmark might give you the impression that meteorite strikes are very rare, but they are quite common. Amazingly, that about 44 tonnes of meteorite material hits Earth each day. Yet these treasures can be hard to find, as we discover in Joshua Howgego鈥檚 book, The Meteorite Hunters: On the trail of extraterrestrial treasures and the secrets inside them. They are well worth the effort, however, because as well as containing a wealth of scientific information, they can be very valuable on the open market.
The first half of the book tells the stories of the people driven to hunt these often-blackened rocks that fell from space. As you might expect from a New Scientist editor, Howgego is an expert guide, taking us across deserts, fields and vast expanses of ice as he introduces a motley crew of hunters and collectors, united by passion but divided by competition.
There鈥檚 鈥渢he Space Cowboy鈥�, Stetson-sporting private meteorite hunter Robert Ward, and Birger Schmitz, who used to get down on his hands and knees in train stations and airports to examine stone floors. We also meet James Karner, who got into the meteorite hunting game because he loved looking for lost golf balls. And let鈥檚 not forget the enthusiastic Jon Larsen, who scrapes layers of dust from Oslo鈥檚 rooftops, sifting through it all to reveal micrometeorites 鈥� tiny meteorites that may be sitting on your roof or in your gutters right now. What happened when Howgego and Larsen removed rubbish bags full of the dust from a rooftop about four storeys high made me laugh out loud. But no spoilers here.
Occasionally, the chase sounds like an Indiana Jones movie, as rival hunters struggle to get to the prize first. The competition is fuelled by the thousands people will pay for pieces of meteorites: even a doghouse hit by a sold for $44,000 at a Christie鈥檚 auction in 2022. If a private hunter claims a meteorite and doesn鈥檛 treat it correctly, they can destroy scientific evidence.
Another highlight was reading about the legendary Fer de Dieu, a 100-metre-long metallic mass rumoured to have been found in the Sahara desert in Mauritania in 1916, but then lost again under the shifting sands.
Amazingly, NASA estimates that about 44 tonnes of meteorite material hits our planet each day
The second part of the book takes us deep into what we can learn from meteorites, whether they are freshly fallen, have been trapped in ice for hundreds of years, or fell millions of years ago only to be unearthed alongside fossils.
It is a very readable outline of where meteorites originate and what they tell us about, say, the history of our solar system or the origins of water on Earth. This is fascinating stuff, if less thrilling than the pace and adventure of the the book鈥檚 first half. It is in its tales of discovery that The Meteorite Hunters comes to life, and it may well change what you think when you look up and see a streak of light as a meteor flashes across the sky, or a meteorite lands on your doorstep. It might even have you getting out there and hunting them yourself.
Chris Simms is a writer based聽in聽Somerset, UK
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