«If you happen to pass through the woods around Armungia , take a look at the ground, you might find the first (but for Crusca it is also worth using the masculine, ed.) meteorite that fell in Sardinia».
Thus the INAF, National Institute of Astrophysics, after reporting the fall of the celestial "fireball", last Sunday, on Sardinia , precisely in the Armungia area.
And the hunt for fragments immediately began. But how are they made and where can they be found?
As regards the fragments, INAF speaks of "stones of a very dark colour, opaque and a few centimeters in diameter".
«To identify, explains the Institute, the strewn field , i.e. the area where to look for the meteorite, we must take into account the direction of the winds and their speed as the altitude varies with respect to the earth's surface».
According to calculations by Raffaele Salerno of the Meteo Expert centre , Inaf consultant, «the result tells us that the strewn field is elongated in shape and is located approximately 1.1 km north-west of the center of Armungia. The area is impervious and rich in woods, but thanks to the high inclination of the trajectory, the streak field for meteorites with a mass in the 50-200 g range is only 800 m long and ± 200 m wide, for a total surface area of 320,000 m²" .
«Near Armungia – continues Salerno – the light meteorites are found, the 50 g ones (Lat. 39.5246° N; Long. 9.3683° E), while at the opposite end are the more massive meteorites, the 200 g (Lat. 39.5308° N; Long. 9.3643°)».
Be careful, however, warns the Institute: if you find one of the fragments, « don't touch anything , take a photo with your smartphone, take note of the GPS coordinates and send everything via email to the Prisma Project Office (prisma_po@inaf.it) : our experts will reply as soon as possible to tell you if it is a meteorite and how to collect it in the most correct way."
But how much is a meteorite or a meteorite fragment worth?
Obviously the purely scientific value is immense, while as regards the monetary value, a recent case involved an Indonesian man who saw a meteorite weighing over two kilos fall on his house and who decided to try to sell both the "piece" the larger the fragments.
But on the occasion Laurence Garvie, professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University , explained to the BBC: «People are fascinated by the fact of owning something that is older than the Earth itself and that comes from space and in many they think if they find a meteorite it could be worth millions. Maybe someone at online auctions is willing to spend a few hundred or even thousands of dollars for a small fragment, but certainly no one would spend millions on a larger space rock."
(Unioneonline/lf)
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