LITTLE ROCK — Steve Arnold isn’t going to rush off to Russia to look for pieces of the meteor that exploded over Siberia on Feb. 15.
That’s because there may be millions of pieces scattered over an area stretching 100 miles, he said.
“I’m in no big hurry,” said Arnold. “Odds are there will be pieces to be found for decades, for the rest of my life.”
Arnold is a meteorite hunter and owner of what he says is the only shop in the world devoted exclusively to meteorites: Arnold Meteorites and More in Eureka Springs. The “more” in this case means “space rock gifts and jewelry.” Prices there vary from $5 to $25,000.
“If millions of pieces are found, there’s going to be plenty of room to be a middleman,” he said.
Arnold was co-host of Meteorite Men, a Science Channel television show about meteorite hunting. The show aired for three seasons (23 episodes) before being canceled last year.
Arnold, who grew up in Kansas, was living in Kingston when he opened the shop in Eureka Springs in May. Now, he spends most of his time in Eureka Springs.
“I’d rather go out and discover a new meteorite collector than a new meteorite,” said Arnold. “If I convert a new person to the field of collecting, they will buy multiple meteorites over time.”
Arnold said he has colleagues in Russia who will find bits of the meteor that exploded reportedly with the power equivalent of 30 Hiroshima atomic bombs.
“It will be easier and cheaper to let them do it,” Arnold said.
The meteorite is believed to have created an 18-foot-wide hole in the ice covering a lake. Arnold said there could be a meteorite at the bottom of the lake that may be of a similar width.
That would be considerably different from the Sutter’s Mill meteorite, which landed in Northern California last year. It was an 80-ton meteor when it hit the atmosphere, said Arnold, but only 2 pounds of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite have been found.
“There might have been 10 pounds that made it to the ground,” said Arnold. “It just totally almost vaporized.”
Robert Beauford of Eureka Springs was part of a team of researchers that noticed that the Sutter’s Mill meteorite offered a glimpse into the outermost surface of the asteroid before it fell to Earth.
It contained fragments of several “rocky components of the asteroidal body” from its 4.56-billion-year trip through the solar system. Its components are comparable to what on Earth would be igneous rocks and clay group minerals.
“That meteorite was the size of a Volkswagen Bug when it came into the atmosphere,” said Beauford. “Our atmosphere is a tremendously effective protective layer over the Earth. ... Typically these things lose 90 to 100 percent of their mass coming in.”
Beauford is a University of Arkansas at Fayetteville doctoral student and curator of the UA’s meteorite collection.He also owns Muse, another shop in Eureka Springs that sells meteorites.
And there’s a third space rock shop in town. Todd Hoeg’s Nature’s Treasures Natural History Studio also sells meteorites, although Hoeg, an archaeologist, said he primarily deals in fossils.
“Eureka Springs is probably the only town of 2,000 people in the world that has three shops that sell meteorites,” said Beauford.
Bits of the Russian meteorite have been selling for inflated prices based on media reports, said Beauford. The New York Times reported that small samples of that meteorite were selling for thousands of dollars and more if the pieces had some significance, such as leaving a hole in the roof of a house.
But it’s too early to tell what the meteorite remnants are worth, said Beauford.
“We’re talking about something that happened on the other side of the world,” he said. “It’s very early. The excitement breeds a lot of mistakes.”
Ultimately, the price for fragments of the Russian meteorite will depend on things such as how rare its material is and how much of it the Russian government will allow to be exported, Beauford said.
He said the Tunguska blast, which occurred in Siberia in 1908, leveled several million trees.
That “event” could be called a meteor but not a meteorite because no parts of it were found on the ground.
The object that entered the Earth’s atmosphere and caused that destruction in 1908 was 20 to 30 times more than the mass of the Feb. 15 meteorite, Beauford said.
Meteorites are rocks or bits of metal from space that fall to the ground, according to Beauford’s website, robertbeauford.net/meteorites_101.
Far fewer than one in 10,000 meteors, or “shooting stars,” result in meteorites.
All of the rest burn up in the atmosphere before they reach the ground. Most meteorites originate as asteroids, or large pieces of rock and metal, that orbit the sun primarily between Mars and Jupiter.
The Feb. 15 meteorite was significant because it crashed in a populated area.
“This is the first time in modern history - well, it’s the first time in human history, when there was a major impact of that size,” Beauford said, “the first time one of those has occurred over a densely populated area.”
Beauford said the Fayetteville meteorite, which fell to the ground 3.5 miles from the UA campus in 1934, shook buildings in Eureka Springs. Only 5 pounds of that meteorite were recovered.
There are 44,963 named and classified meteorites in the International Society for Meteoritics and Planetary Science database. About half of those were found in Antarctica, said Beauford.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 02/25/2013