History collides with outer space at the UNM Meteorite Museum.
Specimens gleam from within their cases; viewers young and old take a journey millions of years back in time.
The museum, under the wing of the Institute of Meteoritics at UNM, was founded in the late 40s. Curator Carl Agee said the first specimens belonged to Dr. Lincoln La Paz, the first director of the institute and former head of the UNM Department of Mathematics and Astronomy.
“Our collection is unique in its own way because we have specimens that other places don’t necessarily have. We have a historical nature because they were collected back in the 40s,” he said.
Meteorites are fundamental in scientists’ understandings of the form, structure, composition and transformation of planets, Agee said.
“Meteorites are thought of as the building blocks for the planets, so if you’re interested in theories about how planets are assembled and how they transform … then the basic information about meteorites is really important,” he said.
Agee said meteorites are defined as any extraterrestrial matter that lands on Earth. He said people often mistake unique looking rocks for meteorites and will bring them in for him to inspect.
“Anything that is outside of the Earth, ends up crashing into it, and can be recovered on the surface — that’s a meteorite,” he said. “Everything else is a meteo-wrong. We get a lot of meteo-wrongs to look at.”
Agee said meteorites can be found all over the Earth, but are easier to recognize in certain areas where the terrain is one solid color, such as in Antarctica or the Sahara desert.
“On the Antarctic ice sheets you can see them from hundreds of yards because they are so different from the white ice,” he said. “(In the Sahara) the background is like white sand. You have a black rock sitting on white sand, so they’re quite easy to spot.”
New Mexico may not be the greatest location for finding meteorites, but UNM’s museum has approximately 700 specimens on display, including meteorites from the asteroid belt, the moon, and even Mars. Agee said the highlight of the museum for many visitors is a 1-ton meteorite that fell on the Kansas/Nebraska state line in the late 1940s, one of La Paz’s contributions.
La Paz heard of the meteorite’s fall and drove his pickup truck to Kansas, purchased the meteorite and transported it back to UNM.
Witnessing falls like that is rare, but doing so greatly increases the monetary value of a meteorite, Agee said, because a sighting increases the historical and human intrigue. He acquired one like that from a farmer in Colorado this year.
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“They were out in the back yard and all the sudden they heard a whooshing noise, and then a thud, then a cloud of dust,” he said.
“They walked over and there was a little crater and right in the crater was a softball-size meteorite just sitting there. I keep thinking to myself ‘Why doesn’t this happen to me? Why don’t I get any meteorites falling in my back yard?’”
Each meteorite’s value also depends on its age, where it originated and where it landed, Agee said. For example, he said meteorites that fall in the United States are far more valuable to U.S. collectors than anyone else. Agee said meteorites from Mars are the most valuable, followed by those from the moon. Older specimens are more valuable as well, so a meteorite that fell in 19th century France is now worth $40,000 per gram.
Agee said he keeps his most valuable specimens in a safe.
He said UNM has La Paz to thank for the prolific collection, but the museum’s prestige has continued beyond his lifetime.
“Some of the first people to study moon rocks brought back by the astronauts were people who studied meteorites, so UNM got some of the first Apollo samples,” he said. “We’ve been funded through NASA since 1969, continually. That’s how it got its beginning: it started as some professor’s meteorite collection and then it evolved into a research institute, thanks to our space program in the U.S.”
He said that contrary to popular belief, NASA is still fully functioning in its research capacities, and only the human flight program is under review by the Obama administration.
Agee said UNM is one of a handful of universities across the country with meteorite museums.
Fred McDowell, a retired University of Texas-Austin geology research scientist, visited the museum on a family vacation. He said he was not only interested in the meteorites, but also in the earth that had been hit by meteorites and its behavior.
“I like the impact structure area over there, including the shatter cones and the materials that are actually parts of the earth that have been ejected from the craters which are formed by impact structures,” he said. “I enjoyed the way they did that and I’ve been interested in those materials for a while.”
All known meteorites originate in the asteroid belt, the moon or Mars, but Agee said scientists are on the watch for some from Mercury or Venus.
“Who knows, they might have a meteorite from Mercury sitting in their archive that they didn’t even know about. It’s possible that we have one, we just don’t know it yet.
