A black market in meteorites

In an upside to an illegal trade, there are more space specimens to study

As more meteorites have been discovered in recent years, interest in them has flourished and an illegal sales market has boomed - much to the dismay of the people who want to study them and the countries that consider them national treasures.

"It's a black market," said Ralph P. Harvey, a geologist who directs the United States search for meteorites in Antarctica. "It's as organized as any drug trade and just as illegal."

The discovery of a rich and historically significant meteorite crater in southern Egypt, just north of the Sudanese border, has shown the voracious appetite for new fragments. Just as scientists appeared to be on the cusp of decrypting the evidence to solve an ancient puzzle, looters plundered the desolate site, and the political chaos in Egypt seems to ensure that the scientists will not be going back anytime soon.

In June 2008, Vincenzo de Michele, an Italian mineralogist who had explored the Egyptian desert for nearly two decades, was scanning the area on Google Earth when he saw something unusual.

He told Mario Di Martino of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Turin, and together they formed an expedition that surveyed the site in February 2009. The desolate area, which the team named Gebel Kamil, after a nearby mountain, was riddled with iron meteorites - more than 5,000 of them.

The team members signed a note of discovery and put it in a bottle at the crater's bottom. The find was a first. It was the only meteorite crater ever discovered in Egypt - its mouth is 46 meters wide - and the team vowed to keep it confidential.

But a return expedition in February 2010 found that the bottle had disappeared. The secret was out. And a few months later, in June, meteorites from the crater were for sale at a show in Ensisheim, France. In a review, the International Meteorite Collectors Association called them arguably the world's "most fascinating new iron find."

In Egypt and elsewhere, scientists say, it is illegal without a permit to remove meteorites from a country. Yet scavengers have disseminated them widely. On Star-bits.com, one of many sites that sell a variety of meteorites, 10 fragments with rich patinas are said to be from Gebel Kamil. The costliest of the 10 - a 900-gram rock, just large enough to cover the fingers of a man's hand - is priced at $1,600.

Eric Olson of Star-bits defended his right to sell them. "I didn't buy them from the Egyptians," he said. "I bought them second- and thirdhand."

The scientists say they have relatively few samples compared with the booming illicit sales. Dr. Harvey said the rampant looting of meteorite sites and skyrocketing prices for the fragments "dramatically reduce who can get samples to do the research."

The black market has exploded in size mainly because of a rush of new meteorites arriving from North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

Starting in the late 1980s and 1990s, explorers and nomads found that dark-colored meteorites stood out against flat, featureless areas covered by sand and small pebbles. And dry desert air helped preserve the rocks from space.

The pace of collecting began to soar after explorers scrutinizing the sands of Libya found rare meteorites from the Moon and Mars.

The collectors association, founded in 2004 in Nevada, now has hundreds of members around the globe. And while some traders deal in legitimate exports, many do not.

One buyer expressed remorse after reading about scientific angst over the thriving market. "I'm very ashamed," the buyer wrote on a blog. "I'm surely a part of the problem."

Still, many collectors defend the hobby as advantageous for scientists, saying the market is producing many discoveries and creating many opportunities. Amateurs often turn to experts for analysis and authentication and, in return, share the extraterrestrial haul.

"The scientists do not have time to go hunt for their own meteorites, so somebody has to do it for them," said Anne M. Black, president of the collectors association. "It's common sense."

Even some scientists applaud the new market.

"I see it as a good thing on balance," said Carl B. Agee, director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico. "It's beneficial mainly because of the huge diversity of meteorites not previously known about and not accessible."

At stake for science in the rush for meteorites are secrets of the cosmic bombardment, the development of the solar system and possible clues to the existence of extraterrestrial life.

As for the Gebel Kamil crater, Mario Di Martino of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Turin said it was futile to try to save its otherworldly riches from the looters.

"Considering the social, political and geographic situation there," he said of the remote corner of southwestern Egypt, "it will be completely useless to protect the area" - unless the authorities put in "a permanent garrison of marines and/or a minefield."

Dr. Di Martino said the allure for collectors was simply the pleasure of owning the latest find. Since it's a new meteorite, he said, "the collectors like to have a piece of it."

The New York Times

(China Daily 04/17/2011 page9)