A Scramble to Claim the World's Most Coveted Meteorite | Hacker News Reader

A Scramble to Claim the World's Most Coveted Meteorite

wired.com

42 pointsReedx12 comments

I am curious why they didn't lean into the poison hypothesis and explain that if this rock had brought poison then by removing it and taking it away they would take away the source of the poison.

That said, these kinds of situations get oddly weird. When visiting a friend in Brazil they recounted a story of being on a tour boat that took tourists to coastal features. At some point the pilot offered to let the friend steer the boat at which point the captain came out and accused him of trying to steal his boat. Its a pretty transparent scam but oddly effective. We both remarked at how the 'everything is a scam' mindset can take hold and you have to be really really careful about everything you do in order to avoid giving advantage to another person who will try to defraud you in some way.

For others who wish to skip over the vaguely-related background info which takes up a quarter of the article, search for "In the days after the Carancas meteorite struck the altiplano."

The article implies that arsenic kicked out of the water table by the meteorite was the probable cause of the illness.

Thank you. I really wish articles got to the point a little quicker sometimes.

The most coveted meteorite is still the Kaaba black stone. 15 million people travel to it annually. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Stone

At the bottom of the linked page:

"The meteoritic hypothesis is viewed by geologists as doubtful. The British Natural History Museum suggests that it may be a pseudometeorite, in other words a terrestrial rock mistakenly attributed to a meteoritic origin."

The stone has not been sampled and scientifically examined.

Usually I'm a stickler for the truth, but since there's no way scientists will ever be able to examine the stone, I prefer not to let the unresolvable uncertainty get in the way of such a neat story.

A UFO? A scorpion? A mythical creature? Superman?

I’m amazed by the fact that people in 2018 actually explain such sightings that way. Even in a small village.

I agree with everything you just said except for with respect to "UFO". Technically, until an object that is inflight is identified, it remains an unidentified flying object.

Also, it is worth keeping in mind that there are, even now, uncontacted tribes [1] that have yet to enter the modern erra:

[1]:https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2018/08/brazil-un...

Most people mean "alien spaceship" not "something I can't make out" when they say UFO, despite the literal meaning of the acronym.

Agreed. But I think aviators still use this term to describe "something I can't make out." I suppose it's the likely origin of the term.

Then there is a large amount of the world which you have not seen.

People are still tried and convicted of witchcraft in many African nations. I have a friend who recently had to play diplomat to a small village in a country in North Western Africa because his company was flying a drone near their village. The drone was named the "witch bird" and the village was convinced that my friend's company was practicing dark magic.

Wild.

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