On Wednesday, christie's, a prestigious auction house, held a special session on the theme of "Deep Impact: Mars, the Moon and Other Rare Meteorites". At this big auction that gathered "extraterrestrial visitors", the appearance of a tin dog house was very abrupt.
The dog house was dilapidated and old, with a rusty corrugated tin sheet, but it ended up selling for $44,000 ( about 278,000 yuan ) — and still below the estimated price (previously estimated at $300,000). The small fragment of the meteorite that broke through the kennel was also auctioned off at the same auction as it, and it only sold for $21,000, less than half of the doghouse. Why?
Rocky's Dog House (See that hole in the roof?) ）
The dog house belongs to a German Shepherd named Rocky.
At 9:07 p.m. on April 23, 2019, a rare meteorite rain struck Aguas Zarcas, a northern town in Costa Rica, South America. This meteorite rain is caused by the decomposition of a fire meteor deep into the atmosphere. Many of the town's residents found fragments of meteorites of all sizes the next day, and "hunters" who specialized in collecting meteorites also heard the wind and came to buy them for $20-30 per gram.
In this meteorite rain, two meteorites hit the roof of a house, and another meteorite smashed through a dog house – the one that was auctioned off this time. Rocky is said to have been sleeping in the dog house at the time, and perhaps the animal's vigilance allowed it to flee in time, luckily escaping the fatal blow of the meteorite.
Hit the meteorite in the dog house
But why does a dog house fetch a higher price than a meteorite?
James Hyslop, head of Christie's Science and Natural History Department, explains that the reason is simple: scarce things are more expensive. Small artifacts hit by meteorites are extremely rare because meteorites enter the atmosphere are rare, with an average of only about 500 arriving on Earth each year, and fewer than 10 of them can be found, because most of them fall in the sea or in the wilderness.
The probability of a dog house about the size of a large suitcase being hit by a meteorite can be imagined. Before the dog house, in 2007, a mailbox hit by a meteorite was auctioned, and because of its smaller size and lower probability of being hit, it successfully auctioned $83,000 (about 524,000 yuan).
To date, among the small artifacts hit by the meteorite, the highest auction record has been set and still holds the record for a Chevrolet sedan hit by a meteorite in 2007 – in 2010, the car sold for a high price of $230,000 (about 1.45 million yuan), enough for the owner to change a luxury car.
It is said that it is a meteorite from Mars, which was shot in the stream
In addition to the old house of the shepherd, the most valuable piece of debris on this "deep impact" session was a small fragment from Mars: it is said that Mars was first hit by an asteroid, and some debris was spilled into space, and a very small part of it gradually flew to Earth. Experts in celestial bodies have identified the meteorite from Mars through complex chemical and isotopic techniques. But this conclusion did not seem to be well received by buyers, and in the end, the $800,000 Martian meteorite stream was auctioned.
Fragments of the "Fukang meteorite"
In addition, the lot worth mentioning is a fragment of the famous "Fukang meteorite". The meteorite was first discovered by local herders on the Gobi Desert in Fukang, Xinjiang, China, and it is likely that it fell there hundreds of millions of years ago. The meteorite as a whole weighs about a ton, is one of the largest meteorites found on Earth in the 21st century, extremely rare and beautiful, its main components are golden olivine and shiny metal iron nickel, with a honeycomb-like structure, sparkling in the sun, known as "the most beautiful meteorite".
This huge meteorite was later cut into nearly a hundred pieces, large and small, and sold openly or secretly, becoming a treasure that meteorite collectors competed for, and the price was comparable to gold, and the larger meteorite blocks could sell for millions of dollars.
Red Star News reporter Qiao Xueyang
Edited by Li Jie
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