Shush, comrade. Didn’t they ever teach you that homo economicus doesn’t exist?

I mean, isn’t Earth just a conglomeration of space rocks that were floating around the protosun? And now we pay top dollar for stragglers?

I go to Chicago a couple of times a year. The Field Museum has a decent collection of meteorites, including the one that crashed through a garage roof and a Model-T Ford, finally punching a hole in the seat cushion. (They have the cushion and a section of the roof, with the hole, there alongside the meteorite.)

They also have a pretty good-sized specimen (perhaps half a meter across) out on a pedestal for visitors to put their hands on. It has a strong magnetic field, so there are large paper clips on it for people to play with.

I went to the American Museum of Natural History numerous times when I was a kid. I tried to take my own kids there this summer, but it was a cold rainy day, and apparently all of NYC decided to visit the museum as well, so we never even found a place to park.

However, I do recall that the meteorite is so heavy that they built the building around it, after building a platform for it. I’ve seen pictures of the horse-drawn wagon that carted it through New York’s streets on its way to the museum. (I forget how many horses it took.)

Well, I can’t find that info, but there’s the museum’s page on the meteorite:

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what/ahnighito.php

>> One of my favorite meteorites is the big iron monster sitting on exhibit in the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites

Heh, the one they acquired from the natives? The story behind that one’s pretty cool… though one has to wonder where the natives got the iron for their tools after that.

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007710290404

[quote]The Peekskill meteorite, famous not only for its great aim through the taillight panel of a car owned by Michelle Knapp, who was only 18 at the time, but for the fact that its fiery streak across the northeast sky was captured on 16 camcorders, went for a few hundred dollars less than the suggested bidding range of $2,000 to $3,000 at Bonhams in Manhattan.[/quote]

It’s probably worth a lot.