Meteorite Hunter
A task to which very few people around the world are engaged. We must demystify the profession, says one of these hunters. In Africa and South America are easier to warn meteorites. They travel the globe in search of fragments of cosmic matter that crash against the surface Earth; they are hunters of meteorites, a task to which very few people in the world, among which figure the Lions Jose Vicente Casado are engaged in body and soul. Find meteorites is my way of living, that’s my job, says Casado, who has wanted to demystify some of the legends that circulate around these space rocks in an interview. People see meteorites continuously everywhere and, in addition, thinks that they are enormous, that we are going to fall one on and we go extinct, summarizes. In his view, believed that they abound, but find one is something extraordinary, because although you see a shooting star on the horizon and be presumed that it is near, you can drop thousands of miles away. Casado, which leads more than fifteen years hunting meteorites and has a collection of approximately 120 pieces, the most complete in Spain, as he points out, says that around the world there will be no more than twenty persons having that profession.
Their usual way of working is to move to desert areas of Africa and South America, where it is easier to notice the presence of these rocks at a glance, because there is no vegetation that hides them. However, it has also found meteorites in Spain, such as those found in the province of Palencia in 2004, in an area of monte and robles, circumstance that hampered their search. The largest weighed half a kilo, but the usual is that they are small – explains – because when a meteorite enters into contact with the atmosphere it explodes and causes a kind of rain of stones. In this regard, noted that every day fall between 20 and 40 tons of cosmic to the Earth’s surface dust, although themselves meteorites estimated that they can fall about 20 the year. Apparently they are stones of more normal and you have to use a small microscope to check if they are good.
There are times that we believe that they are and are not and sometimes it happens the other way around, pointing. Asked by how much it costs to maintain this activity, emphasizes that does not him and his companions in the expeditions a very high expense because they are in precarious plan and if necessary do not hesitate to sleep one night at el raso. The pieces collected by Casado are used in exhibitions or donated to scientific institutes for study, which, in his words, may end up taking even more value that which would be obtained by selling them. One of these exhibitions will begin next week at the Museum of the Siderurgy and mining of Castilla y Leon (MSM), with headquarters in Sabero (Leon), where some specimens will be shown and explained issues such as the formation and evolution of the solar system and the emergence of life. Tomorrow, Casado will deliver a lecture in the MSM, which will give some tracks of How to follow the trail of these rocks that, as he emphasizes, everyone wants to find. Source of the news: ex-officio, meteorite Hunter
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