Wanted: A Meteorite From San Diego and Its Environs

Just about every person on Earth who is old enough to walk and gaze at the nighttime sky has seen the splendor of a shooting star. Millions of years before man harnessed fire, meteors streaked down from the heavens. Century after century these fiery objects have pelted the planet, a galactic version of bugs hitting a windshield on a warm summer evening.

All of which makes the following simply astounding:

Not one documented meteorite has ever been recovered in San Diego County. Not a pebble. Not a rock. Nothing.

But that may change, because the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center in Balboa Park on Thursday opened the largest public exhibit of meteorites on the West Coast.

The display will last two months and at 2:30 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday until Jan. 12, a local meteoriticist--a breed of rock hound who specializes in meteorites--will be on hand to inspect suspected meteorites brought in by the public.

“It’s a statistical certainty that someone has picked one up,” said Bruce Wegmann, a San Diego meteoriticist and meteorite collector who helped put together and open the exhibit. “I’ve spoken to local gem and mineral societies but no one is really aware of meteorites. They get tossed into a box with other garbage rocks. I’m hoping this exhibit will make someone realize they have one in their possession.”

Wegmann is a self-taught specialist. He’s a part-time machinist and full-time meteoriticist who tends to be rather passionate on the subject.

Holding a 5-billion-year-old Murchison meteorite in his hands, Wegmann described how at night in his bed he will stare at the rock and feel its vibrations. “This rock has seen everything. The formation of the planet, all of history, all man has done. When you think about it, that’s truly awesome. Here, hold it, see what I mean.”

(Every meteorite is named for the location where it is found; Murchison is a town in Australia.)

“We’ve learned more about the solar system from meteorites than from any other source,” Wegmann said. “This is one of the few areas where a person without a specialized education can find a meteorite and advance the knowledge of science.”

Joining Wegmann at the opening was Robert Haag, the self-proclaimed “Meteorite Man.” Haag, of Tucson, Ariz., owns one of the world’s largest meteorite collections, and most of the meteorites on display at the Science Center belong to him. His business is looking for meteorites and buying, selling and trading them. For the last several years, he says, his sales have reached $100,000 a year.

Haag, who valued the current display showing 40 to 50 specimens at about $102,000, said meteorites are “worth their weight in gold.”

His search for such space rocks have taken him to Egypt, Australia and South America, among other places. On Jan. 6 of this year, a meteorite was reported as hitting the ground in La Criolla, Argentina. It took six months for word to reach Haag. He flew to the area and started a painstaking search that took several weeks. His reward? About 50 pounds of meteorite.

At prices that can easily reach $1,000 a pound after cutting and polishing, the work was more than worth it.

But Haag’s interest goes beyond the money. He has given away and sold meteorites at bargain-basement prices to universities such as UCLA.

Haag estimates there is one recognizable meteorite on the ground per square mile. The trouble is that in a place like San Diego, much of the land has been disturbed by development or is difficult to survey because of mountains and canyons.

Haag and Wegmann give these pointers on how to recognize a meteorite:

Most are the size of a baseball. Because most of them contain iron, they are heavier than similar-looking rocks and will often stick to a magnet. Also, some have a dark stain from their fiery entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. And some, which have been on the ground for many years, are rust colored.

A British Museum listing of meteorite finds lists 2,611 worldwide, as of January, 1984. Although San Diego isn’t on the list, neither are other cities, such as Portland, Ore.

Part of the Science Center exhibit, officially called “Cometary Cousins: A Comprehensive Meteorite Collection,” includes two lectures.

The first is set for 2:30 p.m. Saturday by Dr. James Arnold, a professor of chemistry and director of the California Space Institute at UC San Diego. Arnold is an authority on meteorites and moon rocks. His talk is called “Meteorites: Strange Visitors from Outer Space.”

The second lecture is set for 2:30 p.m. on the following Saturday, Nov. 23. It will be given by Dr. John T. Wasson of UCLA’s chemistry department. Wasson will discuss large meteorites and the craters they create on Earth. Wasson was involved in the recovery of the three-ton Old Woman meteorite found in 1976 in San Bernardino County.