Over 100 meteorites are displayed in the museum, including two that weigh over a ton apiece.

Meteorite Museum

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Meteorites -- rocks that have fallen to Earth from space -- are rare, and yet over 100 of them are on display at the Meteorite Museum in Albuquerque, part of a 5,000-specimen collection at the University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics. It was started by professor Lincoln LaPaz who became fascinated with meteorites during World War II (He later investigated New Mexico UFO sightings at both Socorro and Roswell).

Dr. Lincoln LaPaz supervises the removal of another space rock.

"Back then no one really knew what to do with extraterrestrial rock samples," said Beth Ha, the museum's program specialist. "So Dr. LaPaz would ask people, 'Hey, do you have a strange rock? Can we see it?' He got some great samples that way."

Big meteorites still fall on the USA. This one made a crater ten feet deep.

One meteorite gotten by Dr. LaPaz fell in Norton County, Kansas, in 1948. It weighs 2,360 pounds, and was discovered when a farmer nearly drove his tractor into its 10-foot-deep crater. LaPaz and his crew loaded it onto a truck and took it to the Institute of Meteoritics, where it's now displayed in the museum along with other, smaller pieces of the meteorite that are still embedded in blocks of buffalo grass and prairie sod.

Kansas meteorite embedded in prairie sod.

The museum has special showcases for meteorites that are known to be from the Moon and Mars, and a quick look around the exhibits makes it clear that meteorites are not just lumps of rock. Chondrite meteorites, sliced in half, resemble an olive loaf or a fruitcake. One iron meteorite on display has melted into an oblong blob like a caveman's club. Pallasite meteorites in the museum, embedded with translucent olivine, are lit from behind so that they glow a golden yellow.

Another big meteorite, found in Arizona in 1921, sits on the floor because "it weighs about as much as a car," said Beth. "People are welcome to touch it because nobody can pick it up and run away with it." The museum is always staffed when visitors are present, mostly to help with questions but also to prevent possible pilferage; black market meteorites are a sad fact of modern mineralogy. "If something is unique and strange," said Beth, "there's a millionaire out there who wants it."

Sliced slab of an Australian iron meteorite from 1911.

The Institute of Meteoritics specializes in analyzing and classifying meteorites, and the Meteorite Museum staff reassures nervous visitors that all of its exhibits are free from alien bacteria and radiation. A common question from the public, Beth said, is, "Have you found any element that's new or unseen on Earth?" (The answer is no.)

One meteorite in the collection, the Rio Rancho, was dug out of someone's back yard less than 20 miles from the museum. Beth said that such finds are exceedingly rare; in fact, the museum will not appraise suspected meteorites brought in by the public, because they're almost always not meteorites. That doesn't stop visitors from trying. "I want to put myself in their shoes," said Beth. "If I found some weird rock I would go to a Meteorite Museum and say, 'Hey can you help me?' But some people get an idea in their head and they don't want to be talked out of it."

Pallasite meteorites in the museum have a rich golden glow.

While the Institute of Meteoritics may be hard at work extracting isotropic data from extraterrestrial rocks, it's the less scientific, but no less important, interest from the general public that keeps the Meteorite Museum going. "Enthusiasts are always the most enjoyable visitors that we have," said Beth. "They're excited. They'll say, 'Are these all from space?' And I'll say, 'Yeah, every single one, dude.' And they'll say, 'That is so cool.'"