Ownership caught between a meteorite and a hard place
Source: Agencies |
February 4, 2010, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
AN out-of-this world rock is in the center of a down-to-earth dispute over who is its rightful owner.
The tennis ball-sized meteorite plummeted through the roof of a medical office in the American state of Virginia just after dusk on January 18, the same time that people reported seeing a fireball in the sky. It plunged through the ceiling of an examination room and landed near the spot where a doctor had been sitting a short while earlier.
"I'm the most likely person to be sitting in that place where it hit," Dr Marc Gallini said. "It just wasn't my time, I guess."
He and fellow practitioner Dr Frank Ciampi say their first thought was to give the rare find to the Smithsonian Institution, which offered US$5,000 for it.
Gallini, who has run his family practice in Lorton, Virginia, since 1978, said he notified the property owner, Erol Mutlu, of plans to give the meteorite to the Smithsonian, which holds the world's largest museum collection of meteorites. Gallini says he got Mutlu's permission, but later got an e-mail saying his brother and fellow landlord Deniz Mutlu was going to the Smithsonian to retrieve the rock.
"The US courts have ruled that a meteorite becomes part of the land where it arrives through 'natural cause' and hence the property of the landowner," the e-mail said.
But Deniz Mutlu later said the family was making no such demands and the meteorite is safe at the Smithsonian, for now.
The doctors have asked the Smithsonian not to release the meteorite until the ownership question was resolved. "We really want this to end up in the right place," said Gallini, who wants to donate the money to Haiti earthquake relief.
The tennis ball-sized meteorite plummeted through the roof of a medical office in the American state of Virginia just after dusk on January 18, the same time that people reported seeing a fireball in the sky. It plunged through the ceiling of an examination room and landed near the spot where a doctor had been sitting a short while earlier.
"I'm the most likely person to be sitting in that place where it hit," Dr Marc Gallini said. "It just wasn't my time, I guess."
He and fellow practitioner Dr Frank Ciampi say their first thought was to give the rare find to the Smithsonian Institution, which offered US$5,000 for it.
Gallini, who has run his family practice in Lorton, Virginia, since 1978, said he notified the property owner, Erol Mutlu, of plans to give the meteorite to the Smithsonian, which holds the world's largest museum collection of meteorites. Gallini says he got Mutlu's permission, but later got an e-mail saying his brother and fellow landlord Deniz Mutlu was going to the Smithsonian to retrieve the rock.
"The US courts have ruled that a meteorite becomes part of the land where it arrives through 'natural cause' and hence the property of the landowner," the e-mail said.
But Deniz Mutlu later said the family was making no such demands and the meteorite is safe at the Smithsonian, for now.
The doctors have asked the Smithsonian not to release the meteorite until the ownership question was resolved. "We really want this to end up in the right place," said Gallini, who wants to donate the money to Haiti earthquake relief.
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