A popular Western online retailer has offered a collection of meteorites found in 2022 in the Algerian desert for sale at exorbitant prices, despite the fact that they are registered in the World Meteorite Database overseen by the International Society of Meteorites and Planetariology.
The Algerian researcher Moulay Charf Chabou from the Institute of Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Ferhat Abbas in Setif (eastern Algeria), published a few days ago on his Facebook account information about the display of these precious pieces, which bear the name "Bashar" in relation to the desert area where these pieces were found. The southwestern province of Bechar is located about a thousand kilometers from the capital Algiers.
Lunar Stones
The website of the International Society of Meteorites and Planetary Science, known as the classification of global meteorites, recently published the classification of these pieces of meteorites - which were found in March 2022 and registered on June 20 of the same year - under the classification "Bashar 006", "Bashar 003", "Bashar 007", "Bashar 010", and "Bashar 009".
These stones are lunar rocks resulting from meteorite collisions whose age or time of fall have not been determined, which can be known in the future through scientific research that the stones may be subjected to.
Each of these five works consists of several small pieces, totaling more than 100 stones, some of which have been offered for sale on websites specialized in the sale of such stones.
Algerian researcher Moulay Charf Chabou said that the stones found have a total weight of about 15 kg, for example, "Bashar 003" weighs 2.9 kg, and "Bechar 006" weighs 7.21 kg, all of which have very valuable scientific value.
The researcher added that the 004-kilogram "Bashar 20" meteorite was also discovered in the same area in the state of Bashar, but it has not yet been classified and is also likely to be a lunar rock.
The website of the International Society of Meteorites and Planetary Science counts the registration of 31 meteorites found in the Bechar region, with a total of about 1273,<> registered meteorites found in Algeria.
Price set at €12 for 0.1g piece of meteorites (websites)
Selling at auctions at precious prices
Some of these meteorites have been offered for sale on Western websites known for their specialization in the sale of such stones, such as eBay, where their price is set at around 12 euros per 0.1 grams. Moulay Scharf Chabou told Al Jazeera Net, "Note, for example, that one of the parts of Bashar 003 weighing 0.2 grams, is sold for 24.50 euros, and if we calculate the price set by the sellers for 15 kg, the final outcome will be more than one million euros."
The importance of these meteorites, as explained by Moulay Charf Chabou, lies in the fact that they are pieces of space, and exactly from the moon, and this in itself is a strong motivation because it will allow scientific researchers in their specialization to conduct experiments and scientific research on lunar materials and stones, without bothering to travel to space, especially since no scientific trip to the moon has been organized for many years.