Technabob » meteorite

Meteorito Wine Was Sent Down from the Heavens

Hazel Chua — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:00:09 +0000

You know what they say about wine: the older it is, the better it gets. But what about wine that was literally fermented with the usual stuff and with something that’s extremely old? Like roughly around 4.5 billion years old?

Apparently, not so bad. But you might have to try it out yourself by grabbing a bottle of of Meteorito. The wine was basically a fusion of interests for Ian Hutcheon, who runs a vineyard and this astronomy center in Chile called the Centro Astronomica Tagua Tagua.

What he did was ferment the red wine by putting the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes with the three-inch meteorite inside the wooden barrel. The wine is then bottled twenty-five days later.

So how does Meteorito taste compared to the non-meteorite version of the wine? According to Hutcheon, it is “livelier.” But hey, maybe that’s what something from space can do either to you (or to the wine.)

Each bottle of Meteorito costs just £7 (~$11 USD), and over 10,000 have so far been fermented.

[via Daily Mail]

Sir Terry Pratchett Forges Meteorite Sword: I Wonder if My Pen is Still Mightier Than That

Lambert Varias — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:48:36 +0000

Sir Terry Pratchett became a knight last year, so it’s only fitting that he equipped himself with a sword. But the Discworld author didn’t just buy or commission a sword; he made one himself. Pratchett gathered the iron ore and with the help of his friends built a kiln to smelt the iron. To make the sword even more special, his agent Colin Smythe also donated pieces of “thunderbolt iron” – iron from a meteorite. Pratchett then forged the sword with the help of Jake Keen, “an expert on ancient metal-making techniques”. Behold! The Pratchett Meteorite Sword:

Unfortunately not even official knights are allowed to carry swords, so Pratchett has hidden the sword instead, in case anyone takes an interest in it. I think it’s safe to say that millions of people are indeed interested in it. I wonder how long we have to wait before this gets referenced in a video game.

[via Times Higher Education, PJSM Prints, News.com.au and Geekologie]

Tiny Meteorite + Boy + ???? = Internet Fame

Lambert Varias — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:27:50 +0000

“Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw “ball of light” heading straight towards him from the sky.” It sounds like the origin of a superhero, but this is actually a true story. The Telegraph – in an article filled with numerous grammatical errors – reports that Gerrit was hit by a “red hot, pea-sized piece of rock,” resulting in a 3-inch scar on his palm. Now the chances of being hit by a meteorite is literally one-in-a-million, so what happened to Gerrit is awesome enough that he won’t have a problem getting a prom date. Unless the girls in Essen, Germany don’t care about such awesome events.

Pardon the lousy pose; the boy got hit by a meteorite. Give him a break. Anyway. On with his story. As if being struck by a meteorite wasn’t awesome enough, the Telegraph article which reported Gerrit’s experience is titled “14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite.” Uhuh. German scientists have confirmed that the rock is indeed a meteorite, but methinks the Telegraph pulled a fast one on readers with that title.

Meteorites do enter Earth’s atmosphere at 5-figure speeds, but unless they weigh thousands of tons, the layers of atmosphere are going to break them down and slow them down to 200-400 mph. Still fast, but not 30,000 mph fast. I’m willing to bet my future firstborn that Gerrit’s meteorite did not hit him at 30,000 mph, because if it did, then at the very least Gerrit would have a hole in his hand.

[via Gizmodo]