To Wish Upon a Falling Star
In 2010 reports came in from around Ireland regarding a meteor that streaked across the frosty February sky. Could it have made it safely to the ground? The press thought so, and a heavenly goldrush began. The public were told to be on the lookout for a strange shinny rock that probably looked like nothing they had seen before. Later that day we received a call at the Aurum Exploration Services office from a local Kells resident who had found a black rock at the side of the road.
“What does it look like?”, I asked.
“It’s black and shiny. I’ve never seen a stone like it”, he replied.
“What about its weight? Do you think it is heavy for its size?”, I added.
“It definitely feels very heavy to me”, the caller replied.
It sounded like it could be a meteorite, so I asked him to bring it to the office that afternoon.
At 2 pm the would-be Indiana Jones arrived at the office with his precious cargo safely wrapped up in a Tesco’s bag and placed in a shoe box. He removed the bag from the box and passed the grapefruit-sized sample to me. The first thing I noticed was how light the sample felt.
“It’s not an iron, stony-iron, or chondritic meteorite based on the weight. It could be a carbonaceous chondrite” I said, as I carefully unwrapped the sample.
The shiny, jet-black rock was exposed to the daylight and my optimism of a being part of a front-page news story quickly evaporated. It was a lump of… coal!
“This is a piece of coal. Have you never seen a piece of coal before?”
“Coal? No, never. We always burned turf [peat] when I was growing up, and now we have oil heating”.
Mystery solved. Next time I see a shooting star I will wish for something else.
Stay tuned for more
April 27, 2026,
