One day long ago, a meteor streaked through the sky over central Yukon, coming to rest in a creek bed about 50 km outside the town of Mayo. Made mostly of nickel and iron, with a distinctive vein of troilite, it lay there undisturbed until the summer of 1986, when it turned up in the sluice box of Daniel Sabo, a miner who worked the creek for precious metals.
At the conclusion of an epic court battle that featured dramatic claims about a devious geologist, extraterrestrial life, government conspiracy and the black market in space rocks, the Geological Survey of Canada has been ordered to pay Mr. Sabo $1,000 for failing to return a piece it cut off his meteorite for testing ? the very piece Mr. Sabo believes contained living organisms.
As the Court of Appeal for Yukon put it in their new ruling, ?There is no dispute that the ?meteorite? did develop a green colouration. The only material dispute about the green colouration is whether its origin was extraterrestrial, as Mr. Sabo contended, or terrestrial.?
As it turned out, a lower court judge decided the green stuff was probably lichen or some kind of mineral build-up, and the appeal court has now agreed, but ordered the GSC to pay Mr. Sabo for ?wrongfully maintaining? the ?off-cut? piece after a particularly nasty meeting in Ottawa.
It?s just a meteorite
?It?s the surface formations that made that original meteorite unique. If they remove them, then what I have back is decreased in value. It?s just a meteorite,? Mr. Sabo said in an interview Sunday. ?I can?t assess any value until I get everything returned, including the surface formations.?
The meteorite, which weighs 243 grams, is stored at the moment in a Vancouver lab, pending a firm legal resolution. Mr. Sabo, who was self-represented, said he plans to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
?I do plan on taking this to the next level,? he said. ?It has to do with the conduct of the trial, the actions of the judges.?
After its discovery, the meteorite spent over a decade in Mr. Sabo?s possession, stored in a drawer or on a ledge, and for a time in a felt Crown Royal drawstring bag. He took it to his parents? place in Arizona, initially intending to sell it, but he later learned this is illegal. He thinks the dry, hot climate of Arizona caused something to change in his space rock, because a green crust grew along a natural seam.
?Something was going on,? Mr. Sabo said. At first he thought it was lint from the felt bag, but then he looked closer and something seemed to be leaching out. Then, as he drove home with it, sometimes balancing it in the crook of his elbow, he developed a terrible rash up and down his arm. He believed he had been infected by some extraterrestrial life form, and was mightily scared.
The rash subsided, and the dispute with the government began soon after, in 1999, when Mr. Sabo gave the meteorite to a GSC geologist for testing. That involved taking a bit off and polishing the cut surface. Although he had consented, Mr. Sabo ?became unhappy and demanded the ?meteorite?s? return,? the judgement says.
When it arrived, Mr. Sabo concluded that it had been switched with a man-made replica. Asked why the GSC would do this, Mr. Sabo said, ?To cover their asses. It?s a fraud, scientific skulduggery at its best?. They could not afford to pay the price.?
?The one I got back is not the same,? he said.
The complaint escalated, the ruling shows, to the point where Mr. Sabo ?decided to travel to Ottawa to confront the GSC himself. On Thursday, Feb. 24, 2000, Mr. Sabo arrived, unannounced, and confronted [a geologist], demanding that the off-cut be returned to him along with any photographs? [The geologist] felt so threatened during his meeting with Mr. Sabo that he did not attend work the next day.?
?After Mr. Sabo returned home with the meteorite, he took a hacksaw to it and cut it into three smaller pieces, in an attempt to prove that the GSC had substituted his original meteorite,? the judgement says.
A lower court dismissed Mr. Sabo?s claims that the GSC conspired against him through fraud, theft, breach of trust, misfeasance, breach of contract and abuse of office. He also alleged police negligence, but that claim also failed. He had demanded over $12-million.
The lower court?s two key findings, now upheld by the Court of Appeal, were that the GSC had not returned a replica, and that the green buildup was of terrestrial origin.
The judge wrote that any junior high school student would have realized that the greenish ?colour bloom? was ?a common chemical reaction between the meteorite, composed mostly of iron and nickel but also other trace elements, and the oxygen in the air, heat and moisture. The other possible explanation is that it was lichen, a mundane organic and terrestrial organism. As neither the meteorite nor any of its parts were introduced in evidence, it is difficult to be any more precise on this point.?
National Post
jbrean@nationalpost.com
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NP_Top_Stories/~3/FLFix8jHME8/
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