“It became a nightmare,” says the wife of a man who found a 38 kg meteorite on the border between Pernambuco and Piauí | Petrolina and Region

As the G1 showed on Sunday (31), who found the fragments to make money from trading stones, which are being negotiated with researchers and meteorite hunters.

However, the findings have not only brought wealth. It also brought fear and tension. At least that is what the inhabitant who found the largest meteorite in the municipality reports: a 38.2 kg piece. Fearful of personal safety, he does not want to be identified.

The wife of the resident who found the 40 kg ore says the family has barely left the house.

“It became a nightmare. We spent a few days without eating or sleeping. The object has value and everyone has an interest here, not just here. If it had no value, no one would come looking for it, not even from abroad ”, reports the resident’s wife.

• International researchers and ‘hunters’ compete for meteorites after the rock shower in the interior of Pernambuco
• ‘We don’t know what to do,’ says the mayor of the city in the interior of Pernambuco that attracted meteorite ‘hunters’ after the rock shower

At the time of the rain of the fragments in Santa Filomena, the neighbor said that he heard the crash, but only knew what it was about later. Days after the phenomenon, he decided to register his property if the stones had fallen there or in the region, in the rural area of ​​the municipality.

“On Thursday (27), a neighbor gave me information about where there was a big scare, a shock, a blow, as if he had put something on the ground. He informed me of a location. I started looking at dawn. When I was around at 8:30 am I managed to locate the stone, ”he says.

According to him, the fragment was buried in the ground. “I took it out and took it to a road about 2 km from there, in my hand, inside the Caatinga, until I reached my motorcycle. Then I brought him to the city ”, he says.

Still not believing in the size of the find, the man went to investigators to report the 40 kg stone that had fallen on his property. But the impact of the stone trade was such that it ended the family peace.

“We come across a stone like this, and people already think that we have become millionaires. It’s not like that. We are very tense, ”said the man who found the meteorite.

The director-secretary of the Brazilian Society of Geology and professor at the Department of Geology of the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), Fábio Machado, analyzed images of the stone found by the neighbor of Santa Filomena. For him, it is a meteorite, all that remains to be seen.

“We need tests to drive it, which is the chondrite type, but it is a meteorite. It is an important sample,” Machado said.

The chondrite-type meteorite is an important mineral for science because it has the same chemical composition as the early solar system, formed more than 4.6 billion years ago.

“Chondrites are the best meteorite fragments to study the formation of the solar system because they faithfully represent the chemical composition at the beginning of rocky planet formation. This means that the stones that fell in Santa Filomena are older than the Earth itself ”, explains Machado.

The professor also explains that, before entering the Earth’s atmosphere, the fragments that rained down on Santa Filomena were probably in one piece. But the exact size of this meteor (when in space, the stones are called meteorites, but when they fall to Earth they become meteorites) is difficult to predict.

“When the meteor enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it burns and then divides into several fragments,” explains Machado.

According to the neighbors, between 100 and 200 fragments, including the 40 kg piece, fell from the sky in the rural municipality.

The family that found the largest meteorite in the interior of Pernambuco says the stone is in a safe outside the property. Despite the shock and fear, they think about selling it, but at a fair price.

“I think it was God who sent us, because it fell on our property. We have to hold on [a pedra] really, ”says the woman of the man who found the stone.

• The neighbors are frightened by the sound of the stones that would have fallen from the sky in Santa Filomena
• The meteorites that fell in the Sertão de PE are from the time of the formation of the solar system, say UFRJ researchers

As G1 discovered, the residents sold some stones to foreign meteor hunters for up to R $ 40 a gram, which would make the nearly 40 kg meteorite worth millions. A friend who has represented the family in the commercialization of the stone said that the hunters themselves offered, however, “only” R $ 120 thousand.

“We had a proposal, but they were people who wanted to take advantage of it and that does not interest us. We are in no rush to trade the stone in any way. We did not price this stone. We did not have negotiations with anyone ”, emphasized the wife.

The Santa Filomena City Council stated that it still does not know how to proceed in this case, since the municipality does not have its own legislation in the case of meteorites. By phone, the mayor of the municipality, Cleomatson Vasconcelos, said that the municipality does not have the financial means to keep the meteorite there.

“We cannot create an expectation in the population that we cannot fulfill,” said the mayor. He said that he has already contacted the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Pernambuco to have guidance in this case.

Santa Filomena has 14,172 inhabitants, according to IBGE. About 3,000 live in the center, but the majority are in the countryside, where bean and cassava plantations predominate.

The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Marcos Pontes, said in an interview with G1 on Wednesday (2) that the case may support new legislation.

“Knowing that in Brazil there is all this insecurity in relation to the subject, that we can take advantage of this case [de Santa Filomena] as an exercise so that we can develop more knowledge about this [falta] legislation and, who knows, propose legislation or some type of regulation in this regard ”, said Pontes.

HE G1 He contacted the Ministry of Science and Technology to find out if the state intends to keep a meteorite in the municipality, but it has not yet returned.