You may NOT worship the rock

[fangsheath]

I couldn't help but note the Douglas Adams-ish quality of this story.<br /><br />Suspected meteor lands in Cambodia: police<br /><br />Wed Jan 26, 6:16 AM ET<br /> <br />Science - AFP<br /><br />PHNOM PENH (AFP) - A 4.5-kilogram (10-pound) suspected meteorite has landed in rice fields in northwestern Cambodia, narrowly avoiding a nearby village, police said.<br /><br />"The rock fell on a harvested rice field from the sky on Monday morning," said Sok Sareth, police chief of Banteay Meanchey province, which borders Thailand.<br /><br />"According to the villagers who live nearby, it came very quickly from the sky and made a noise like a bomb exploding. It dug about 40 centimetres (16 inches) into the ground," he told AFP.<br /><br />"The rock is a little bit black and was hot, and looks strange compared to other rocks... It was lucky that it did not land in the village or people could have been killed," he said, adding experts would examine the rock.<br /><br />Pictures of the lump were splashed across the front pages of local newspapers Wednesday.<br /><br />Sok Sareth said some villagers reportedly wanted to turn it into a shrine.<br /><br />"Nobody has asked for it yet, but I have been told some villagers said that they want to put it on a shrine to pray to it, but we won't allow them to do that. It's useless," he said.<br /><br />Cambodians, particularly in rural areas, are typically superstitious. <br /><br />http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050126/sc_afp/cambodiameteor_050126111654

 

[Leovinus]

It looks like an alien egg. Don't study it too closely! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

Definintely not. It could be one of the eggs Ranger Gord spoke of on the "Red Green Show", in one of his animated "educational" films. To summarize, rocks are actually eggs distributed by attractive women in hot-air balloons. Some will hatch out into black holes which will devour all ignorance. <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" /><br /><br />(Ranger Gord is a strange sort of person.) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[nopatience]

If I had a meterorite in my living room. Id sit it on top of my TV and pray to it every day<img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />

 

[igorsboss]

<font color="yellow">The famous Black Stone of the Ka'aba at Mecca is also likely a meteorite</font><br /><br />Since we're already offending virtually every Muslim on the planet, I was wondering if someone could go confirm this.

 

[odysseus145]

http://www.crystalinks.com/blackstone.html<br />"Perhaps the most exalted rock in every sense is the Black Stone of the Ka'ba, a dark <b>meteorite</b> set in gold in the outer wall of Islam's holiest shrine, the Kaaba, in Mecca." <br /><br />http://www.meteorite.fr/en/basics/history.htm<br /><br />"There is another famous example from the Middle East, but there is some dispute about whether the object of veneration is actually a <b>meteorite</b> or not."<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaaba<br /><br />"...is presumed by most sources to be a <b>meteorite</b> remnant." <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[silylene old]

Native Inuits in Northern Greenland (Thule area) used to worship and use pieces of a huge iron meteorite weighing more than 70,000 kg embedded in the icecap. The natives for over a thousand years mined the meteorite pieces for iron, to make tools and hunting weapons. This treasure of iron funded the entire native Inuit economy for several hundred miles in all directions, as it was the only source of iron around. Two of the three meteorite pieces were also slowly beaten to change the shape of the iron, for unknown reasons.<br /><br />The explorer Peary took the largest three meteorite pieces in the 1890's and delivered them to museums in the US. He also brought back 6 natives, 4 of which died almost immediately on arrival. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>