Source of hole at Edmonton-area golf course likely to remain a mystery wrote:By Shannon Montgomery, The Canadian Press
EDMONTON - Maybe it's a meteorite and maybe it isn't, but it's unlikely the source of a mysterious hole at an Alberta golf course will be discovered any time soon.
The octopus-shaped opening in the slushy ice of a golf course pond just west of Edmonton has neighbouring homeowners abuzz with the possibility a small piece of space could have plummeted to earth in their very backyards.
But the mystery will likely stay submerged in the seven-metre-deep pond that provides water to irrigate the golf course, Glen Andersen, a superintendent at The Links in Spruce Grove, said Monday.
"I think it's a safety issue now," said Andersen, who added he wouldn't want to inch across the thin ice in search of what may have fallen.
"We're not going to do that. We hope people don't come out here - we'd ask them to leave."
Residents first reported the hole Saturday, and reports of a fireball in the sky two nights before have piqued the interest of many.
Andersen said while it's fun to ponder what may have fallen, those who work at the course are much more interested in golf. "It's kinda neat, interesting, but that's it."
Many objects can fall from the sky, but very few end up being meteorites, said University of Alberta professor Chris Herd, who curates the province's meteorite collection.
Space debris such as pieces of satellites sometimes rains from the sky. The mystery object that caused the hole could even be a large piece of frozen waste from an airplane, he said.
"The fact is that there could be a number of other possibilities for what punched a hole through the ice, and the fact that if there is anything, it's at the bottom of a pond, doesn't put it high on the list of priorities for investigating it, unfortunately."
While it's unusual with Canada's massive size for people to see a falling meteorite and actually be able to recover it, Herd says his lab sees about 100 rocks a year that people think may be from space. About one in 400 actually turns out to be.
A motorist who described seeing a big ball of fire in the sky Thursday night may provide a key to the puzzle. Eric Whyte, who was driving on Highway 2 between St. Albert and Morinville around 10 p.m., said he originally thought what he saw was a shooting star, but the bright-orange ball of fire with blazing tail didn't burn away.
Alan Hildebrand, a planetary scientist at the University of Calgary and co-ordinator of the Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre, said that description sounds like a falling meteorite.
He said he will review the data captured by an all-sky camera near Edmonton to see if it captured a bright trace in the sky Thursday night.
"Certainly once we have enough information, we can tell the difference between a natural object entering and man-made debris coming down," he said.
Only between 60 and 70 individual meteorites have ever been found in Canada, according to Herd.
None of these has been recovered from a pond, he said. He explained the water could act quickly to destroy much of a meteorite's interest.
"You can actually have chemical reactions take place. You can have alteration pretty quickly. It degrades the original minerals that are inside, and it's harder to study for scientific reasons."
Herd added that under Canadian law, meteorites - which tend to be heavy and can be worth a fair amount of money - belong to whomever owns the land where they touch down.
The Geological Survey of Canada, which maintains the national collection of meteorites, offers a minimum of $500 for the first specimen of any new Canadian meteorite.
Herd says he's happy to examine any potential meteorites that are recovered, but it would be far too difficult to try to recover something that could end up being of no scientific interest.
"You'd need equipment to dive down into this pond," he said. "So if somebody entepreneuring would want to do it, I'd be happy to look at what they might find, but I can't justify the expense to go looking."
Alta golf course neighbours say they'll dive into mystery hole to see what's there wrote:By The Canadian Press
EDMONTON - Several men who live next to an Edmonton-area golf course are hoping to find out if it was a meteorite that punched a hole through the ice of a pond on the grounds.
Aaron Soos and Derek Zienowicz say they will use a chainsaw to cut through the ice before jumping in with cold-water scuba-diving equipment.
They say they've heard a meteorite as small as a toaster could fetch up to $10,000.
But Chris Herd, who curates the province's meteorite collection at the University of Alberta, says space rocks belong to landowners - regardless of who finds them.
A golf course spokesman has already said there's no plan to go looking for whatever may have crashed through the ice late last week.
Residents first noticed the hole on Saturday, and reports of a fireball in the sky two nights before have piqued the interest of many
