[meteorite-list] How many are there

[Lasse Lindh]

Hi all

There is one question that I have tried to find answer to and that is: 
How many meteorites are there waiting to be found?  Iv'e asked this 
question in other forums but never got a straight answer. Probably 
because no one knows.. ;o) Thats understandable. But purely theoretical. 
How many meteorites fell to earth each year? One number that is 
mentioned is that it's estimated that some 5-6000 meteorites over 100 
gram or 80.000 meteorites over 10 gram do fell each year over the whole 
Earth. That's a significant number, but spread out over the whole 
planet, it's very little per square mile.

Wilson made a search on 4 square miles sometime in the 50:ies. He found 
159 meteorites. I do not know how he performed this search, but I reckon 
he used metal detectors and magnets that were very much inferior with 
todays. He might not even have bothered to search below the surface for 
small ones and only took the ones he saw and those that were detected by 
his MD, if he was usinf one.
If we were to do the same search today in the same area, with the best 
tools that we got, I wonder how many additional meteories that we would 
find?

My question is, how many meteories can we expect if we count in all the 
small ones down to 1 gram in the total. If the statistics hold for 
meteorites as in many other things, the  amount will significantly 
increase the smaller the stones are.

This is an interesting question especially for us that does not live in 
a dry desert area or have the means or money to travel there a few times 
each year. If that number is high enough, it might be worth while to 
search with magnets in an area were meteories never get to be older than 
maybe 500 years...

regards

Lasse