Filmmaker Turned Meteorite Hunter Searches For Space Rocks

PARABNORMAL NEWS — A meteorite that landed in Maine last month could be worth big money with a $25,000 reward for whoever can collect a fragment of the space rock.

Witnesses reported a very bright fireball with a glowing tail streaking across the sky in the middle of the day on April 8th. NASA pinpointed the area of Washington County where they believe the debris ended up.

The Maine Mineral & Gem Museum posted on Facebook on April 12th that they were offering the reward for the first 1kg specimen submitted to them that turned out to be from the meteor.

“I’m crazy enough to think ‘man I could probably find that meteorite’. Yeah I know it’s 700 miles away, but what the heck,” Tyler Transue of Doc Side Media told Parabnormal News.

The odds of finding a meteorite might be akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

But that wasn’t going to stop Transue.

The filmmaker turned amateur meteorite hunter made a 3,000 mile journey from Pennsylvania to Maine and back in hopes of cashing in.

During his second day on the ground, a magnet hit something.

“I found a rock, took the magnet to it and sure enough, I’m like ‘holy cow’,” said Transue.

Then the waiting game began. Rather than send the museum a chunk of the object, he wanted to deliver it to them personally.

Just spoke to the fine folks at Maine Gem and Mineral Museum (i.e. org offering $25k for a piece of the meteorite that landed April 8th near Waite, ME) and they want pics, info, and GPS coordinates to analyze and then send me a packet for further testing 🔥🤞 #meteorite #maine pic.twitter.com/ZUwy5X3g1x

— Doc Side Media (@docsidemedia) April 17, 2023

After handing it off, there was more waiting while testing of the chemical composition was done.

Finally on April 29th, the results came.

“It looks like your boy found a piece of slag,” Transue told us.

But Tyler still finds himself lucky to have been close enough to hit pay dirt.

The American Meteor Society took several reports of the fireball. It’s believed to be a bolide, which are recorded about once a year, but they don’t always survive in Earth’s atmosphere.