Death from above

You like meteorites.

Let's get our terms straight first. A meteoroid is a metal and/or stone object hurtling through space; a meteor is the same thing as it's streaking into our atmosphere; and a meteorite is a piece of the same that's survived impact. Cool thing is, some people hunt these cosmic souvenirs down and sell them. You too can own a piece of outer space!

It's funny, really. Meteorites are just space dirt. We've got an entire planet of the stuff. Still, when you think about this object hurtling through the universe since the dawn of time, only to come to rest on our planet, it's pretty cool -- nerd cool, granted, but cool.

Among the most interesting--and spendy--items one can acquire is a piece of an asteroid of Lunar or Martian origin. A very small number of meteorites started as chunks of dirt on those celestial bodies, and now they're here--and expensive! Gram for gram, accumulating crack rocks would be much less pricy (until you start smoking your collection).

The other item that meteorite fanciers covet is rocks that have hit a man-made object, an animal or person on impact: hammer stones.

I guess it makes the story better when you're handing someone a space pebble: "Yeah, this is my meteor. It's worth more because it brained a porcupine on impact."

No, on second thought, it doesn't make the story better. Digging a rock specifically because it hit something is weird at best and downright ghoulish if it was a murder-missile. Still, I got dibs on the name if I ever start a metal band.