{"id":181745,"date":"2025-11-15T08:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T08:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/181745\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T08:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T08:40:09","slug":"riches-from-outer-space-lure-meteor-hunters-to-the-sahara-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/181745\/","title":{"rendered":"Riches from outer space lure meteor hunters to the Sahara Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When a fireball from space crashed into the rocky plains of southeast Morocco in September, Mohamed Benitjit topped up the credit on his mobile phone and packed a bag with a tiny magnet and a few clothes, ready to set off in search of meteorite fragments.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I just need to know where it landed,\u201d the 52-year-old merchant said in Enzala, a village at the foothills of the Atlas mountains. &#8220;Information is everything in our trade. It doesn\u2019t come easy since whoever finds something likes to keep it for himself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Like many other locals, Benitjit is seeking to cash in on the kingdom\u2019s status as a booming hub for meteorite hunting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a fireball from space crashed into the rocky plains of southeast Morocco in September, Mohamed Benitjit topped&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[4204,18,19,17,10456,133,451,5986],"class_list":{"0":"post-181745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-morocco","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-tourism"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}