This guy lives my dream

I have always wanted a meteorite!!

This story begins not in a galaxy far away, but at a Milwaukee rummage sale a few years ago. Tom Lynch paid $10 for an odd hunk of metal he figured might be copper or bronze with potential salvage value.

He had no idea it had dropped from space into the Arizona desert some 50,000 years ago.

"For the last two years, it kept my grandson's basketball hoop from blowing over in the yard. It weighs 50 pounds," said Lynch, a retired foundry and General Motors worker who lives in South Milwaukee.

Recently, he saw a show about meteorites on the Travel Channel and realized that's probably what he had. It was curious, he thought, that the thing never oxidized in the weather. Following advice from the TV show, he held a magnet up to the object and it stuck.

He took his 4.6 billion-year-old find to the Milwaukee Public Museum and then to Chicago's Field Museum last month. The scientists got excited. Yes, they said, it's a meteorite.

Unfortunately, the meteorite turned out to be stolen! Read more here. http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/41069052.html