{"id":140919,"date":"2025-11-15T08:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T08:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/140919\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T08:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T08:45:07","slug":"riches-from-outer-space-lure-meteor-hunters-to-the-sahara-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/140919\/","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":140920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[255,61,60,30898,82,247,6306],"class_list":["post-140919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-africa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-morocco","tag-science","tag-space","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}