Down to Earth

Meteorites are immovable property and belong to those on whose land they happen to fall, according to a judgement by the Swedish appeals court. A thirty-pound iron meteorite which fell in 2020 was appropriated by a couple of geologists, who handed it over to a museum; whereupon the owner of the landing site started legal proceedings. The district court ruled that the meteorite was ownerless; but the appeals court has shown an encouraging degree of Britishness in favouring property values over scientific ones. The judge proclaimed that meteorites have the same legal status as any other stones, because they are composed of the same material; therefore, since iron is present in the Earth's surface, an iron meteorite counts as part of the ground on which it lands. Whether an extraterrestrial visitor whose pseudopodia contained one or more terrestrial elements would automatically owe allegiance to the House of Bernadotte remains as yet undetermined.