The “Basket” meteorite was stolen from Meteor Crater east of Flagstaff in August 1968.

Scientists said the Basket meteorite began as part of the Canyon Diablo Meteor, which flew roughly 40,000 miles-an-hour, or 11 miles per second, or 50 times the speed of sound.

Wisconsin resident Tom Lynch bought the meteorite, shaped like a basket, at a yard sale three years ago for $10.

“I figured, for $10, it was worth at least that in scrap,” Lynch said.

Lynch never scrapped the unique item and instead kept it and used it to weigh down a basketball hoop for his grandson.

“It worked just perfect,” weighing in at 49 pounds.

But one day Lynch was watching the Travel Channel and he began to learn about the mystery of meteorites.

Ultimately, Lynch learned through scientists at Chicago’s Field Museum that the odd hunk of metal wasn’t a piece of scrap.

Lynch said scientists there sawed off a piece, tested it and figured it was about 4.6 billion years old.

Eventually, it was determined it was, in fact, the Basket meteorite.

Instead of trying to sell it, Lynch said he decided it was best to return it to Arizona.

So 40 years after it was stolen, Lynch brought the Basket meteorite home to Meteor Crater on Monday, saying he was actually glad to part with it.

“I tell you, it got a little nerve-racking,” Lynch said. “I basically slept with it last night. But this has been wonderful.”

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Wednesday that under a leasing program, as many as 270 communities could benefit from direct use of geothermal energy, generated from intense heat deep beneath the Earth.

“Geothermal energy is replenished, is a renewable resource that generates electricity with minimal carbon emissions . . . (and) reduces the need for conventional energy sources,” Kempthorne said.

He announced completion of an environmental review of the proposed leasing program, which will include federal forest and rangelands. The national parks such as Yellowstone, which is renowned for its geothermal geysers, remain off limits to leasing, he said.

The plan, expected to be made final in two months, calls for leasing land to project developers with the proceeds shared by local, state and federal governments.

The Interior Department said it will issue a list of specific land areas that will be open for leasing. Each project will still have to undergo site-specific environmental reviews.

The broader environmental review for the overall leasing program calls for 118 million acres of land managed by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, and 79 million acres under the U.S. Forest Service, to be made available for potential geothermal development.

“These lands hold a huge energy potential,” Kempthorne said.

He said it is estimated that the available leases could produce enough energy to generate 5,540 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 5.5 million homes. Geothermal energy also can be used directly for heating buildings.

“Today both city and state buildings in Boise are heated and powered by some of Idaho’s geothermal resources,” Kempthorne, a former mayor of Boise and former Idaho governor, said in a conference call with reporters.

One problem may be the availability of power transmission lines. A proposal that would have limited leases to land near existing electric transmission systems was rejected in favor of a broader leasing program.

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On the Web

Interior Department: www.doi.gov

The proposal won’t contain a section on wind turbines in residential areas in Flagstaff, but city officials said that question is expected to be addressed in 12 to 18 months when the city does an extensive rewrite of its land development laws.

The rules currently don’t specifically allow turbines, nor do they forbid them.

Demand for wind turbines has been low. The city’s business incubator and a business at another location both recently put up large wind turbines. Neither has been hooked up to the power grid. They are waiting for certification from utility officials.

“The only requests to come forward are those two,” said Roger Eastman, the city’s code administrator. “There really isn’t a lot of interest.”

Andy Kruse, a founder of turbine-selling Southwest Windpower in west Flagstaff, said the council direction on wind turbines was good news for the community. “It is a great step forward for the community,” he said. Kruse estimated it would cost roughly $13,000 to buy and install one of his turbines.

Proponents said large portions of the city don’t have adequate wind resources to merit their installation.

Kruse said the nearly 100-foot height limit on wind turbines allows them to capture peak wind resources without being blocked by buildings or trees.

A wind resource map of Flagstaff generated by a Northern Arizona University professor shows only small pockets where there might be sufficient wind resources to put a wind turbine.

A. You’re not looking at the Little Dipper but rather the Pleiades or “Seven Sisters” star cluster, one of the finest and most famous clusters. For most people, six stars are visible to the unaided eye. Through binoculars many more stars are visible, making this one of the finest celestial objects to view in binoculars or a wide-field telescope. To find the Pleiades tonight, go to a location away from local light sources (dark skies help but are not required) and look above the eastern horizon from 7:30 – 8:30 p.m. Depending on your location, Venus may appear to rise later due to mountains that may block it from view. Binoculars will help a great deal in spotting it from light-polluted locations.

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On the Web

Flandrau Science Center:

www.gotuasciencecenter.org

Nik Richie, founder of <a href="http://TheDirty.com">TheDirty.com</a>, says he provides a public forum through his Scottsdale-based Web site featuring anonymously submitted photos of people in awkward situations and comments about the personal lives and physical attributes of those shown.

SCOTTSDALE – When Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart and friends socialized with co-eds in his backyard last spring, people around the country wound up sharing the experience via photos, including one of Leinart holding a beer bong for a guest.

Jason Dolence, an Arizona State University student, got the same treatment when someone took a picture showing him standing in his underwear while a fraternity brother threw up in a toilet.

“It wasn’t one of my proudest moments,” Dolence said.

The publicity came courtesy of TheDirty.com, a Scottsdale-based Web site that features pictures and commentary, submitted anonymously, documenting embarrassing situations and offering sometimes-graphic assessments of the personal lives and physical attributes of those pictured.

“This is possibly the ugliest girl at ASU,” a contributor writes below one photo. “I see her out at clubs and vomit in my mouth every time.”

The site began as DirtyScottsdale.com, covering Scottsdale and ASU, and has expanded, fueled by the Leinart party pictures, to feature submissions from dozens of cities and colleges, including the University of Arizona.

Nik Richie, who founded the site in 2007 and offers his own comments on submissions, said what he does is 100 percent legal and provides a public forum. His real name is Hooman Karamian, but he goes by the pseudonym he uses on the site.

“If someone’s got a picture and they want to get it out there, I will take the risk,” Richie said. “There has to be that voice in any kind of media or press.”

Richie calls himself the “first-ever reality blogger.”

“I was thinking to myself, reality TV is such a big thing right now, but there’s nothing out there that’s reality Internet, so let’s try Dirty Scottsdale,” he said. “Scottsdale is kind of dirty; there’s a lot of fake money here and everybody thinks they’re somebody that they’re not.”

Richie said he doesn’t worry about being sued because all he’s doing is commenting on photos submitted by other people. He also won’t fight with those who demand that he remove posts.

“If someone is really upset and they want their image taken down and they feel threatened, I take their image down,” he said.

A review of one day’s submissions to TheDirty.com found dozens from around the country, including 12 from ASU, and from some cities in Canada and Europe. The site has sections featuring posts involving professional athletes, cheerleaders and fraternity and sorority members.

Dolence, the ASU student, said he was offended at first by the post showing him in his underwear and including Richie’s comments suggesting the scene resembled a specific sex act. He didn’t ask that the post be removed and said he remains a fan of TheDirty.com.

“It’s absolutely hilarious,” Dolence said. “You get a kick out of the comments that people write.”

Retha Hill, director of ASU’s Gannett New Media Innovation Lab and former vice president of BET Interactive, the online unit of Black Entertainment Television, said people should be aware that it has become easy for others to document and share their actions via the Internet.

“People have always gossiped about each other, but now that each individual has the technology to broadcast images and gossip to millions of viewers, people need to be more careful about what they do in public,” Hill said.

Joseph Russomanno, an associate professor in ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication who specializes in mass communication law, said Richie isn’t liable for third-party content on his site. However, Russomanno said, that protection goes away if the site alters a photo, something Richie occasionally does by zooming in.

Richie himself wound up with unwelcome publicity recently when a drunken-driving arrest and guilty plea to misdemeanor DUI removed his veil of anonymity. Media outlets published his booking photo and noted his real name.

Richie said it would be unfair if he didn’t get the same treatment as others on his site, so he posted the photo and police report on TheDirty.com.

“I made a mistake and I had to own up to it,” Richie said.

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TheDirty.com

• Founded: In 2007, covering Scottsdale and Arizona State University

• Founder: Nik Richie, a pseudonym for Hooman Karamian

• Focus: The main page has links to separate sites on 45 cities, including some in Canada and Europe, and 27 colleges, including the University of Arizona.

• Content: Photos and commentary range from humorous to explicit and derogatory.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranked the state 23rd based on eight categories, including spending on energy efficiency programs, building codes, tax incentives and transportation policy, according to its news release.

Vermont, Connecticut and California tied for first on the list, and North Dakota, Wyoming and Mississippi came in last. Just nine states scored better than 50 percent out of a possible 44 points in the analysis.

Arizona scored 11.5 points. The top three states scored 33 points each. To see the report, go to aceee.org.

A small asteroid is on track to hit Earth at about 7:45 p.m. Tucson time, according to University of Arizona scientists.

The asteroid is heading toward northern Sudan, but UA scientists say it is too small to be hazardous, according to a UA news release.

It is only two meters in diameter and is traveling at 12 kilometers per second, said Ed Beshore of UA’s Catalina Sky Survey. “Whether it will survive entry through Earth’s atmosphere depends on its composition,” Beshore said. “But it is sure to create a spectacular sight for those fortunate enough to see it at night.”

It is the first time astronomers have discovered an object with a nearly 100 percent chance of hitting the Earth, the release said.

The asteroid is expected to release about one kiloton of energy when it hits Earth’s atmosphere, either in a

single shot or in a series of explosions, the release said. It is on course to hit Earth’s atmosphere with a grazing strike, much like a skipping stone on water, Beshore said.

Richard Kowalski, a member of the Catalina Sky Survey team, discovered the object with the team’s 60-inch telescope on Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson.

Even if this asteroid reaches the ground intact, the predicted impact area is largely uninhabited, and the danger to individuals is small, the release said.

Morris Jarvis, an engineer for Intel Corp., stands next to the space shuttle he is building at his home in Mesa.

MESA – Morris Jarvis thinks we should be living in the age of the Jetsons, and he intends to make it happen. Jarvis, an engineer for Intel Corp., spends his spare time working on a space shuttle in the garage of his east Mesa home.

His ambitions are lofty: to build a spacecraft that can launch passengers on a suborbital space flight and bring them back to Earth safely.

He insists it isn’t a crazy pipe dream. The technology to build spacecraft is available off-the-shelf to entrepreneurs and inventors who know how to use it, he said.

And he sees a substantial market, noting that Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company has collected about $30 million in down payments from people who want to ride into space in a spacecraft he’s developing with Bert Rutan’s Scaled Composites Co. “It sounds like there’s a lot of money in this business,” Jarvis said.

And, indeed, the suborbital launch market has attracted a lot of would-be players. The Federal Aviation Administration/Office of Commercial Space Transportation Web site lists 18 commercial ventures working on vehicles to take passengers and payloads to the edge of space – internationally defined as 100 kilometers, or about 62 miles, above the Earth’s surface.

Jarvis thinks his space shuttle for the masses – which he calls Hermes, after the Greek messenger god – will do even better, flying to about 70 miles.

A study for the Office of Commercial Space Transportation agrees that a viable space tourism industry is developing.

“Market surveys have shown considerable interest in suborbital space flight by members of the public, including those able to afford ticket prices of around $100,000 to $200,000 per flight,” the study said.

As a child, Jarvis followed the early space flights avidly and read every book he could find on the subject. Later he attended the University of Arizona and graduated with an aerospace engineering degree.

“It was always a passion of mine, watching the Apollo guys,” he said, adding that “there isn’t a geek out there who hasn’t dreamed of being an astronaut,”

In 1993, Jarvis formed his own company, STAR Systems, to develop the Hermes spacecraft, although the idea had been floating around in his mind long before that.

He finalized the design in 2002 and built a fiberglass and wood mock-up, which he unveiled at the Intel Developer Forum in August in San Francisco.

Jarvis got a lot of attention and offers of help at the show, even from ex-astronaut Story Musgrave, who took a seat at the controls in the four-passenger cabin.

Jarvis also got some unexpected attention at the show from FBI investigators, who wondered why Jarvis was trying to import rocket engines from Poland.

“They actually were pretty nice,” Jarvis said of the G-men. “We went out to lunch, and they checked out my papers. I think they figured I was half-a-bubble off, but I was harmless enough.”

Still, Jarvis dropped his plan to import engines for the Hermes from Poland. Instead, he plans to use an engine available in California that is like the ones used in the X-15 rocket plane of the 1960s.

“All the parts are out there on the shelf if you want them,” he said. “I’m not out to reinvent the wheel. That’s the secret of keeping it inexpensive – finding what’s out there and building around it.”

The next step is to rebuild the prototype using flight-certified materials and conduct simulated landing tests with the craft attached to a trailer at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

The last step will be to build a final version of the Hermes with a heat-resistant carbon composite skin that would take off from a runway attached to a turbine-powered engine pod that would take the craft to 100,000 feet. The reusable vehicle would have to be certified as space-worthy by the FAA before any such flight could be attempted.

Jarvis believes he can offer flights to the public for an affordable $25,000 to $30,000 – cheap enough for just about everyone to experience.

The main thing preventing this dream from becoming reality is money. Jarvis figures he has sunk about $250,000 into Hermes so far — most of it his own money — and he needs to raise another $5.4 million to get the craft to space.

So why would anyone want to invest in his venture?

“This is a chance to get in on the ground floor,” he said of the fledgling space shuttle industry. “There are viable businesses in this.”

A. The ringed planet Saturn will not be visible in the evening until around mid-February, when it rises about 8 p.m. in the east. In early October, one hour before sunrise, Saturn is more than 10 degrees above the eastern horizon, but by late October at that time it climbs to more than 30 degrees in altitude, or one-third the way up from the horizon. Saturn is found in the constellation Leo the Lion, far below its bright star Regulus.

Flandrau: The UA Science Center

www.gotuasciencecenter.org

PHOENIX – Arizona’s participation in a regional pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be much less costly than opponents contend, and it would be tiny compared to the cost of not responding aggressively to climate change, the head of the state Department of Environmental Quality said Tuesday.

“People talk about sacrifices, they talk about impact, they talk about people paying more,” Steve Owens said in an interview with Cronkite News Service. “You haven’t seen significant costs until you see what might happen 40 or 50 years from now if we don’t do something now to control greenhouse gas emissions.”

Arizona, six other states and four Canadian provinces that are part of the Western Climate Initiative last week unveiled a plan to cut their greenhouse emissions by 2020 to 15 percent below 2005 levels. It includes a cap on emissions that decreases over time and a system allowing utilities and other businesses to trade pollution rights or offset emissions through actions such as planting trees.

Owens said it’s incorrect for consumers to assume that the plan would cause their electric bills to spike, and he blamed utilities for creating that impression.

“Every time we start to do something that asks the utilities to limit the amount of pollution, they run around and claim that it’s going to cause utility rates to go through the roof and they’re not going to be able to keep the lights on,” Owens said. “It’s kind of the same old same old when you talk to them.”

Richard Hayslip, associate general manager for the Salt River Project, said utilities try to provide honest appraisals of the impact of such plans. He said the Western Climate Initiative plan definitely would cost ratepayers more.

“Anyone who thinks a program that isn’t carefully crafted like the Western Climate Initiative isn’t going to impact consumers is naive,” Hayslip said.

Owens, who is co-chair of the Western Climate Initiative, said members of the group are optimistic that the impact on consumers would be minimal, in part because businesses would look for ways to reduce emissions at lower costs and help consumers use less energy.

“I really do believe that at the end of the day, once this program is implemented, you’re not going to see significant price increases,” Owens said. “You’re just not going to have that and the utilities and consumers and others are going to find much more cost-effective and cheaper ways to comply with this program.”

Owens said climate change, which most scientists say is caused in large part by greenhouse gases, already is affecting Arizona in the form of higher temperatures and prolonged drought. Those changes will force Arizonans to pay more for air conditioning and to pay to import water from other areas, he said.

Owens said states that fall behind on reducing greenhouse gas emissions are going to be at a disadvantage because they will have to make greater cuts much more quickly in the future.

“I don’t think anybody can dispute the fact that in the United States there will at some point be regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and there will be reductions in greenhouse gases emissions mandated by the federal government,” Owens said.

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On the Web

Western Climate Initiative:

www.westernclimateinitiative.org

Arizona Department of Environmental Quality:

www.azdeq.gov

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QUICK FACTS

Background on the Western Climate Initiative:

• Launched in February 2007 by Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington. Utah, Montana and four Canadian provinces have since joined.

• Thirteen other U.S. and Mexican states are officially observing the WCI’s actions.

• The group announced a plan last week to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to 15 percent below 2005 levels.

• The plan’s centerpiece is a cap-and-trade system that includes a limit on emissions that decreases over time and a system that allows utilities and other businesses to trade pollution rights or offset emissions through actions such as planting trees.