Michael Farmer tells the tale of his quest for extraterrestrial geology and how it landed him in prison, and explains why he eats bits of the moon and Mars
Why did you head to Oman in the first place?
On 31 December last year I went on my 20th meteorite hunting expedition in Oman with my fellow hunter Robert Ward. I have studied the law there since the arrest of Russian and American hunters back in 2005 and I understand the practice to be legal.
How did your meteorite hunting trip go?
I found 35 meteorites, including three more pieces of the Dhofar 1180 Lunar, which I'd originally found in 2005, and other nice things. On the last day we headed towards Dubai. At 1pm on 13 January we arrived at a roadblock in the town of Adam. There was nothing out of the ordinary, until the police rushed my car with M16 rifles. They were nice and did not seem to know why we were being arrested but they forced us out of our cars and ripped them apart, finding the meteorites. We were taken to the police station and interrogated for 10 hours. They had intelligence that we were coming. I think I know who had told them.