Man-made Asteroid Belt

In my latest pun inspired shenanigan; I present the universe’s first “Man-made Asteroid Belt”.

Basically, I went on ebay and bought a small meteorite (There are national organisations for confirming their authenticity and origins). Then I soldered (welded) it to a normal waist belt I had in the house. Behold:

man-made asteroid belt

So, let’s see some of the before and after photos:

Component parts Asteroid belt after welding. Note, metal rings were stretched End-on view

In usage, the meteorite is not actually sharp and it has not snagged any clothing (yet). It is perfectly wearable and worth it when the story is told with the inevitable pun-reaction-groan made by the person hearing the story.

I have been googling around and have not come across any other references to this idea (but if you did, please inform me and I will give you due credit too). Also, I am aware of the difference between meteorites and asteroids, but the particular meteorite I used here landed on Earth in 1947 in Russia (called Sikhote-Alin) and according to Wikipedia, the USSR Academy of Science believe it actually was from the asteroid belt and got knocked to Earth by collisions there. So until our good friends at Space-X bring us back some more asteroid material, this will do nicely.

If you really want one of these, pop me an email at jason@jasonruane.com and if I get enough interest I will rustle up a few.

– Update 2014-09-05:
Unbeknownst to me, this post got picked up by a huge blog BoingBoing, and posted by Cory Doctorow which I am super vamped about: