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The meteorite is pretty heavy, but it's still just the sixth-largest found in Michigan.CMU via YouTube
The world is a nightmare. This is especially the case, with unnerving reports on the state of anthropogenic climate change and various geologically-induced disasters making headlines. So, with that in mind, I thought I'd all try to cheer you up, if only for a moment, with a marvelous little tale about meteorites.
BBC News, Mona Sirbescu, a professor of geology at Central Michigan University, was recently brought to life by a member of the public. This person has been using a 10-kilogram (22-pound) rock as a doorstop for several decades. He bought it in 1988, after acquiring the farm Edmore.
It did not take long for Sirbescu to realize that the doorstop was actually a meteorite – the largest she had ever studied in the entirety of her academic career, as it so happens. The previous owner of the farmer looked like he was a type of meteorite, as his father saw it crashing down from the night sky back in the 1930s. He nevertheless gave it to the new landowner during the sale, seemingly unaware of its potential worth.
After examining the space rock alongside the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, it was revealed that it was not a common meteorite either: it had a freakishly high proportion of nickel in it. This rarity, along with its size, makes it worth $ 100,000, and the Smithsonian is keen on being the buyer. The university reports that a mineral museum in Maine was also thinking of buying it.
Its value is also John Wasson, a professor emeritus of planetary sciences at the University of California in Los Angeles, uncovers. He is currently reviewing its chemical composition, and if it is found to contain amounts of even rarer elements, that dollar value is set to rise. Either way, the owner, who is anonymous, wishes to donate 10 percent of the profits to Central Michigan University.
This story is not just one of serendipity and some rather lovely feelings. There's also some curious scientific nuggets buried in the tale that are worth fleshing out a little.
Firstly, the fact that this meteorite was found in a field by a non-expert is not surprising. Debris from space is in the foreground, and can be estimated to be 193 tons (213 tons) per day. Most of this comes in the form of dust-sized lumps though, with anything much larger being a rare find. This is not just because they are often burned up in the atmosphere, but if they do, it is difficult to spot them.
Often, the best place to find meteorites are in vast, unpopulated, undeveloped areas that provide a good color contrast: sandy deserts and the middle of colder ones, like the plains of Antarctica. Meteorites, often black, with a little deep green, can be spotted against these backdrops, assuming the sands or not having fallen by the time the meteorite hunters arrive at the scene. Farms, as it happens, work well too.
Chance certainly plays a huge role. Meteorites are more often than not, they are often seen by people who often do not know their worth. This is not, after all, the first time a meteorite has been inadvertently co-opted as a doorstop. A similar story occurred in 2012, this time in Tennessee.
Meteorite experts rely quite heavily on these finds, and sometimes they can be truly revelatory. Such was the case in 2008, when an asteroid exploded in the skies above Sudan's Nubian Desert. This article was made in the past by the collectors and laypersons. One of those Nubian meteorites made headlines recently after it was found to be diamonds older than the Solar System; it has been noted that it was part of a lost planet-sized object in our cosmic backwater that was obliterated before Earth even existed.
The other point is that this meteorite is one of several types of space-borne traveler. They are defined by their geochemistry, which in turns reveals where they came from. You have iron meteorites, for example, which contain large quantities of iron in the cores of large asteroids.
You also have gotten stony meteorites, which, like their iron equivalents, and contain mainly silicate minerals. They are by far the most commonly found.
These stony meteorites can contain glassy inclusions named chondrules. These so-called stony chondrites indicate that they may have experienced, violent, extremely hot events, which produced occasional pockets of melting, and perhaps during the earliest days of the Solar System. Those without these chondrules – which underwent long-term, complex melting within asteroids, moons, and planets like Mars – are known as achondrites.
Because of the nature of a meteorite, you can also get stony-iron meteorites – geochemical hybrids with roughly equal parts metal and mineral silicate. There are a handful of oddities that blur or subvert the boundaries somewhat, but those are the basics.
According to Sirbescu, this new meteorite is composed of 88.5 percent iron, and 11.5 percent nickel. That makes it an iron meteorite, which means it's already fairly rare as it is. However, most iron meteorites have upwards of 90-95 percent iron in them, so the presence of plenty of nickel dramatically increases the meteorite's monetary and scientific value.
So who knows? Perhaps you're going to have a good time here or you're going to have a good time. If in doubt, ask a scientist!
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The meteorite is pretty heavy, but it's still just the sixth-largest found in Michigan.CMU via YouTube
The world is a nightmare. This is especially the case, with unnerving reports on the state of anthropogenic climate change and various geologically-induced disasters making headlines. So, with that in mind, I thought I'd all try to cheer you up, if only for a moment, with a marvelous little tale about meteorites.
BBC News, Mona Sirbescu, a professor of geology at Central Michigan University, was recently brought to life by a member of the public. This person has been using a 10-kilogram (22-pound) rock as a doorstop for several decades. He bought it in 1988, after acquiring the farm Edmore.
It did not take long for Sirbescu to realize that the doorstop was actually a meteorite – the largest she had ever studied in the entirety of her academic career, as it so happens. The previous owner of the farmer looked like he was a type of meteorite, as his father saw it crashing down from the night sky back in the 1930s. He nevertheless gave it to the new landowner during the sale, seemingly unaware of its potential worth.
After examining the space rock alongside the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, it was revealed that it was not a common meteorite either: it had a freakishly high proportion of nickel in it. This rarity, along with its size, makes it worth $ 100,000, and the Smithsonian is keen on being the buyer. The university reports that a mineral museum in Maine was also thinking of buying it.
Its value is also John Wasson, a professor emeritus of planetary sciences at the University of California in Los Angeles, uncovers. He is currently reviewing its chemical composition, and if it is found to contain amounts of even rarer elements, that dollar value is set to rise. Either way, the owner, who is anonymous, wishes to donate 10 percent of the profits to Central Michigan University.
This story is not just one of serendipity and some rather lovely feelings. There's also some curious scientific nuggets buried in the tale that are worth fleshing out a little.
Firstly, the fact that this meteorite was found in a field by a non-expert is not surprising. Debris from space is in the foreground, and can be estimated to be 193 tons (213 tons) per day. Most of this comes in the form of dust-sized lumps though, with anything much larger being a rare find. This is not just because they are often burned up in the atmosphere, but if they do, it is difficult to spot them.
Often, the best place to find meteorites are in vast, unpopulated, undeveloped areas that provide a good color contrast: sandy deserts and the middle of colder ones, like the plains of Antarctica. Meteorites, often black, with a little deep green, can be spotted against these backdrops, assuming the sands or not having fallen by the time the meteorite hunters arrive at the scene. Farms, as it happens, work well too.
Chance certainly plays a huge role. Meteorites are more often than not, they are often seen by people who often do not know their worth. This is not, after all, the first time a meteorite has been inadvertently co-opted as a doorstop. A similar story occurred in 2012, this time in Tennessee.
Meteorite experts rely quite heavily on these finds, and sometimes they can be truly revelatory. Such was the case in 2008, when an asteroid exploded in the skies above Sudan's Nubian Desert. This article was made in the past by the collectors and laypersons. One of those Nubian meteorites made headlines recently after it was found to be diamonds older than the Solar System; it has been noted that it was part of a lost planet-sized object in our cosmic backwater that was obliterated before Earth even existed.
The other point is that this meteorite is one of several types of space-borne traveler. They are defined by their geochemistry, which in turns reveals where they came from. You have iron meteorites, for example, which contain large quantities of iron in the cores of large asteroids.
You also have gotten stony meteorites, which, like their iron equivalents, and contain mainly silicate minerals. They are by far the most commonly found.
These stony meteorites can contain glassy inclusions named chondrules. These so-called stony chondrites indicate that they may have experienced, violent, extremely hot events, which produced occasional pockets of melting, and perhaps during the earliest days of the Solar System. Those without these chondrules – which underwent long-term, complex melting within asteroids, moons, and planets like Mars – are known as achondrites.
Because of the nature of a meteorite, you can also get stony-iron meteorites – geochemical hybrids with roughly equal parts metal and mineral silicate. There are a handful of oddities that blur or subvert the boundaries somewhat, but those are the basics.
According to Sirbescu, this new meteorite is composed of 88.5 percent iron, and 11.5 percent nickel. That makes it an iron meteorite, which means it's already fairly rare as it is. However, most iron meteorites have upwards of 90-95 percent iron in them, so the presence of plenty of nickel dramatically increases the meteorite's monetary and scientific value.
So who knows? Perhaps you're going to have a good time here or you're going to have a good time. If in doubt, ask a scientist!
