RE: [meteorite-list] Elma status

[Charles R. Viau]

Pekka, Robert Verish and Robert Matson had some excellent comments on this, and I wanted to comment back to each…   For Pekka,             Thanks for sharing that data. The chemical analysis looks somewhat similar to what I have been told , but does vary.  Some people I have talked to thought that the total absence of MgO and MnO were just as strange. Some said  that these were also common impurities in slag, especially in minerals related to Ilmenite, and the ratio’s and streak did not match. Also, the physical characteristics of the individual pieces seemed to have a very thin, even coating of the glass and that a slag would most likely be homogenous or glass on one side with material on the other… who knows.  It is real strange and I think that what bothers the analysts the most is that they cannot explain how it was made.  I think an electrical or plasma mechanism is really interesting and wonder if there is even enough existing data on such phenomena to help them there as well. I also hope that the resulting analysis won’t require a PhD in petrology to decipher… J   For Robert M and Robert V,             I agree that there should be a priority for those that have worked so hard and have material in a queue to be examined. I wonder if the analysts themselves are really kind of their own boss, and perhaps take on what they feel is easy to disprove first, and then get wrapped up in the enigma of trying to prove just what it is when it cannot be easily explained. And/or it was the immediacy of the Elma event, the story content and the speed in which samples were available to them…In any case, the NWA thing has hurt a lot of research and NASA should never have shut the doors on domestic researchers that have finds that have been properly documented. What they needed to do was put someone in charge of clearing these finds from the NWA imports based on the documentation and credibility of the finders.   Thanks, Charles, IMCA 4351