Falls are surely when recoverable material makes it to the surface.
It would be classified as a "find" if material is recovered but the fireball
was not witnessed. This suggests serendipitous discovery but is obviously not
always the case (Antarctica and hot desert "finds" are the result of deliverate
search efforts but in most cases, the fall obviously occured many years ago.
The geology of these areas makes sucess more likely, perhaps, vastly so but it
is still a lucky dip).
For normal parts of the world, a search for new finds is one of hope.
It is an "observed fall" if it is eyeballed on the way down.
Following this, searchers KNOW there are samples in a specific area rather than
hope. This improves the chance of recovering a sample tremendously.
I know freshness is important but if it were as easy to discover a new "find"
as it was an "observed fall", the hunters wouldn't feel the need to descend on
each new "observed fall" like a pack of wolves on a wounded caribou (OK, I know
it's still not easy to discover an observed fall but I meant by comparison,
like electromagnetism is easier than quantum electro dynamics...oh and sorry
about the pack of wolves analogy, that makes hunters sound vicious and
bloodlust driven)
I think "fall" has become synonymous with "observed fall" but nobody can really
be bothered to say "observed fall" all the time.
When it's witnessed by photograph or radar but not actually seen, a search
would still be targetted to a specific area determined from the observation.
I'd still be classifying this as an "observed fall".
Some purists may balk at classifying a radar image as "observed" but there is a
precedent (kinda)
Many of Saturn's and Uranus' moons have "Voyager 2" given as their discoverer.
Some, were spotted on images only many weeks after the image was taken and
credit goes to the automated robot rather than the image analyst. I think this
is very much the same thing. If a machine can discover a moon, it can observe a
fall.
Rob Mc
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