Robert Matson thought I might wish to post the following to the
list. It's interesting.
Wishing everyone a terrific weekend.
All best / Darryl
From: "Matson, Robert D." <[email protected]>
Date: May 8, 2009 3:29:58 PM EDT
To: "Darryl Pitt" <[email protected]>, "Meteorites USA" <[email protected]
>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Subject: NJO revisited
Hi Darryl (please feel free to forward to the list as I cannot from
work):
I might also mention that Eric Twelker had expressed his doubts to
the
same
New York Times reporter with whom I had spoken, and he reached out to
the
lead scientist and warned the object wasn't a meteorite, to which the
scientist at Rutgers tersely responded, "Get your facts straight."
Dr. Delaney's defensive "get your facts straight" comment was actually
directed at me. (Eric Twelker had forwarded my MetList post to him.)
Here's
the original source of that quote:
------ Forwarded Message
From: "Jeremy S. Delaney"
Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2007 16:17:17 -0500
To: Eric Twelker <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: New Jersey Meteorite/NYT article
I suggest that your colleague get his facts right Yours sincerely
Jeremy
S. Delaney
Eric Twelker wrote:
Hello Jeremy
I am the meteorite dealer that Kareem Fahim was talking to
yesterday between conversations with you. I think he explained my
concern on the origin of this piece--but I wanted to forward the
email
below from Rob Matson to our Meteorite Mailing list. Rob is a
respected scientist who is engaged in tracking and recovery of space
objects. He expressed concern to me that the gamma ray spectrum
should
be measured right away and that passage of time was critical. You
can
contact Rob here: "Matson, Robert" <[email protected]>
Eric Twelker
Hi All,
I was surprised that our local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles closed
the
news last night (just before Jay Leno) with a 30-second blurb on the
mystery metal object from New Jersey. So I was finally able to see
high-definition video of the object being rotated, allowing a better
feel for the surface texture. It is a bit peanut-shaped, and
certainly
larger than a golf ball which means its specific gravity is
correspondingly lower -- less than 7 I should think. The surface
looked
melted in some spots (like viscous drips), but in other areas I
thought
I could see glints from small, metallic crystal faces -- although not
unlike the octahedrite crystals one sees in the higher quality Nantan
pieces.
If this had been a find rather than a fall, I'd be very encouraged by
its density and appearance. But as a fresh fall, it looks, well,
~wrong~. Where is the crust of magnetite? How could it look the way
it
does if it just screamed through our upper atmosphere at 8+ miles per
second?
So my vote is that if it turns out to be a meteorite, foul play is
involved. Determining whether it is a meteorite or not should take
about 20 seconds by any regular member of this list examining the
specimen firsthand. If it ~is~ a meteorite, the next step would be to
check its gamma ray spectrum for evidence of short-lived,
cosmic-ray-induced radioactive isotopes in order to prove it was
recently in space.
On a final note, by nature I'm suspicious of coincidences; given the
recent reentry of the Soyuz third stage booster over Wyoming/
Colorado
the morning of January 4th, I thought it would be a good idea to
check
that rocket body's ground track for the evening of January 2nd over
New
Jersey! For example, there may have been pyro bolts or other
deployment
hardware related to the launch that would have had different drag
coefficients, causing them to reenter earlier or later than the
rocket
body. Great idea on paper; alas, there were no passes close to New
Jersey in the hours prior to 9pm on Tuesday night.
--Rob
Meteor's 4-billion-year space tour ends in N.J.
4 experts confirm finding in Freehold Twp.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
BY MARYANN SPOTO
Star-Ledger Staff
Upon further review, it came from outer space after all.
The fist-sized hunk of rock that smashed through the roof of a
Freehold Township home earlier this week was declared a genuine
meteorite yesterday, making a bit of New Jersey history and solving
a riddle that had everyone from local police to the Federal Aviation
Administration hunting for answers.
Three Rutgers University geologists and an independent scientist
determined the dense, kidney-shaped mass had been hurtling around
the universe for some 4.6 billion years before ending its galactic
journey Tuesday afternoon in a second-floor bathroom.
"This little guy is a meteorite," said Jeremy Delaney, who examined
the object with Rutgers colleagues Gail Ashley and Claire Condie. An
independent metallurgist, Peter Elliott, reached the same conclusion.
"This would be a class of meteorites almost as old as the oldest
things we know," Delaney said "This is true solar system material."
While strikes by rock-like objects from space are not rare -- an
estimated 20 to 50 rocky objects from outside the Earth's atmosphere
pelt the planet daily -- most meteorites are not recovered, and New
Jersey had been in a long space-rock drought.
The last documented strike took place in Deal on Aug. 15, 1829.
Delaney, who's verified only three meteorites from among all the
objects brought to him in his 30-year career, said he's surprised
there haven't been more.
"It amazes me a state this big, with this many people, hasn't had
more falls observed and more materials collected," he said. "Most
objects I've seen have been meteor-wrongs. This was a meteor-right."
The grayish-brown chunk, given the rather lackluster nickname
"Freehold Township," hails from the asteroid belt, a rock-strewn
expanse between Mars and Jupiter. It's either the core of a very
tiny heavenly body or the fragment of a larger one that broke up
sometime over the eons.
______________________________________________
http://www.meteoritecentral.com
Meteorite-list mailing list
[email protected]
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
