Glad you found it useful. I wanted to share too that native iron
reacts real close to the same as a meteorite will to the magnetism.
So you might want to watch for that. I sent one of about 20 some
pieces of native iron I have to AZ to a lab and they confirmed that
that is what it is. I have learned to tell the difference in the two
mainly by sight. Native iron is rougher looking than an iron
meteorite and some of the pieces I have have a strange mineral habit
clearly visible on the surface. BTW, these pieces of native iron do
not test positive for nickel or at least not for me here with the
alertest Ni test or at the lab in AZ. I tried to send some to UCLA
for a nickel test but they were a little too busy. I can't blame them
though for not wanting to take time away from more important things to
test my little chunk.
Best of luck finding those iron meteorites.
Mike in CO
On Sep 23, 2009, at 8:31 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
Michael,
I would first of all like to thank you for this great information.
Secondly , I would like to tell you that hopefully your test is
definitive. As evidence that it is. I just tried to magnetize a
bunch of small CD's and Odessa's that I have and none of them became
magnetized. This proves you are correct at least for the ones I
tried. In addition I also tried to magnetize a couple of prospects
that I have and they too did not become magnetized and yet other
pieces of found metal that's clearly not meteorite material did
become magnetized. You are quite the genius and thank you so very
much for sharing. Thank you again and again. Carl
PS they claim if results can be replicated that theory becomes fact?
I hope this is now a fact because a few found irons might just get
added to the "it's a keeper for more testing pile."
--
Carl or Debbie Esparza
Meteoritemax
---- Michael Murray <[email protected]> wrote:
For what they are worth, here are a couple suggestions...
If you place the suspect iron on a strong magnet, then remove the
magnet, the suspect iron should not retain magnetism (if it's a
meteorite) but should to some extent if man-made iron. Kind of like
magnetizing the tip of a screwdriver. You can test the once
magnetized suspect iron to see if it will attract fine particles of
magnetite, Not very scientific I know but it is a good indicator I
think.
Another thing you can try if the suspect iron is not very big is to
place it on a strong magnet (super magnet if you have one) and if the
iron piece wants to orient itself up on one of it's ends on the
magnet, I would rule out meteorite. If your suspect iron is large,
you'd probably have to remove a small piece of it to do this test.
If
the small piece lays down on any of it's sides on the magnet and
doesn't want to orient itself, I'd put it in my 'it's a keeper for
more testing' pile.
I bought a couple nickel test kits. I have tried to be as careful as
possible to do a clean uncontaminated test on several suspect irons.
After doing quite a few, I still don't trust the results. It's not
that I don't get positives, I do. It's that I've learned not trust
the positive tests all that much. If I find a big enough suspect
iron
someday with enough other indicators that it could be a meteorite
then
I will let a lab do the testing so I can rest assured the results are
going to be more trustworthy than mine. Meanwhile, my 'it's a keeper
for more testing' pile continues to grow.
Mike in CO
On Sep 23, 2009, at 12:27 PM, Mike Hankey wrote:
I've done some nickel tests on some of the slag/meteor wrongs we
have found.
It tests positive for nickel.
Does this sound normal?
So I guess the only way to confirm slag (if you can't do it
visually)
is to cut it open and if there are holes / bubbles then it is
slag. Or
if the slice doesn't look like a meteorite slice it is slag.
For the record, I am personally looking for west like fusion crusted
stones and this is what I am training people to look for. At the
same
time when I get reports about weird rocks I have to follow up and
take
a look. Not all slag looks the same, there are a lot of different
types. I'm getting pretty good at identifying / ruling things out,
but
the nickel test threw me for a loop.
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