Hello Jim, et al, Yes, I would recommend a microscope. There should be plenty of "inspection scopes" on the used surplus market. You might find a good one on eBay, but they show up in high tech swap meets if you have on in your area. Los Angeles and San Diego have them...
How small is your tiny iron? Can you post a photo? With a microprobe you can analyze almost anything you can see in a compound microscope. It's only semi-destructive, since it drills an extremely small hole into the specimen. I wonder if your "iron" is from a separate fall, or perhaps an iron clast from Holbrook that broke up high in the atmosphere and became ablated and crusted on its way down? I don't think anything has changed as a result of anthill searches. I do think that it would be interesting to extend strewn field research towards millimeter and smaller residue from witnessed falls. After all, the fallout from the smoke trails must have come down somewhere, and unlike big fist-sized finds which are relatively rare, there should be gazillions of these tiny fragments and condensates. But this will take lots of soil samples and lots of effort (plus lots of probe time). Maybe I'll look into this... Cheers, Nick Nicholas Gessler, Ph.D. [email protected] http://isis.duke.edu/gessler Research Associate Information Science & Information Studies Duke University, Durham, North Carolina ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
