* Astronomy

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Meteorites

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Meteorite I.D. How to tell if you have a Meteorite! (part 1)

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Meteorite I.D. How to tell if you have a Meteorite! (part 2)

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Blobrana · L

Designed to honour the Pioneer 10 Probe, Mobiado Grand 350 Pioneer is made out of meteorite
It is said that the Gibeon meteorite was discovered in Namibia back in 1836 by an English captain named J.E. Alexander. Herschel confirmed that the rocks were from outer space. Scientists even traced the meteorite's origins to the Jupiters asteroid belt, making the choice quite fitting indeed. So the Mobiado Grand 350 Pioneer is made out meteorite, at least the back cover.
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Gibeon is a meteorite fallen in prehistoric times in Namibia. It was named after the nearest town: Gibeon (Namibia).
It was discovered by natives (Namaqua) and used to build arrows and other tools.
In 1836[1] the English captain J. E. Alexander collected some samples in the Great Fish River area and sent them to London. Here John Herschel analysed them and confirmed for the first time the extraterrestrial nature of the material.
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Blobrana · L

A steady barrage of small meteorite impacts on the moon should cause it to "ring", but no seismometers sent there have been sensitive enough to hear it. So Philippe Lognonné at the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris and colleagues decided to work out how loud the ring is.
The team estimated the meteoroid population in the solar neighbourhood, and calculated the likely seismic signals the space rocks would create if they struck the moon at a range of sizes and velocities.

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Blobrana · L

That winter, we travelled to France and visited meteorite sites there. At a Paris museum I saw a black meteorite full of the same chemicals and amino acids that may have helped life take hold on Earth billions of years ago. Kathe and I went to a chateau near L'Aigle, site of a massive meteorite fall in 1803. We touched the Ensisheim meteorite, the oldest meteorite in the Western Hemisphere whose fall can be dated precisely: It dropped on Nov. 7 in 1492.
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Using technology to solve mysteries
The fist-sized hunk of metal or stone found on an Iowa railroad track could have been extraterrestrial, a fragment of the Estherville meteorite that had fallen to Earth from space in May of 1879. If so, the nugget would qualify as a precious object, rare and expensive. On one well-known collectors Web site, a half-ounce chunk of the meteorite is listed for $964. So with hopes high, the owner of the fist-sized find sent a specimen to UB scientist Peter Bush to inspect. Was the rock a treasure - a piece of the heavens that had come hurtling down to Earth more than a century before - or just some worthless lump of rubbish?

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Blobrana · L

Giant meteorite comes with hefty price tag
Weighing in at a little more than 2.5 tons, the bulky space rock can be yours - for about $500,000.

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Blobrana · L

A meteorite, according to the Australian Oxford Dictionary, is "a rock or metal fragment formed from a meteor of sufficient size to reach the Earth's surface without burning up completely in the atmosphere".

So what should a suspected fallen space rock, that NASA's Mars robot, Opportunity, has stumbled across on the red planet, be called?

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Blobrana · L

The Matilda and Karl Pfeiffer Museum at Piggott recently received, on permanent loan, specimens from NASA and outer space from the collection of Kenneth Renshaw, local astronomer and NASA Solar System Ambassador.
Now on display are meteorite specimens that have been chemically analysed to have originally come from the Moon and Mars that were found in West Africa and Libya, respectively. Scientists believe the Moon and Mars, struck by asteroids and meteorites, lost the rocks to space, which later struck the Earth.

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Découverte d'une inclusion surprenante dans la météorite d'Isheyevo
Une étrange inclusion dans la météorite d'Isheyevo vient d'être découverte par une équipe du Muséum et de l'INSU-CNRS associée aux Universités de Lille et Grenoble. Cette inclusion, minéralogiquement primitive et riche en matière organique, présente des excès d'azote lourd les plus élevés jamais mesurés en laboratoire. Cette découverte remettrait en cause les modèles actuels de formation du système solaire. Les résultats sont publiés cette semaine dans la revue PNAS.

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