Thirty minutes before noon on May 15th 1900, a single stone flew down from space through a clear blue sky. It attracted the attention of those in that region of Alabama having generated the sound of thunder during its supersonic passage through the thin atmosphere of earth. Using the metaphors of the day, one witness described the meteor’s noise as
The Felix Carbonaceous Chondrite: A 3.3 from 1900. Read Post »
One of the wonderful things that the Internet has brought to us is the vast amount of images available on every topic. For meteorites many different issues can create challenges for getting images done well. Even as I write this I realize that I will not be able to show the images in this article at their hi resolution. We
Here in the United States of America, if you want to get a meteorite classified, you have to pay some professional to get it done. It does sound like the American-way, but there was a time not too long ago that you could get a classification done on your meteorite just for the price of a type-specimen. But even back
Bob’s Bulletin – A newsletter for “orphaned” meteorites from the USA. Read Post »
Kamil Crater is one of the most recent discovered impact craters. It was incidentally identified in 2008 by Vincenzo De Michele (Italy) during a Google Earth survey while he was searching for ruins of prehistoric settlements in a rocky desert area of the southwestern part of Egypt (22°01’06’’N, 26°05’16’’E; Figure 1). In 2010, an Italian-Egyptian geophysical campaign was organized with
Kamil Crater (Egypt) a natural laboratory to study shock metamorphism and impact melting Read Post »
The wavy black forms signal a symplectitic texture. Symplectites appear in metals, minerals and other materials. They are intergrowths of two or more constituents and appear in a variety of configurations. They may be considered a disequilibrium textural feature. The different phases may form from: a single phase that becomes unstable from a pressure or temperature change (e.g. exsolution); a
The recent announcement of “tektites” in the Atacama forced me to revisit the criteria that distinguish tektites from other impact glasses. At both extremes are examples where there is solid consensus. This one is a tektite, but that one isn’t. Somewhere in between is a poorly described definitional boundary. I don’t intend to fight that battle in this column. Instead,
Our Meteorite of the Month is kindly provided by Tucson Meteorites who hosts The Meteorite Picture of the Day. Submit Pictures to Meteorite Pictures of the Day
