Although an L-impact melt sounds like a delicious sandwich I’d buy, it’s actually a relatively new meteorite class defined as “An ordinary chondrite from the L group that has experienced impact melting.” Seems simple enough, but of the 31 entries for L-imp melt in the Meteoritical Bulletin Database, there are a total of two outside the hot deserts of
The Caldwell Meteorite: Not just any old L imp-Melt! Read Post »
I have hunted meteorites since I was a preteen and though I did not know what I was looking for in the earliest years I got every book I could find at the library and took every opportunity to hunt. My parents were building houses out in Bullhead City, Arizona when only a couple of hundred people lived there, and
This thin section was one of a hoard that was deaccessioned by Arizona State University in 2014. My notes from then say “Very large sample. Interesting and busy TS. (Is TS curved/cupped?)” This week I looked closer and found that the glass cover slip is partially detached from the base glass slide, lifting up – and has brought the stone
George Frederick Kunz (1856 – 1932), was arguably the world’s foremost gemologist and mineralogist to ever live. At the age of 23, he was hired by iconic Tiffany and Co. in 1879 as its chief gemologist, and became a vice president from 1907 until his death in 1932 at the age of 75. Kunz was America’s first gemologist. He was
The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) launched a spacecraft named Hayabusa2 to study asteroid 162173 Ryugu on December 3, 2014. Hayabusa2 arrived at Ryugu on June 27, 2018 then successfully orbited, mapped and sampled the asteroid. On Dec. 6, 2020, the Hayabusa2 returned to earth and released a capsule containing a sample of the asteroid. I published an article entitled: Initial
Returned Sample Identification of Organic Compounds from Asteroid Ryugu Read Post »
