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Meteorites in Texas

Picked this up off the sci.astro.amateur newsgroup.

-Walter

NEWS RELEASE  OCT. 1, 1997

Albuquerque, N.M.  After a year of detective work involving scores of
eyewitness reports from across New Mexico and Texas, a group of
scientists has concluded that the Earth collided with a swarm of cosmic
debris on the night of Oct. 3-4, 1996.

The most widely-reported fireballs were ones over eastern New Mexico
and the Texas panhandle, and another near Bakersfield, California,
exactly 104 minutes later.  The relationship among the times,
locations, and trajectories of the meteors seemed too unlikely to be
mere coincidence, and had initially led some scientists to believe that
a single object skimmed through the atmosphere and re-entered after a
single orbit.

After careful analysis of a videotape taken from El Paso, Texas,
together with eyewitness reports, Mark Boslough of Sandia National
Laboratories and Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario found
that the first meteor entered at too steep of an angle to skip off the
atmosphere. They are now convinced that the two fireballs observed over
New Mexico/Texas and over California were two different objects.

They also determined the most likely location in the Texas panhandle
where meteorites might have fallen, and John Wasson (UCLA) has
re-issued a reward for a sample.  Brown and Boslough believe that any
meteorites reaching the ground in the Southwest would most likely be
found south of Amarillo, near the towns of Hereford and Canyon, where
they were carried by winds to the east of the visible trajectory.  The
most likely place for small meteorites to have landed would be in an
oblong area about 10 miles ESE if Hereford, but any larger meteorites
would be in a strip that stretches as far as 10 miles east of Canyon.

This part of the Texas Panhandle is well-known for its abundance of
meteorite finds because it is flat, with little vegetation and few
natural rocks on the surface.  The most famous area is southwest of
Plainview, where over 900 meteorites were recovered after they fell in
1903, and were still being found as late as 1949.

Over the past year, two groups of scientists from Los Alamos National
Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have
also reported low-frequency sound data showing that the Earth's
atmosphere was hit by at least 60 objects within several hours of the
two that were originally reported, two of which were also observed by
Defense Department satellites.

Most of the infrasound-producing meteors occurred during daylight hours
and were not seen by witnesses, but the large number of collisions
taking place that night helps explain why two bright ones with such
similar trajectories would be seen so closely spaced in time.  Although
the scientists eliminated their hypothesis of a single object bouncing
off the atmosphere and re-entering it later, they are still very
interested in the events of one year ago because it means the Earth
collided with a cluster of objects, perhaps pieces of a broken
asteroid. A sample of one of these meteorites would help scientists
determine what kind of asteroid spawned the fragments and better
understand how they break apart and explode in the atmosphere, says
Sandia's Mark Boslough.

Prof. John Wasson is seeking such samples and is offering a reward of
$2,000 for the first confirmed sample as large as 4 ounces, and he
urges persons living within the calculated fall area to look in their
fields, on the roofs of buildings, in stock tanks and other locations
where stones would not be expected.  Meteorite hunters are reminded to
get permission of land owners, and that any stones automatically belong
to the owner of the property on which it is found.  The stones are most
likely to be black with a fresh matte texture.  Samples should be sent
to Prof.  Wasson at the Institute of Geophysics, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
90095, or to Dr. Adrian Brearley, Institute of Meteoritics, University
of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131.  Each sample will be
acknowledged, but those that are not meteorites will not be returned
unless a return self-addressed envelope is provided.