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An Irish Meteorite?

The following was posted today on the "Meteor Observer's" list.  Highly
questionable, to be sure, but FYI  I forward it nonetheless....
Gregory


> Below is an article from the Feb 11-17 issue of the Irish Echo, an Irish
>  American newspaper:
>  
> >  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>  
>  Fermanagh's suspicious boom had cosmic origins
>  
>  By Andrew Bushe
>  
>  	DUBLINA meter-wide crater blown in a County Ferrnanagh field last month,
>  within miles of the border with the Republic, was not the result of a bomb,
> as
>  was first suspected, but was almost certainly caused by a meteorite, 
> according
>  to the director of the Armagh Planetarium.
>  
>  	On Dec. 13, a sound not unlike an explosion rocked buildings and smashed
>  windows in homes near Belleek, Co. Berrnanagh, and resulted in an
>  investigation by the British army and the RUC.
>  
>  	It wasn't until a farmer discovered a small crater in his field near
>  Enniskillen-Bundoran Road on Jan. 6 that suspicions were aroused that a 
> cosmic
>  close encounter might have been involved.
>  
>  	Dr. Tom Mason, the planetarium's director, said when he and his staff were
>  called in by police they had an "aura of healthy skepticism." As soon as 
> they
>  drained the water out of the hole, they realized it might be a meteorite.
>  
>  	A week-long detailed investigation of the field failed to find proof, but
>  samples were taken and a 1.5 millimeter glass fragment was later found on a
>  piece of a steel pan that, along with a milk churn, was found near the 
> crater.
>  
>  	'It was a complete fluke I found it," Mason said of the fragment. 'It is 
> like
>  an insect larvae or a seed, but, bingo, it was a little glassy sphere. As 
> far
>  as I was concerned, that little bit of evidence was the clincher.
>  
>  	'"Under the microscope it is quite characteristic of a cosrnic particle
and
>  one of my astronomer colleagues in the Arrnagh Observatory, lDr. Bill
Napier,
> 
>  who is an expert on meteorites, concurs with that opinion."
>  
>  	Mason said he thinks the meteonte may have weighed up to a ton and was a
>  particle from the asteroid Phaethon, a burned-out comet.
>  
>  	The fragment could be about 4.5 billion years old, whereas the bedrock in 
> the
>  Belleek area is only 350 million years old.
>  
>  	"It is a very exciting scientific find," Mason said. "We have checked the
>  international literature and there are no samples of this particular meteor
>  shower hitting the earth. If we can find more bits and pieces, our 
> colleagues
>  all over the world will be shouting for them for analysis.
>  
>  	"I have informed colleagues in Australia and in the Smithsonian in 
> Washington
>  and have sent little samples of the milk churn over to London to see if
they
>  can be analyzed too.
>  
>  	'We now think that we had a fairly high-entry object coming in from space 
> at
>  a high angle. The time of year it impacted is the best time to be hit by
the
>  Genninid meteor swarm, the tail of rubbish that follows around Phaethon."
>  
>  	Mason said that when the meteonte entered the earth's atmosphere it would
>  have been much bigger but had burned up and lost a lot of its mass before
>  impact.
>  
>  	'what actually hit the ground was anything from 20 centimeters to a meter
>  across," Mason said 'Y would go probably for the lower of those two
figures.
>  It exploded and we think all the tiny wee bits are scattered all over the
>  field."
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