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Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, July 27-31

The 61st Meteoritical Society Meeting in Dublin begins in a week.
Abstracts for the papers are at
http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/meetings/metsoc98/pdf/sessguid.pdf
A few highlights:
John Wasson theorizes that Libyan desert glass might have formed from a
'Tunguska-like aerial burst'.  This burst would have been ten thousand
times larger than Tunguska.  
Derek Sears is advocating missions to return samples from asteroids.
A team including Don Brownlee used the Infrared Space Observatory to
perform spectroscopy on comet Hale-Bopp.  HB contains forsterite and
enstatite.  This adds to evidence that a class of interplanetary dust
particles, the pyroxene-rich class of anhydrous chondritic IDPs, are
cometary in origin.
Monahans was discussed by E.K. Gibson & a team.  It contains grains 0.5 to
3 mm in size of dark blue to purple halite.  This is the first report of
halite in an ordinary chondrite, possibly because of the quick recovery,
though it has been previously found in smaller grains in Murchison & a
ureilite.  The most likely origin for the halite is brines, indicating that
there might be fluid in the halite, and there might be aqueous alteration
of the stone.  

_______________________________________
Peter Abrahams   telscope@europa.com
the history of the telescope, the microscope,
    and the prism binocular

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