[meteorite-list] Latest Natural History mag highlights meteorites

From: Martin Horejsi <martinh_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:16:37 2004
Message-ID: <BB726D30.2F13%martinh_at_isu.edu>

Hi All,

The latest issue of Natural History (the mag of the American Museum of
Natural History in NYC) has several articles about meteorites including a
short interview with Denton Ebel, the curator of meteorites at the museum
(who in his picture is holding a Johnstown specimen of what I would guess
exceeds 10kg!).

In the interview, Ebel makes two comments that made me wonder...

First, he mentions that "Most meteorites are pieces of asteroids. A very few
are comets."

My question is which "very few"? I figure the usual suspects are Orgueil and
Murchison, but some comet experts I have talked with discount them and all
other meteorites as being of cometary origin.

The second thing that caught my eye was when Ebel said, "Chondrites are
really sedimentary rocks made up of dust and then chondrules, these round
droplets that were once molten and now are little beads, many containing
glass, which were present in the solar system."

My question here is if chondrites can really be considered sedimentary
rocks. It seems interesting that in one fell swoop (for me anyway), the once
illusive sedimentary meteorite now happens to be the most common type to
fall.

Any thoughts on this?

Cheers,

Martin
Received on Wed 27 Aug 2003 04:14:08 PM PDT