[meteorite-list] re: Shirokovsky

From: Paul Heinrich <lenticulina1_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:22:33 2004
Message-ID: <20030603012010.41216.qmail_at_web21410.mail.yahoo.com>

On Mon, 02 Jun 2003 22:19:42 +0300
Pekka Savolainen wrote:

>well, I still strongly belive, Shirokovsky is a
>man made one, perhaps not in purpose, but anyway.
>If you look the composition of Shirokovsky, it
>looks at least to me, itīs not volcanic origin.

The curious aspect of it being man-made is
that the estimated age of the olivine is 270
million years. Unfortunately, that is just a
guess as the K content of the Shirokovsky is
not really known. If it is in that sort of
age range, then it either some sort of natural
terrestrial rock or fabricated from a
natural peridotite as a component. It is
certainly not volcanic in origin, but, if
natural, might be some sort of weird ultramafic
rock.

I am curious what the reservior was originally
built for. If it is part of a nickel smelter or
similar processing plant, the Shirokovsky
pseudometeorite could simply be a piece of
ore (or slag?) that got lost at the bottom of
the reservoir. They might have had the bad
luck of finding a chunk of natural rock in
the vicinity of where the hole was reported in
the ice and jumped to a rather hasty and
incorrect conclusion that the fireball, hole
in the ice, and the chunk of rock were connected
to each other.

The stable isotopes, mineralogy of the olivine,
the lack of cosmic-ray tracks, and other characters
definitely argue against it being a meteorite.
It sounds like some sort of weird ultramafic Ni
ore. Could the Shirokovsky pseudometeorite be ore
dumped into the reservoir either from a nearby
smelter or barges that were onced shipped down
the river during Soviet times?

This might be a classic example of where people
needed to be careful about jumping to conclusions
before thinking everything through completely and
failing to completely test their ideas against
reality.

As a geologist, I would be interested in obtaining
a chunk of the Shirokovsky pseudometeorite, if
nothing else to figure out where it actually came
from. Even if it not a meteorite, the real
identity of it and where it came from is an
interesting mystery.

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA


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Received on Mon 02 Jun 2003 09:20:10 PM PDT