[meteorite-list] Meteorite Hits House In Louisiana

From: Robert Verish <bolidechaser_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:28:18 2004
Message-ID: <20031001001810.76864.qmail_at_web60306.mail.yahoo.com>

>From Mark Schleifstein's newspaper article:

"We found olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase and
troilite," a combination of minerals often found in
meteorites, said Stephen Nelson, chairman of Tulane's
earth and environmental sciences department.

Nelson used X-ray diffraction Friday afternoon to
double-check the type of individual minerals that make
up the rock. He had first identified the rock as
rhyolite, a form of volcanic rock found in Mexico and
south Texas.
---- End of Quote ----

RHYOLITE!!!

"olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase" - and he came up with
RHYOLITE!!!

Must be a misquote. How embarassing for all.

P.S. - What's the latest word on this fall? Haven't
heard that much about it.

Bob V.

------------------------------------------------
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-0/106464393133640.xml

HEAVENLY HOME WRECKER

Uptown resident finds his roof, floors ripped through
by fallen rock;
Tulane scientists say tests indicate rare, otherworldy
object: a meteorite

By Mark Schleifstein
The Times-Picayune (Louisiana)
September 27, 2003

When Roy Fausset walked into his Joseph Street home
after work Tuesday evening, he knew immediately that
something was very, very wrong.

"The powder room door was open and it looked like an
artillery shell had hit the room," he said.
   
Something had fallen with enough force to punch a hole
through the roof and two floors before coming to rest
in the crawl space beneath the house.

It was a sandy-colored rock that appeared to have been
burned around its edges. Preliminary tests by
scientists at Tulane University indicate this
particular rock came from outer space.

If so, that makes it an exceedingly rare phenomenon.
Meteorites enter the Earth's gravitational field with
some frequency; all but a tiny percent of them burn up
during their passage through the atmosphere -- what
are commonly called "shooting stars." So far as could
be determined, the Joseph Street landing was a first
for the city.

"We found olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase and
troilite," a combination of minerals often found in
meteorites, said Stephen Nelson, chairman of Tulane's
earth and environmental sciences department.

Nelson used X-ray diffraction Friday afternoon to
double-check the type of individual minerals that make
up the rock. He had first identified the rock as
rhyolite, a form of volcanic rock found in Mexico and
south Texas.

The minerals Nelson found don't automatically mean
it's a meteorite, he said, because they're also found
in the Earth's mantle, deep underneath the planet's
crust.

"But we don't commonly see pieces of mantle falling
out of the sky," he said.
"And the black crust, which I thought was a weathering
line at first, perhaps it's a fusion crust -- material
that melted as it passed through the atmosphere."

Nelson said the rock is known as a "stony meteorite,"
a type more common than the black, ironlike rocks that
have become the archetypal meteorites in the public
imagination.

Fausset said neighbors told him they heard what
sounded like a car crash just after 4 p.m., but they
didn't know it was his home being hit.

"One of my neighbors on South Tonti Street had two
children in her back yard, eating Popsicles, and they
heard a terrific noise," he said. "And a lady next
door to her heard it. She was indoors and ran out into
her back yard, but didn't see anything."

"But if it had hit 100 feet away in that back yard, it
could have killed one or all of those people," Fausset
said.

Finding the damage inside his home came as a shock, he
said: "We had just renovated the powder room and now
there was plaster everywhere. I looked up at the
ceiling and saw this big hole."

A quick check in the adjoining utility room revealed
another hole in the ceiling and what looked like a
broken ceiling joist.

"I went outside and looked up and about midway down
the front of the roof, there was a hole about the size
of a basketball," he said.

Fausset immediately called his insurance agent, who
suggested he check upstairs to look for any more
damage.

In his daughter's second-floor room, Fausset
discovered that something had smashed through the
ceiling there, too, and it had demolished an antique
wicker desk before cutting a neat hole in the
wall-to-wall carpet and the flooring beneath it.

Back in the first-floor bathroom, Fausset found
another hole leading through the floor to the crawl
space.

"That's when I called the police," he said. When
officers arrived, they found several chunks of rock
beneath the hole in the bottom floor that matched
fragments found in Fausset's daughter's room.

"I'm in shock," Fausset said Friday after learning the
rock had been identified as a meteorite. "Oh, that's
scary. I will certainly go to church this Sunday,
because the Lord was certainly sending me a message."

And the meteorite?

"I guess I'll go put it in my safe-deposit box, or
just frame it," he said.

. . . . . . .

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at
mschleifstein_at_timespicayune.com or
(504) 826-3327.


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Received on Tue 30 Sep 2003 08:18:10 PM PDT