[meteorite-list] New Orleans Meteorite

From: MARK BOSTICK <thebigcollector_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Jun 17 16:43:09 2004
Message-ID: <BAY4-DAV142VAeEm5u700020995_at_hotmail.com>

Hello List,

Within a couple weeks the New Orleans meteorite will be making it's way to the market. The meteorite has not been classified yet, however it looks a lot like Bensour or Kilabo to me.

I imagine this was posted to the list about a year ago, but the BBC did a really good job on its article, by just quoting the homeowner and not putting in any price speculation or untrue facts. So forgive me for reposting it, if that is the case.

Here is a 64g fragment with sheetrock that was not water damaged.

http://www.meteoritearticles.com/colneworleans.html


Mark Bostick




BBC News
United Kingdom
Date: Monday, October 6, 2003
'A meteorite smashed through my roof'

The chances of being hit by a chunk of space rock are measured in the billions-to-one. Roy Fausset, 59, had the closest of escapes last month when what scientists now say was a meteorite crashed through his New Orleans home.
"I walked through my front door and it was like a mortar bomb had fallen on my house.
There was dust all over the floor of the entrance way and the two doors leading to a utility room and the powder room had been blown open.
There was ceiling debris everywhere. I thought it must have been a broken pipe, but there was no water.
As I was coming home, I'd noticed something on the roof, but had thought nothing of it. It turned out there was a hole the size of a basketball through the tiles.
Whatever it was, it had passed through the attic, then my daughter's bedroom, through the powder room and into the crawl space under the floor.
I thought it must have been some frozen waste that had fallen from a passenger airliner - they are carrying out improvements at our local airport, so planes have been diverted over our house.
I called the police. An investigator went down into the crawl space and he found some rock fragments. There are no rocks in New Orleans, it's all silt. He said: 'It's a meteorite.'
I took a sample over to the nearby Tulane University, where Stephen Nelson - the head of earth and environmental sciences department - examined it
He said the rock was rhyolite - which is found in Mexico and Texas. He thought it must have been thrown out of a plane by a vandal or become attached to a plane somehow and then fallen off.
But now, after further analysis, it seems it has a profile consistent with that of a meteorite. The police investigator was right.
I've collected up all the pieces. It's not a meteorite from Mars or Venus, which sell for $1,500 a gram. It probably came from an asteroid, so is only worth $3 - $10 a gram. It might help with the repairs.
But I don't care about the money. I'm just very grateful that no one was injured. We really dodged the bullet. If anyone had been at home, they might have been killed. I think just hearing the noise would have caused me to expire.
One of my neighbours was out in her yard with her children eating popsicles. They heard the impact and thought it was a car accident. If it had fallen 100 feet away, they could all have died.
I've been very disorientated by the whole thing, especially when I consider what a narrow escape we all had and what could have happened.
I keep asking: Why me? Maybe God was telling me something? I certainly went to church on Sunday and I will never mock Him as I did in my foolish youth.
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Received on Thu 17 Jun 2004 04:43:00 PM PDT