[meteorite-list] Rock Discovered in New Hampshire A Meteorite?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Apr 29 12:46:33 2005
Message-ID: <200504291628.j3TGScu08496_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=54008

Rock discovered in Manchester may be meteorite
By RILEY YATES and CAROL ROBIDOUX
Union Leader (New Hampshire)
April 29, 2005

MANCHESTER - What's grayish black, about the size of a baseball and
falls from the sky when nobody's watching?

Denise Lavoie isn't sure, either, but she's looking for someone who can
confirm her theory that the craggy rock that landed next to her
mother-in-law's rose bush the other day was a remnant from the recent
Lyrid meteor shower that has had star-gazers from across the country and
around the world calling 911.

"As soon as I saw it there I knew what it was," Lavoie said yesterday of
the rock she's been keeping close tabs on since it landed about five
feet from her in-laws house at 586 Cilley Road.

Her mother-in-law, Donna Boucher, said the rock, discovered Wednesday,
wasn't there over the weekend because that's when she planted the rosebush.

At first Boucher thought the one-pound UFO might be a lump of coal or
maybe something that was thrown there by a neighbor. She said it reminds
her of rocks she would see in Reno, where she lived for 27 years.

"I'm just looking for validation of what it is," said Boucher.

Eberhard Moebius, a professor of physics at the University of New
Hampshire, said there are two kinds of meteors: ones that are stony and
ones that are made of iron, nickel and other metals.

That a meteorite would bear some resemblance to lava is not surprising,
he said. "If a meteorite really falls down and lands, it has gone
through the Earth's atmosphere. And it burns during that."

Moebius said Boucher and Lavoie would do best to show their specimen to
scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in
Cambridge, Mass. They would be able to say whether it was a meteorite.

"Certainly that is possible and that has happened," Moebius said. "But
to say that positively, one would have to see it."

So far, everyone who's seen the rock believes it to be otherworldly,
Lavoie said.

"I took it to work and everyone was saying we could probably get money
for it," Lavoie said. "My brother-in-law is going to make a nice box for
it and we're going to put the date on it, and where it was found. Until
then, I'm keeping it close to me."
Received on Fri 29 Apr 2005 12:28:36 PM PDT