[meteorite-list] Sky Falls on Nebraska Man

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Jul 6 14:55:56 2005
Message-ID: <200507061837.j66IbYT20463_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2005/06/30/top_story/extras/doc42c3529782b8d302103789.txt

Sky falls on Fairbury man
By JONNIE TAT'E FINN
Lincoln Journal Star
July 6, 2005

FAIRBURY - Brad Kinzie made a wish on a falling star last week.
Actually, he made two - after a close encounter with what he believes is
a meteorite. "It swooshed right over my head," Kinzie, 50, said
Wednesday at his home in Fairbury. "I shut my eyes when I felt its wind
push past me. I knew right away it was a falling star."

That was at 1:30 a.m. Friday. Kinzie was watering his front lawn.

"It's been so hot," he explained. "The grass gets more water when you do
it at night."

The quarter-pound object, which hasn't yet been analyzed by experts,
fell at about a 45-degree angle from the southwest and landed about 65
feet from Kinzie, he said. He marked off his position with a pinwheel
and planted a fake red flower where the specimen fell.

The rock, with its darkly colored pitted surface, is about 2.5 inches
long and 1.5 inches across.

"It still had a silver and reddish-orange glow to it when I checked it
out," Kinzie said. "So I left it where it was overnight - I wasn't going
to touch it. But I didn't sleep a wink."

That weekend, Kinzie told his two grandchildren about the close encounter.

"Michael said, 'Grandpa, you need to get a hold of those people at the
university,'" Kinzie recalled. "In a little hick town, you don't know
what to do with something like this."

On Monday, Kinzie called Martin Gaskell, an astronomy professor at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

"This is an extremely rare case," Gaskell said. "There are only a
handful of cases of this kind of close encounter. A chance of this
happening to any one individual is maybe one in 10 million or one in 100
million."

Without examining the specimen, Gaskell said it's hard to be 100 percent
sure if what Kinzie found was, in fact, a meteorite.

But there is strong evidence for it, the professor said.

"Well, it was a witnessed fall, though I doubt it was still glowing when
he found it. That was probably more psychological, I think," Gaskell said.

Meteorites stop burning about 10 miles up in the atmosphere but are
still hot when they land.

The object also has a strong magnetic pull and the physical
characteristics of a meteorite. "I imagine it's probably an iron
meteorite," he said.

Sam Treves, professor emeritus at UNL who Gaskell described as an expert
in meteors, will study the object. Treves was unavailable for comment
Wednesday.

In the lab, the rock will be sliced and etched with acid, which - if
it's a meteorite - will create crystalline structures, Gaskell said. "It
all has to do with the slowness at which the metals condense," he added.
"In space, this happens slowly."

If it is a meteorite, it could be worth a few thousand dollars, said
Erik Hubl, chairman of the Hyde Memorial Observatory Board. Hubl has
collected meteorites since the mid-1980s.

"Meteorites are definitely valuable and collecting them is for sure a
rare and obscure hobby," Hubl said.

Kinzie's first wish on the falling star - a wish about his family - has
already been granted, he said. So he'll likely keep the rock around
rather than take the money.

His other wish - which he wouldn't reveal - hasn't come true yet.

"I'm lucky it didn't hit my noggin," he said. "I'll take what I can get."
Received on Wed 06 Jul 2005 02:37:32 PM PDT