[meteorite-list] Portales Valley Classification Info

From: star-bits_at_comcast.net <star-bits_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue May 17 15:33:04 2005
Message-ID: <051720051932.2921.428A46EB0007FE5B00000B6922058864429C9B070DD39D0E9B9C_at_comcast.net>

<If this proposed reclassification happens, what does this say about the
original classification?>

Things are reclassified all the time. Mount Egerton was originally classified as a mesosiderite, it is now an aubrite. Yilmia was an EL5 and is now an EL6. There are lots of other examples. As more information comes in through more research or new improved equipment things change.

<Was it wrong?>

Absolutely not.

<Was it a rush to judgment?>

You obviously know nothing about David Kring to even think this question let alone ask it. He doesn't rush anything and if every "T" isn't crossed or "i" dotted it doesn't go out. It is one of the reasons the U of Arizona does so few classifications because he nails down every detail and it takes forever to get a classification out.

< Did they
not want to take the time out to study it enough to properly classify it
(lazy)? How could it go from an H6 ordinary chondrite to a "Portalesite,
H7, metallic-melt breccia (primitive achondrite)" Did it experience a
metamorphous between studies.>

What a judgmental load of crap this statement is. Not only was the classifier lazy, but also incompetent because he gave a classification that didn't match your views and some new proposed classification somebody called it 7 years later. Your implication the classifier was obviously incompetent or the stone metamorphosed between analysis’s is ridiculous.

<I did not call anyone "working" on it lazy, I asked why the original group
did not make up a new classification for this unique meteorite.>

Wrong. direct quote from Tom K March 2004 "I have to ask, was Portales Valley classified as a H6 ordinary chondrite because "they" were to lazy to make up a new classification?" Tom you make basically the same statement in this email saying the classifier was to lazy to do a proper classification. "Did they not want to take the time out to study it enough to properly classify it
(lazy)?"

<Apparently Alex Ruzicka, Marvin Killgore, David Mittlefehldt, and Marc Fries among others I am sure, could see this meteorite needed to be studied further>

What makes you thing the original classifiers don't continue to work on PV?

<If this reclassification does happen, I think my question back in March of
2004 is a fair and valid question, why was PV called a H6 ordinary
chondrite?>

Nobody has ever said it was "ordinary" including the classifiers. Both David Kring and Alex Rubin called it an H6 although with different qualifiers because according to the classification scheme in 1998 that is what it was.

<Astronomers are always being reprimanded for telling us a killer asteroid
is going to strike the Earth next year. They come out and say it before they
get all the information and when they finally do get all the information,
they look bad for jumping the gun.>

Wrong again. The astronomers post the information so other astronomers can look for the rock. It is the media that finds the information and mis-reports it and then blames the astronomers for the media's lack of understanding.

< A scientist came out and said PV was an
H6 ordinary chondrite. Now it looks like all the info might be in and
someone had jumped the gun. Do these two branches of science have to play by the same rules, find out all the info before you talk?>

"Jumped the gun"??? So at what point is it acceptable to you, Tom? Should the classification be published after the classification work is done OR do they have to wait for everybody all over the world to complete every single study that will ever be made on the meteorite and then pool the information decades later before anything can be published? The second alternative is certainly what you appear to be asking for.

--
Eric Olson                 Feeling cranky this morning.
ELKK Meteorites
http://www.star-bits.com

Received on Tue 17 May 2005 03:32:59 PM PDT