[meteorite-list] Norwegian Meteorite Weight Guess

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Jul 19 05:33:00 2006
Message-ID: <00cd01c6ab16$4c670d10$305ee146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi,

    I don't have a good guess as to the total fall weight
and totally lack experience in chasing around after falls,
so naturally I tried to think of how to tackle the problem
starting from the corner of Complete Ignorance Ave. and
Why Not Blvd., which is a handy starting point, since
you'll find me hanging out there a lot of the time...

    My idea was to compare strewnfield size to total
recovered weight. The distance between finds in Norway
indicates a strewnfield at least 5 km long (or wide), so
I looked at recovered fresh falls that had strewnfields
that size.

    They run from 10 kilos recovered to 40 kilos recovered,
depending on the locale, terrain, who hunts, and so forth.
The median value was about 22 kilos... Finds (old strewnfields)
are totally different; a few stones are often all that is ever found.

    Now, there are plenty of excited people looking at THEIR
gardens, sheds, and yards for funny rocks. Soon, I expect,
there will be more expert scroungers at work, but here's the
problem: the Oslo Fiord.

    As fans of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy no doubt recall,
the fiords are the proud artistic touch of the Earth's Designer.*
A fiord is very deep, with steep walls. And stones have been found
on both sides of the Oslo Fiord, so much, if not most, of the
strewnfield is out-of-recovery-bounds, probably 60% to 75%
of it.

    That's 5500 to 6600 grams, so that's my guess, and frankly,
I think it's too high. Norway is not exactly a rock-free environment!
Yards, gardens are cleaned pieces of ground, but the rest is AS IS.
There's plenty of hide-outs for a shy meteorite, a hunter's challenge.
So, I'll cut my estimate in half. Now it's down to 2750 to 3300 grams.

    I'll quit guessing there. That pretty much guarantees that the total
will be a lot less or a lot more than my average value of about 3 kilos.
But don't worry. If things are on schedule, Norway should have another
big daylight detonator in about five weeks, just like the last pair...
Don't they always come in three's?


Sterling K. Webb
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* Slarty Bartfast. He got an award for the fiords...
Received on Wed 19 Jul 2006 05:32:47 AM PDT