[meteorite-list] Doubts Cast on Kansas Meteorite

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Oct 15 23:23:17 2006
Message-ID: <200610160323.UAA20852_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/15755710.htm

Doubts cast on meteorite
By KEVIN MURPHY
The Kansas City Star
October 14, 2006

The object beneath a south-central Kansas farm field appears unlikely to
be a meteorite, according to readings from special detection equipment
taken Friday.

Meteorite hunters and scientists are using NASA-leased
ground-penetrating radar devices to examine several spots on a farm
between Haviland and Greensburg, Kan., where meteorites might be buried.
A metal detector had earlier found something that measured 12 by 18
feet, but apparently it is not a single object, meteorite hunter Steve
Arnold said.

"It's not looking monster huge," Arnold said. "It appears to be multiple
pieces of something."

The "something" could be several smaller meteorites or some sort of
debris, Arnold said. In the past, Arnold has found horseshoes, steel
wagon wheels, even a tractor engine. Last year, however, Arnold
unearthed a 1,400-pound pallasite meteorite that was the largest of its
type ever found.

The current search for meteorites is part of a test that NASA's Johnson
Space Center in Houston is doing of the radar equipment, which can
produce images of underground objects and formations. Scientists said
the testing could lead to use of similar equipment on Mars.

The Kansas meteorite search has also drawn the interest of the Houston
Museum of Natural Science, which has a film crew doing a program on
meteorite searches and digs. The museum would like to put a newly found
meteorite on display.

Arnold said several sites would be dug Monday. Backhoes are used to
reach the objects six or seven feet below ground. The object that had
measured especially large also will be dug up, Arnold said, even though
it may not be of the size his early metal detection indicated.

"You always want something huge,' Arnold said, "but you can't really
control that."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4258636.html

Meteorite may point to an even larger find
By MARK CARREAU
Houston Chronicle
October 14, 2006

Meteorite hunters from the Houston Museum of Natural Science and other
Texas locations found a prize meteorite in a soggy Kansas wheat field on
Friday, one that could be a centerpiece of a museum exhibit next year.

But scientists also are checking the possibility that a tantalizingly
large underground object, thought to be 12 by 18 feet, at the same site
is a meteorite of record proportions.

After digging 18 inches down near the large mysterious target, the
meteorite hunters instead discovered several inches of rusty steel
cable, according to expert Steve Arnold.

"The whole thing could be cable, though that is weird for me to think. I
just don't know," said Arnold, who reflected on his 15 years of
prospecting for meteorites.

"Much of the time you end up with farm implements or junk, what we
affectionately call 'meteor wrongs.' You have meteorites and you have
meteor wrongs," he explained.

The Brenham "fall," an area named for a former post office in Kansas,
was first noted more than a century ago by Indians who gathered small
pieces of meteorite scattered across the prairie.

Houston's museum already has a foot-long section from a windfall
discovery of new pieces of the Brenham meteorite. It is tentatively
scheduled for unearthing on Monday.

The meteorite, a combination of iron and rock called Pallisite, could
become a featured star in a museum exhibit on asteroids, comets and
meteors for the fall of 2007.

"We will have a rock to bring back to Houston," Carolyn Sumner, the
museum's chief astronomer, said late Friday from the site in southwest
Kansas.
Received on Sun 15 Oct 2006 11:23:14 PM PDT