[meteorite-list] New Jersey Metal Object Identified As A Meteorite

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 18:27:44 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <200701080227.SAA25862_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/nyregion/06rock.html

What Landed in New Jersey? It Came From Outer Space
By KAREEM FAHIM
New York Times
January 6, 2007

It was not from the neighborhood.

The object that tore through the roof of a house in the New Jersey
suburbs this week was an iron meteorite, perhaps billions of years old
and maybe ripped from the belly of an asteroid, experts who examined it
said yesterday.

Tentatively named "Freehold Township" for the place where it landed -
and ruined a second-floor bathroom - the meteorite is only the second
found in New Jersey, said Jeremy S. Delaney, a Rutgers University
expert who examined it.

"It's a pretty exciting find," said Dr. Delaney, who has examined
thousands of meteorites. He said that the first New Jersey meteorite was
found in 1829, in the seaside town of Deal.

The meteorite now belongs to the family whose house it ended up in, said
Lt. Robert Brightman of the Freehold Township Police Department, adding
that they had asked not to be identified.

The family has not yet given permission for physical testing of the
meteorite, but from looking at it, Dr. Delaney and other experts were
able to tell that the object it had been part of - perhaps an asteroid -
cooled relatively fast.

It is magnetic, and reasonably dense, they determined. The leading edge
- the one that faced forward as it traveled through the earth's
atmosphere - was much smoother, while the so-called trailing edge seemed
to have caught pieces of molten metal.

In fact, Mr. Delaney said, it seemed very similar to another meteorite
fragment, the Ahnighito, now on display at the American Museum of
Natural History.

"This little guy is a lot like it," he said. "It's a good candidate for
the core of an asteroid."

And the scientists are hoping that the owners of the "Freehold Township"
will make it available for testing and public viewing, like the
Ahnighito, a 34-ton chunk of the Cape York meteorite found in Greenland.

Or, they could sell it.

"The worth of a meteorite like this is almost completely determined by
where it fell," said Eric Twelker, a geologist and a dealer in
meteorites, who buys and sells perhaps a hundred of them a month on
meteoritemarket.com, his Web site. He was speaking of the premium placed
on meteorites with a compelling back story, like the football-size rock
that crashed into a parked Chevrolet in Peekskill, N.Y., in 1992.
Received on Sun 07 Jan 2007 09:27:44 PM PST