[meteorite-list] Just Another Question

From: Mark Crawford <mark_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 07:24:13 -0400
Message-ID: <20080530072413.txkgj9rosoo4oso4_at_annasach.net>

A related question I pondered a while back: How big does an object
need to be to be a 'parent body'? Is the meteorite ever the full
remnant of the PB?

In other words, can something be big and coherent enough to survive
passage through the atmosphere and produce a meteorite, which hasn't
previously been part of a much larger body?

My (rather ill-educated) guess would be that candidates would be very
primitive and undifferentiated, with a very pretty low density.

Mark


Quoting Jeff Grossman <jgrossman at usgs.gov>:

> Alan Rubin and I grappled with this issue in our article in Meteorite!
> 10 years ago, "What is a meteorite? The pursuit of a comprehensive
> definition." We wanted a definition that would exclude things like
> tektites from being called meteorites. Our definition then said that,
> to be called a meteorite, an object had to escape the dominant
> gravitational influence of its parent body.
Received on Fri 30 May 2008 07:24:13 AM PDT