[meteorite-list] When is a fall...?

From: Rob McCafferty <rob_mccafferty_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:23:41 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <168201.62529.qm_at_web55201.mail.re4.yahoo.com>

Falls are surely when recoverable material makes it to the surface.

It would be classified as a "find" if material is recovered but the fireball was not witnessed. This suggests serendipitous discovery but is obviously not always the case (Antarctica and hot desert "finds" are the result of deliverate search efforts but in most cases, the fall obviously occured many years ago. The geology of these areas makes sucess more likely, perhaps, vastly so but it is still a lucky dip).
For normal parts of the world, a search for new finds is one of hope.

It is an "observed fall" if it is eyeballed on the way down.
Following this, searchers KNOW there are samples in a specific area rather than hope. This improves the chance of recovering a sample tremendously.
I know freshness is important but if it were as easy to discover a new "find" as it was an "observed fall", the hunters wouldn't feel the need to descend on each new "observed fall" like a pack of wolves on a wounded caribou (OK, I know it's still not easy to discover an observed fall but I meant by comparison, like electromagnetism is easier than quantum electro dynamics...oh and sorry about the pack of wolves analogy, that makes hunters sound vicious and bloodlust driven)

I think "fall" has become synonymous with "observed fall" but nobody can really be bothered to say "observed fall" all the time.


When it's witnessed by photograph or radar but not actually seen, a search would still be targetted to a specific area determined from the observation. I'd still be classifying this as an "observed fall".

Some purists may balk at classifying a radar image as "observed" but there is a precedent (kinda)
Many of Saturn's and Uranus' moons have "Voyager 2" given as their discoverer. Some, were spotted on images only many weeks after the image was taken and credit goes to the automated robot rather than the image analyst. I think this is very much the same thing. If a machine can discover a moon, it can observe a fall.

Rob Mc




      
Received on Mon 27 Apr 2009 06:23:41 PM PDT