[meteorite-list] Lovina

From: abudka at nycap.rr.com <abudka_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 20:53:02 +0000
Message-ID: <20091209205302.SNG4D.269155.root_at_cdptpa-web23-z02>

I am new to this type of discussion and joined the list because of my interest in Lovina.

Reading Darryl Pitt?s posting in Vol. 75, Issue 17, I am prompted to comment.

As I opened ?Meteorite,? out flew the beautiful image of Lovina, with its very striking nickel-iron Widmanst?tten morphology, cubic symmetry dendritic structures! Here was additional, exciting evidence to confirm my insights that nickel-iron meteorites are primary crystallization structures!

1. While unusual ? but not unknown - in the meteoritics world, such structures are familiar to casting metallurgists. Show the Lovina image to a metallurgist or metallurgical engineer. Do NOT tell that person that it is a possible meteorite, but ask him / her to describe how that object could have formed. Then listen. You will hear the word ?casting.?

2. Core? What core? The concept of a meteorite parent body with a nickel-iron core is an old idea based on circular reasoning. Does anyone think that a meteorite parent body can break apart, send pieces of its core to Earth and that we are looking at nickel-iron meteorites that came to Earth without ever reaching the melting point of iron, 1538 ?C (2800 ?F)?

3. Calling Lovina?s structure ?ziggurat,? ?pyramidal,? ?pagoda,? ?octahedral? or ?Widmanst?tten,? is Nature?s joke of the simplicity / complexity of cubic symmetry!

4. When I was new to meteoritics years ago, I showed pictures of a potential meteorite to several meteoriticists. I was assured that this could not be a meteorite because it was vesicular, and meteorites are NOT vesicular. That proved to be incorrect because I have since seen images of vesicular meteorites, even nickel-irons.

5. An alternate interpretation of the meteoritic Widmanst?tten structure as a primary crystallization, 3-dimensional dendritic structure solidified under microgravity conditions is found at my website,

http://meteormetals.com/

For background on the circular reasoning behind how meteoritic Widmanst?tten morphology became the Widmanst?tten mechanism, click Learn More.

6. Is Lovina a meteorite or a meteor-wrong? Before that determination is definitively settled, we must have a new metallurgy for meteorites!

Phyllis Budka
Received on Wed 09 Dec 2009 03:53:02 PM PST