[meteorite-list] Claimed pairings

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:16:09 +0200
Message-ID: <004101cb120d$1509cdf0$6502a8c0_at_name86d88d87e2>

Hello Greg (C.) and all,

While it's a little late to tell my thoughts in that pairing thread, I want
to give some remarks.

All in all, I think, we do need more patience.
Of course everyone wants to have all information readily and completely at
hand immediately.
But take that NWA 5400 as example. We're talking about a brand-new stone,
where some teams of scientists just finished the first comprehensive
analyses, and who will do certainly further research on that material,
a stone, with just was implemented into the Bulletin database. A stone,
where I don't know, whether the first abstracts are already published.
Material, where we don't know, whether additional pieces will surface - just
take a look to such meteorites like NWA 011 or the NWA 733 lunar, where
after 10 years after the first pieces arrived, still here and there some
additional specimens newly show up.
We're talking about material, where currently other scientists are working
on and haven't finished yet their work (very weird that some claim, that
these have an obligation to the private collectors here in that early debate
to share their preliminary results of their work in progress),
and whereon other teams will work on and publish in future.
Material, where the normal scientific discussion and the debate about the
interpretation of the results will have still to start..

..and we are crying here on the list like spoiled children: We want it all,
now, complete and hard and fast and once for all.

Patience!!!


Neither I don't fully agree with the apartheid of NWAs versus "historic"
meteorites.
I'm sorry, the data for one's very specimen in the collection of Allende,
Sikhote, Pultusk, Gibeon, Mocs ect are in principle not that much better
than these for NWA 869 or that silicated NWA iron.

These specimens are almost all identified not by scientific analysis, not by
a Geoff, a Steve, a Siggi, a Mike proudly posing behind the stone in situ on
a grotty and spotty daguerreotype.
And a King-label, a LaPaz-label, a Vienna or Paris label may ennoble the
specimen in complementing the pedigree, but in the end it says nothing about
the origin, which with such mass-specimens-showers was quite the same like
today with the NWA 869ers, namely that a dealer or private collector sold it
once to the museum/big-name-person based on pure personal assertion.

And I don't fully understand the pejorative remarks regarding the safety of
the meteorite collectors and meteorite collecting.

O.k. let's think to a signed leaf or a painting of a Dali, Picasso, Chagall
or an antiquity or an artefact
- which a collector or a museum wants to acquire - and there we're certainly
talking about other sums than with meteorites.

How are such objects authenticated?
They go to one or more experts. The expert looks at the object and based on
his education and experience he's giving a personal guess and you pay his
bill. Ready. And then the object is authentic.


What do we have with meteorites?

- Meteorites are classified by their measurable physical properties and not
by guesses.

- These authentications are done, especially if rarer types are involved, by
the best international scientists of that branch of science. Independently,
paid by the state. And often with more interesting types, this
classification is done by several teams of researchers, the cream of cream.
Papers are published and these meteorites are objects of further studies and
publications often for more than a decade.

- These new finds are independently and centrally registered with the
available data and published in the Meteoritical Database, for everyone
accessible. The MetSoc recognizes these meteorites, and that happens by an
international independent panel of top-notch scientists.
In most cases in the comprehensive inventory the main mass holder or the
finder is given, hence the origin of the material.
(Yes I know, it was mentioned here, that NomCom would have only a function
as a bookkeeper for the world inventory of meteorites. But remember e.g. the
discussions about Tafasssasset, neither would I believe, that NomCom would
ever recognize a classification of a metorite from Saturn or from the
Andromeda galaxy...).

- Whenever something goes wrong or doubts about the authenticity raise in
the exchange of material between collectors, dealers, institutes - one has
the efficient organisation IMCA to address to. And many, if not the majority
of the meteorite generators are meanwhile members there.

- Meteorite World is small, small amounts of the objects of desire - there
doesn't exist something like an "anonymous" lunar - and only very few people
are involved. Those people, trading with meteorites, do that based on their
reputation. The rules are strict. Sell once a fake and you are out. Forever.


To me that sounds ways better, than that what I do have regarding safety,
when I'm collecting baseball cards, fine arts, antiques, artefacts, coins,
fossils, minerals, furniture, jewels, precious stones etc.


Last thought.
Of course the find data and documentation in NWA-countries is insufficient
and unsatisfying.

But for me personally the inherent information these stones deliver about
the solar system and our World outweigh by far and manifold the lack of data
about their short period of time, they spent here on Earth.

And you have to see, what you have with them!

Greg, hadn't you recently a HOW, and LL, a part of a lunar?
10 years ago, you would not have been able to get such a stone at all, or
even to take part in a recovery of a new rare meteorite!
Mike neither could play with the weirdest messengers from the most exotic
corners of the asteroid belt. And with his cutting instructions he wrote, he
probably would have given also a plan for arm-clamps for not trembling while
cutting the most ordinary ordinary chondrites, cause they were then so rare
and expensive.
And no boxes of chocolate for Melanie :-(

Sounds like Grampa telling stories from the war,
but it was just 10-15 years ago!

There, if you want to have such a thing like a new LL or a HOW you had no
other choice than to go to Libya and to hunt in the desert hoping to find
one day such a stone.
And if Richard wanted to touch a Moon, he would have to fly to a private
date with one of the very few persons, who had such things or he'd have to
kneel in front of the show case of a Haag begging for once touching a Moon.
Your house versus a gram of Moon, those were the deals.

And in general, these were quite boring times compared to today.
An eucrite, everyone had his Millbillillie but then?
Huh, 3 out of 4 eucrites today are still Millbillillies.
For the carbs, everyone had his/her Allende - and then?
Still today 19 out of 20 CV3s are an Allende...

So all in all - of course one can always discuss - but that wealth, the
availability, the NEWS - aaaand yes all about the money, money, money - the
so far unseen cheapness of meteorites -
the NWAs brought along with them,

that all makes it, in my eyes at least, quite nonsensical to complain about
the NWA-situation, doesn't it?

Let's rather enjoy the NWAs, as long as it is still possible.
The posterity will refer once to that period we're living in
as The Golden Age of Meteorites.

For sure.
 
Best!
Martin
Received on Tue 22 Jun 2010 09:16:09 AM PDT