[meteorite-list] Witnessed fall lunars?

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 15:46:05 +0200
Message-ID: <002301cb4e93$05265b70$0f731250$_at_de>

Hiho,

simply bad luck, but statistically not surprising.
We have only 1200 observed falls in total.
Each year - depending on the estimates - several thousands of meteorites
make it to the ground,
but only a few per mill of them are found afterwards.

(Ooops, did someone say, that meteorites aren't a renewable resource?)

>I also find it odd that no lunaites have been recovered from the
>Americas or Europe.

Because we haven't any deserts in Europe.
Here in Europe you can't even find any ordinary chondrites, if you don't
have any hints, that one has just fallen or that once one was found before
in the very area, you're searching in.

>from the
>Americas

Cause they don't stick to a magnet ;-)

Nooooooo, it's just a question of time.

It's true, that debris ejected from the Moon-Earth-system is caught with
time to a much higher percentage by Earth again than e.g. ejecta from Mars,
but that says nothing about the absolute frequency of such ejecting events.

Nevertheless lunaites were falling, are falling, will fall.
Best proof are the lunaites we already have.

I think, the difficulty is simply to match them in the very field.
Some lunaites tend not to develop black fusion crusts, but rather
transparent or greenish ones,
and they are often very difficult to tell apart from terrestrial rocks, once
after they have lost their crust by weathering or got covered by desert
varnish.

Note that all lunaites so far were found in cold or hot deserts.
But with the Martians e.g. it isn't much different, with the exception of
Governador Valadares
and with Lafayette, (an orphan without coordinates, found in the collection
of the Purdue university).

So only a little patience is necessary.
To find a lunaite one needs in first line: Happy hunters & muuuuuuuch time.


Much more astonishing for the people is,
that regarding the stats of the recent 50 years, Australia would be expected
to have nowadays not only a single lunaite of 19g, but several new finds and
some kilograms.

Though that effect is no natural one, but falls solely under the personal
responsibility of the leading Australian scientists, who supported and
support a legislation, which prevents any finds of new meteorites.
Perhaps one should really outline that once in the Australian media, to make
a try, that Australia could eventually still be rescued as a traditional
location for meteorite research, planetology and space science.
One could sell that relatively easily to the public as a no-cost-complement
to Australian space activities, which aren't that famous and with a pointer
to Antarctica, which financial efforts USA, Japan, China have to undertake
there to obtain meteorites (and wasn't Ansmet originally substantiated to be
an excellent (and the only) source for planetary materials, after the
cessation of the Apollo program?) Costs and tax money, which Australia
wouldn't have to bear, cause they have all that in front of the doorstep for
almost for free, if they only would allow the people to find.
(My hope is still, that meteoritics down there isn't so ailing yet, that one
day they will come to reason, before it's too late, although I fear, we will
have to wait for the next generation of Australian meteoricists (if there
still will be then some at all)).

Back to some stats, which are excellent (also without down-under).

>From Antarctica we have:
19 different lunaites total tkw: 4.7kg
There the finding continues!


>From Asia we have:
23 different lunaites total tkw: 10.5kg
There were some quarrels,
but I'm very confident, that searching can and will continue.


>From Australia we have
1 lunaite total tkw: 0.02kg
There, as told, it's a solely political decision,
whether and when the experts finally can start to recover lunaites.


>From the Americas we have
No lunaite
There I say, just some patience. Men at work.
Aren't you, Sonny, Rob, Bob, Ruben, Steve, Geoff and dozens others?
I'd expect the first lunar to be recovered there within maximum the next ten
years - in Northern America.
South America not so, there were some prohibitionist tendencies to observe
during the last years,
They haven't the deserts, respectively not so many hunters neither - so
probably they'd need an observed fall, which has to happen in one of the
meteoritically liberal countries there, else it most probably won't be
recovered.


>From Europe
Neither any lunaite.
No wonder, we Europeans always needed falls, else we can find only irons.
But it's unfair, you over there have every two years a Park Forest, a
Whetstone, a Buzzard Coulee, a Mifflin.
Since I get involved for the 1st time in meteorites, 30 years ago, I'm
waiting for a good shower in Europe.
Only one happened since, unfortunately in a country, where they dug out of
the relic box a law with the odor of stalinism, so that the tkw had to stay
tiny by law.
Meanwhile the collectors here are screwing automatic fireball cameras onto
their rooftops to pull more meteorites in!
   

And Africa
25-30 lunaites total tkw: 39.7kg
(depending how narrow one draws the circles around the pairing groups)
There the next years will be decisive.
Whether we can continue with Super-Mega-Para-Antarctica there
or whether we will get an Australia.
Currently there are liberal, but also extremist positions.
I think, a clear stand of MetSoc could be helpful, if not to say - would be
highly necessary -
and because North Africa hasn't a traditional meteorite research,
some of the countries with longer experiences could serve as models,
to avoid, that we get a similar catastrophe there, like it happened in Libya
or Australia,
and that maybe some countries there, which hysterically introduced a strict
prohibition could come to more reasonable and for their objectives more
serviceable solutions.

 
So the crown goes definitely to the people of North Africa. They're the
Emperors of the Moon.
I guess, for finding a new harmony, it could be a nice gesture, if MetSoc
would symbolically award one of their numerous medals and prizes to The
Anonymous Hunter in the Sahara :-)


Ah Mike,
Because you recently accentuated the important role also for science the
private sector is acting in,
Quick the stats....

Lunaites recovered by non-private teams:
(The 19 Antarctics + 1 from Oman (1 stone with black crust).)

20 different lunaites - total tkw: 4.9kg


Lunaites recovered by the private sector:

47 different lunaites - total tkw: 50.0kg


If we let aside the little Calcalong from 1980.

The publically funded sector needed for its
20 lunaites with 4.9kg 31 years.

The private sector needed for its
46 lunaites with 50.0kg 13 years.


(and with other rare types the ratios are similar).


Therefore, - even if one forgets for a moment that the private sector with
its mercantile background has such a much more higher cost efficiency and
helps to save tons of public funds,
- it makes absolutely no sense to demonize the privateers, nor even to
construct the bugbear of the private sector being a competitor to the
"official" sector.

And one thing has to be stated, because it is so often forgotten.
After so many institutes and museums took leave from their traditional
support of the private sector and didn't purchase nor swap anymore, no
matter due to which reasons or motivations,
the private collectorship largely and widely shoulders these years that
duty.
It's the private collector, who makes it possible by means of his purchases,
that such an immense wealth of new meteorites, like we had the recent 10-15
years now, could have been found at all and that these ended also in the
labs of the researchers and were greatly available to science.
That, incomprehensibly, I never read in any publication, neither in the
media.

So I guess, it is highest time, to turn back to a respectful "with each
other" again.


Huh Mike, I'm getting old. And therefore sentimental.
Lunaites.... LUNAITES!!!!
You know, as a little boy, when my parents weren't home, I pilfered their
lorgnette to "observe" the Moon in the evening sky. In kindergarten we
tinkered the lunar landscape with grey egg-cartons and the Eagle lander and
proudly carried our elaborates home. Almost each boy had at home these Lego
bricks and constructed with them (they were much simpler than today)
launching pads, Saturn rockets, space ship modules ect. Huh later, there
weren't such many tv-chanels, such things like the first landing of the
Columbia was an event, for which whole families assembled on the couches in
front of the screen to attend.
Again later, I read about Calcalong, there was no internet yet, I hadn't
even a picture from it. Grail, Excalibur,... Then much later, as a student,
DaG 400, DaG 262 - a dream! But only a dream, East or better to say West of
Eden. Unaffordable...

Often I'm missing that spirit today,

when I hear sometimes: phhhht another lunar, so what?
(huh, but I read in the Tower of London they had to install moving floors to
be able to get all the people guided through, who want to watch the tassels
there. A Koh-I-Noor, a Cullinan... a stone from Moon, a lunaite is 14,000
times more rare than such a diamond and 1 million times more
interesting...cause it's from Moon!).

And often I miss that spirit today
with the - I fear I have to borrow a word from Chicago-Steve - these
naysayers.

That's why I'm often so impatient and polemical, because I'm sooooo unable
to understand these Ebenezers and Ahabs, who are so eager and so blind, that
they want to ban all private activities or ownership. I can't understand,
what they aim to achieve with that. None but one single stone of a lunaite
was ever found by a science team outside of Antarctica, in Antarctica nobody
is disturbing them. But these trying to enforce total prohibition, they're
not going to Antarctica. I wrote "blind", because I can't see any advantage,
no goal in their efforts.
Where can be an advantage for them and for their countries - in no
meteorites being found anymore? They are so self-destructive...

Yes lunaites are striking, they own magic.

But the same is valid for all other types.


Where has all the spirit gone...

(Sterling will say:" Spirit? Spirit is currently on Mars!". Yes it is. But
also - what can we do so much more, with a Martian rock, if we have it here
in our labs on Earth!)


Huh, what a cheeeeesy, cheesy end
of that much too long & boring post.

And so what.
Off. Must go to fondle a lunaite.

Best!
Martin











-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Galactic
Stone & Ironworks
Gesendet: Montag, 6. September 2010 23:05
An: Meteorite List
Betreff: [meteorite-list] Witnessed fall lunars?

Hi List,

Is there a theory for why there have been no witnessed falls of lunar
meteorites? It seems odd to me that we have 4 Martian witnessed falls
(Shergotty, Chassigny, Zagami, Nakhla, and almost Lafayette) and no
lunars.

I also find it odd that no lunaites have been recovered from the
Americas or Europe.

It would seem that we are long overdue for two things to happen - for
a lunaite to be recovered in the Americas/Europe and for a lunar
witnessed fall. I wonder which will happen first?

Best regards,

MikeG
Received on Tue 07 Sep 2010 09:46:05 AM PDT