[meteorite-list] NYT story

From: Shawn Alan <photophlow_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 11:53:29 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <667682.50439.qm_at_web35401.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hello Martin

I would have to agree people have their own neish when it comes to meteorites and as you can see ordinary meteorites to you are not interesting. But to science ordinary or not, meteorites play a pivotal roll in the exploration of new discoveries of where we came from, who are we, where we are going, and these are questions we will continue to try to answer till we cease to exist. I see that NYT is banking off the scientific importance meteorites have for science and are banking off how they can get more readerships from an article about rocks from space. It says it all in the title?. Black-Market Trinkets From Space. That would get my attention even if it was not about space. It could even say Black-Market knitting trades, or Black-Market coin collecting trades. That phase will lure anyone into reading that article, which I have to say is bad reporting on their part but good for readership.

The real problem isn?t that we as a society have gotten bumber, it?s that our lexicon has changed and the way we perceive reality has shifted to more on glorifying the negative, glorifying corruption and focusing on tabloids that sensationalize GET RICH trends. NYT knew that a normal story about meteorites wouldn?t pull in readership, meaning the mass. How could they make a simple article seem more appealing to all and they found it. Corruption, stealing, illegal trading, Black-Market, makes for a good sci fi thriller, however the real picture on how meteorites are collected and used for science is false.

As you can see NYT isn?t a place for scholarly articles but a place to be informed on uniformed articles. As for the real trading that goes one I have to agree that what you said is dead on. The market isn?t made up of millions and billions of dollars to be had, but it?s made up of meteorites collected from around the world. These specimens from the far reaches of the dry desert sands, to the white snow caps of Antarctica, to locked up historic meteorites in institutions and museums all have a common goal, to progress science and the understanding of evolution of the universe. I do wish that the NYT hadn?t said what they said, but they did, and all we can do is move forward.

I like to focus on the positive side, even if it?s from the negative. I can say this, the article in NYT has brought the science and meteorite colleting world even closers, and by doing so, we as a group will have a stronger understanding where we stand when it comes to meteorites and the place they hold in the evolution of the universe.

Shawn Alan
IMCA 1633
eBaystore
http://shop.ebay.com/photophlow/m.html


[meteorite-list] NYT story
Martin Altmann altmann at meteorite-martin.de
Wed Apr 6 07:37:17 EDT 2011

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Hello Shawn,

I think one aspect in your thoughts isn't fully correct. Understandable, because you're occupied with historical meteorites.
Historical meteorites are by far the most expensive meteorites you can have. Why are they so expensive? Because of the poor availability.
Why is so few available - rrrrrright, because the very most of their tkws is locked away in institutional collections.
Hence they are not the problem, the researchers and scientists do already have them.
Shawn, this material stems from the times, where there existed not more than 2000-3000 meteorites on the whole World.

Times have changed. We have now a couple of tens of thousands meteorites more, within only 3 decades. The Antarctic ones and the desert finds.
Meteorite science, the advance in knowledge, the new results - that all is done by means of these new finds.
It's all about them.
And they don't cost a thing anymore. That black market, profit thing - it is a true sham debate, a discussion nobody in expert circles is having, but which is carried in only from laymen from outside.

You have to see the dimensions. Let me help you. Let's take the Bulletin Database.
I give you now a summary by types of all that what was found - in 35 years - by ANSMET, NIPR, PRIC, KOREAMET, EUROMET together.
And the same only for that what - in 11 years - was coming from NWA.
Only NWA, the couple of thousands of entries for the other Sahara finds (the DaGs, HaHs, SAHs, Acfers, Tanezroufts) I leave out, as well as the complete Oman (Dhofar, JaH, Shisr...). Only NWA:






Antarctica NWA

Acap/Lod 2.73 kg 25.18 kg

Angrites 0.02 kg 7.24 kg

Brachinites 0.25 kg 8.16 kg

Aubrites 5.37 kg 11.14 kg (still biased by some El Haggouina pairings)

Carbonaceous

CB 0.13 kg 0.90 kg

CH 0.21 kg 0.42 kg

CI 0.80 kg -

CK 4.50 kg 32.86 kg

CM 18.94 kg 5.98 kg

CO 36.10 kg 20.29 kg

CR 3.61 kg 10.85 kg

CV 15.64 kg 81.30 kg


Diogenites - 83.12 kg

Eucrites 47.97 kg 116.56 kg

Howardites 11.88 kg 32.63 kg

K-Chondrites 0.02 kg -

Lunar 5.43 kg 22.28 kg

Martian 27.80 kg 8.15 kg

Mesosiderites 34.06 kg 259.50 kg

Pallasites 202.47 kg 6.25 kg

R-Chondrites 1.38 kg 30.57 kg

Ureilites 16.31 kg 49.40 kg

Winonaites 0.08 kg 1.38 kg


For the irons, I'm too lazy, there we have more from Antarctica than from NWA,
And the ordinary chondrites.. well they are not so interesting and there are from Antarctica only 500 numbers with a larger tkw than 2.5kg.
Hence a few single tons from whole Antarctica
And anyway, to bring 1000 gallons of gasoline to the Pole costs as much to get a ton of ordinary chondrites from NWA delivered to the doorstep of the institute.

So you see, of what small quantities we're talking at all. Seen the weights and the volume of money.

Look the overall expenses for one single Antarctic meteorite season would easily have bought all that above listed desert completely.
And if one would be so kind to spend another years expenses, with that money one could install in each and every Sahara country an university meteorite department equipped with a microprobe and pay there two meteoricists for the next 50 years.

Money, profit motifs, that is a bugaboo of not so knowledgable people.
Compared to quite any other university research or museums collecting activities, we're speaking with meteorites about peanuts.
Neither any "black market" does exists, simply due to the lack of mass.

Those articles always suggest, that the private collectors would buy up all new finds before the scientists could do that.
Please Shawn - after Calcalong was forgotten, which two meteorites angered the scientists most? The two DaG-Moons.
Now see Shawn - still today - after so long times and these two rocks were everything else than of the size of a mountain,
you can still buy them without problems, and at a rate 200, 300 times lower than 15 years ago.

Look, Shawn, what was the most devastating article before that one now? It was, when Dr.Smith, the highest meteorite boss of the Commonwealth cried in BBC, that science wouldn't be able to compete with private collecting. Nja well, I would cry too if I would have bought the Ivuna main mass, because it was simply the most expensive meteorite specimen of the World of these years around. But I'd rather would have said: Girl, what are you crying, you could have bought so much fine desert instead.

Back to that NYT article - what is the name of that "journalist". Mr.Broad simply only would have had to go to the Natural History Museum in New York and if he have had a little talk with the meteorite curator there, Denton Ebel, he would have learned not only, that meteorite dealing and trade is as old as meteoritics, but also, that the main load of meteorites in the NY collection and the great stones and irons, the collection was founded with,
were simply purchased from a big meteorite dealer: Henry Augustus Ward. Half of his private collection - the other half plus before some more was purchased from the Field museum, which was founded hence also solely with purchased material. That Fields, where the curators seem to have a problem to purchase desert meteorites, because they think, meteorite dealing would be a new phenomenon and that in former times their meteorites had fallen from the sky directly into their stock. And Ebel would have him perhaps too, that for their crown jewel, the fat Cape York, they had paid a million USD to the owner.

These articles, that yelling, it comes always from single persons, mostly standing outside of meteorites. These are single opinions.
In fact the overwhelming majority of scientists, private collectors, hunters and dealers - they are all very content, how things are going with meteorites, because such paradisiac times never existed before.

Look Shawn, now that Dr. DiMartino. He is no meteoricists. He hasn't directly clues about that field, he is an astronomer.
And he is silly. If you look in the Bulletins, there you find, that he once purchased an eucrite in Algeria (and the Algerians made a much larger drama than the Egyptians) and there isn't listed his institute as holder of the stone, but he as private person.

Now back.
Look market, black market. These articles and those who are fanning the flames, they always try to raise the impression,
that millions of people after quitting time would go out and would dig up millions of meteorites, selling them for billions of dollars.

They want to create a problem, where no problem is at all.
(Why they are doing that? I can imagine).

And that is the dangerous thing. Laws are made by politicians and administration. They read that bullshit in NYC, New Scientist, BBC..
and think - uuuuh - there seems to be an urgent problem, we have to do something!

Of course - all people occupied with meteorites know, that this is a titanic humbug - but they can't know it.

Profit. Shawn, I never met a person, who became wealthy during the last 10 years in dealing with meteorites.
The times are long over and gone. Look today, we all, from the ominous goatherd up to the collectors who are financing that all,
we made it possible that any provincial university or even college today can make serial examinations on such rare classes like mentioned above and that on more different samples, as they would get from the Antarctic leaning sytem, cause there weren't found so many.

Of course Shawn, here and there might be curators moaning about having no budgets, but that's their job, to get things straight.
Because most institutes have their budget in best order.
And I always recommend, just browse a little bit around and check the budgets not only of meteorite institutes, but for other research projects and check the purchase budgets of other, also small museums, galleries and collections.
And check the prices of the specimens on the major arts fairs.
You will find out, that the annual World meteoritic turnover doesn't exceed the prices of one or two or high-end artifacts or pieces of art.

So that debate is vain.


More important are to answer the questions. If one would accede to the wishes of these yellers and if one would introduce such laws, what would that bring for an improvement for these yellers?

Where would be the advantage?
Would their budgets grow then?
Would be meteorite then become cheaper?
Would then more meteorites found on Earth?
What would that mean for the recovery of the rare and scientifically especially interesting types?
Would then end more material in the labs and national collections?
Would you have then still that influx of material for free due to the classification process system?

THOSE are the questions to be answered, before one thinks about banning all commerce.

And partially they are already answered. In Australia. In Oman. In Libya. In South Africa. In Algeria.


Shawn - one can like it or not - it has proved that there is simply and by far no such economic and efficient way for meteoritics to get the objects for their research - than to buy them from the professional private specialists.

Best!
Martin
Received on Wed 06 Apr 2011 02:53:29 PM PDT