[meteorite-list] Meteorwrongs and Meteorites

From: Carl Agee <agee_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 10:41:59 -0600
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=XN0BozxDc=aj3yPsBoYfUh8zXwg_at_mail.gmail.com>

My take on this is the following. Most people who come to us with a
suspect meteorite are for some reason expecting that identification
costs us nothing, and that we can glance at sample and give quick
answer. So when they go to an average geology department and get a
"free" meteorite screening they may often get what they pay for --
someone's best guess -- often of dubious merit. Of course there are
many samples that are so obviously meteorwrongs that a quick glance is
all that is needed. But - I would never tell someone they have an iron
meteorite before I had at least run an EDS analysis on it for Fe and
Ni. And that's just the start -- if you want to know what kind of an
iron -- well that's a lot more work still! But of course not everyone
has an SEM in their basement. And guess what? These instruments cost
money, and the technicians who keep them running are paid salaries. As
for stones, yes, I can tell you fairly quickly, running a calibrated
electron microprobe, if your sample is a eucrite, ureilite, lunar,
martian -- or a just terrestrial basalt. So this is the dilemma that
we often face: definitive answers usually take time, money, and
expertise -- there is no free lunch for good data.

--
Carl B. Agee
Director and Curator, Institute of Meteoritics
Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences
MSC03 2050
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque NM 87131-1126
Tel: (505) 750-7172
Fax: (505) 277-3577
Email: agee at unm.edu
http://epswww.unm.edu/iom/pers/agee.html

Received on Thu 21 Apr 2011 12:41:59 PM PDT