[meteorite-list] Mercury Fragments on earth (not)

From: Shawn Alan <photophlow_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 13:30:39 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <1312489839.15572.YahooMailClassic_at_web160118.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>

Philip R and Listers,

Philip R thank you for the Brett Gladman and Jaime Coffey paper from Meteoritics and Planetary Science on possibility of meteorites originating from Mercury. I have to say what I read sounds intriguing and give more hope to the idea we collectors do in fact have mercurian meteorites cause I know might have some :) well I hope. Down below is a section taken from the article that explains in better detail about which meteorites might be from Mercury....

"The calculations presented here indicate that mercurian meteorites reaching Earth would most likely (1)
have preatmospheric
radii of order 1 decimeter and 4pi
CRE ages (for the transfer itself, as opposed to
a potentially longer nearsurface
2pi
CRE residence age) of 530
Myr. This is similar to martian
meteorites with the interesting difference that the long CREage
martian meteorites are reduced by
collisional destruction in the main belt (Gladman 1997) whereas mercurian meteorites may be more
limited by PR drag. Our calculations show that the atmospheric entry speeds of mercurian meteoroids
will be faster (1530
km/s) than is common for martian meteoroids, for which 1015
km/s is typical; the
mercurian entry speeds are more in line with `normal' chondritic meteorites and thus the lower ablation
concluded from cosmicray
records and explained by lowspeed
arrivals (Gladman 1997) should be
absent for mercurian meteorites. Although unlikely that sufficient fireballs will be observed, incoming
mercurian meteorites will exhibit a strong preference to fall in the morning rather than afternoon.
Lastly, the common low masses of lunar meteorites will be rare in the mercurian case since cmscale
mercurian ejecta is rapidly depleted by PR drag."

Source:http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.4038.pdf (pg7)

All I can say if your you early birds keep an eye out up in the sky for us night owles like :)


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


 
 
[meteorite-list] Mercury Fragments on earth (not)Philip R. Burns pib at pibburns.com
Thu Aug 4 13:45:46 EDT 2011


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At 11:07 AM 8/4/2011, Edwin Thompson wrote:


>A very compelling poster was presented at a Met Soc meeting back in

>the 90's showing a very plausible scenario that might have produced

>meteorites on Earth having come from the surface of Mercury.


Brett Gladman and Jaime Coffey from the University of British
Columbia discussed the possibility of meteorites originating from
Mercury in a 2009 paper from Meteoritics and Planetary Science. A
prepublication copy is available online:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.4038.pdf

They concluded that there should be a number of meteorites of
Mercurian origin already here -- around 1/3 to 1/2 the number which
originated from Mars.

The Messenger spacecraft should provide better information about the
possible composition of Mercurian meteorites.

David Weir offers a useful summary of the subject of Mercurian meteorites at:

http://www.meteoritestudies.com/protected_MERCURY.HTM


-- Philip R. "Pib" Burns
pib at pibburns.com
http://www.pibburns.com/






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Received on Thu 04 Aug 2011 04:30:39 PM PDT