[meteorite-list] Holbrook under the microscope...

From: Nicholas Gessler, Ph.D. <nick.gessler_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:24:43 -0400
Message-ID: <DB5D1DA7A59B414CA964A5C17C444EAA07A229CACA_at_EX-MAILBOX-04.win.duke.edu>

Hello Jim, et al,

Yes, I would recommend a microscope. There should be plenty of "inspection scopes" on the
used surplus market. You might find a good one on eBay, but they show up in high tech swap
meets if you have on in your area. Los Angeles and San Diego have them...

How small is your tiny iron? Can you post a photo? With a microprobe you can analyze almost
anything you can see in a compound microscope. It's only semi-destructive, since it drills an
extremely small hole into the specimen. I wonder if your "iron" is from a separate fall, or perhaps
an iron clast from Holbrook that broke up high in the atmosphere and became ablated and crusted
on its way down?

I don't think anything has changed as a result of anthill searches. I do think that it would be
interesting to extend strewn field research towards millimeter and smaller residue from
witnessed falls. After all, the fallout from the smoke trails must have come down somewhere,
and unlike big fist-sized finds which are relatively rare, there should be gazillions of these
tiny fragments and condensates.

But this will take lots of soil samples and lots of effort (plus lots of probe time).

Maybe I'll look into this...

Cheers,
Nick


Nicholas Gessler, Ph.D.
nick.gessler at duke.edu
http://isis.duke.edu/gessler
Research Associate
Information Science & Information Studies
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Received on Thu 21 Jul 2011 05:24:43 PM PDT