[meteorite-list] Wanted: Meteorites from Mercury

From: Michael Mulgrew <mikestang_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2012 18:23:05 -0800
Message-ID: <CAMseTy10sxbj2GHtuwSi+-q9CfoGn7UWUomGgv7_5GPvrL0Lcw_at_mail.gmail.com>

List,

I've also wondered on Mercurian meteorites, and I know there is a
theory that Mercury was involved in a large collision early in the
development of the solar system, and that this collision blasted off
the entire outside of Mercury leaving behind the planet we know today.
 I've pondered that it may be possible that some of this material that
made up something like 40% of Mercury pre-collision could be
responsible for some of the classes of meteorites today that we know
come from large, differentiated parent bodies, but do not know what
those bodies could be, i.e. Angrites.? If any of that pre-collision
Mercury crust and mantle is out there would we even have a way to
relate it back to the Mercury of today?? We may never know.

Regards,
Michael in so. Cal.

On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 1:44 PM, Sterling K. Webb
<sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> You may or may not remember that what made
> possible the positive identification of Martian
> meteorites AS Martian meteorites was that we
> had samples from the Martian surface.
>
> No, not rock samples, nor any returned samples,
> but the isotopic composition of rare gases in the
> Martian atmosphere, which made a distinctive
> and unusual signature (particularly for Argon).
>
> The SNC's shared this unique signature. It was
> like a fingerprint. And possible only because we
> had a lander on the surface.. Mercury has no
> atmosphere of any consequence and we have
> no lander there.
>
> It's always possible that our present sensing
> capacity will turn up something as definite, but
> I can't think of what it could be. Believe me, I've
> tried.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Galactic Stone & Ironworks" <meteoritemike at gmail.com>
> To: "Stuart McDaniel" <actionshooting at carolina.rr.com>
> Cc: <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>; "meteoritelist meteoritelist" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2012 2:54 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Wanted: Meteorites from Mercury
>
>
>> Hi Pete and List,
>>
>> There is really no evidence that supports the Mercury-angrite
>> connection. ?However, if a meteorite from Mercury is ever confirmed,
>> it is expected to be similar to angrites. ?Because angrites are so
>> unusual (in comparison to other meteorites) and they possess
>> properties that would be expected from a Mercury meteorite, they are
>> the leading candidates. ?But as far as I know, nothing definitive has
>> ever come to light that makes a solid connection between angrites and
>> Mercury (or any other parent body).
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> MikeG
>>
>> --
>> *************************************************
>>
>> Galactic Stone & Ironworks - Meteorites & Amber (Michael Gilmer)
>>
>> Website - http://www.galactic-stone.com
>> Facebook - ?http://tinyurl.com/42h79my
>> News Feed - http://www.galactic-stone.com/rss/126516
>> Twitter - http://twitter.com/galacticstone
>>
>> ***************************************************
>>
>> On 1/8/12, Stuart McDaniel <actionshooting at carolina.rr.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> That is what was mentioned in the article.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Stuart McDaniel
>>> Lawndale, NC
>>> Secr.,
>>> Cleve. Co. Astronomical Society
>>> IMCA #9052
>>>
>>> http://spacerocks.weebly.com
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Pete Pete
>>> Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2012 3:12 PM
>>> To: baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov ; meteoritelist meteoritelist
>>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Wanted: Meteorites from Mercury
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi, All,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I know there's been only scattered remarks about the Messenger mission, but
>>> is the current consensus that angrites do not originate from Mercury?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Pete
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov
>>>> To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>>> Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 10:20:11 -0800
>>>> Subject: [meteorite-list] Wanted: Meteorites from Mercury
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/Wanted-Meteorites-from-Mercury-136803313.html
>>>>
>>>> Wanted: Meteorites from Mercury
>>>> By Kelly Beatty
>>>> Sky & Telescope
>>>> January 6, 2012
>>>>
>>>> During a recent science conference discussing Messenger's results from
>>>> Mercury, investigator Shoshana Weider (Carnegie Institution of
>>>> Washington) commented, "Short of landing on the surface, picking up a
>>>> rock, and bringing it home, the instruments on Messenger that
>>>> characterize chemistry are the best we're going to get."
>>>>
>>>> Well, Shoshana, you might still get to hold such a rock someday.
>>>>
>>>> According to a 2008 analysis
>>>> <http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.4038.pdf> by Brett Gladman
>>>> and Jaime Coffey (University of British Columbia), chunks of Mercury
>>>> should be lying somewhere on Earth right now. The dynamicists conclude
>>>> that 2% to 5% of the debris blasted by impacts off the surface of
>>>> Mercury at or above escape velocity (2.6 miles per second) should reach
>>>> Earth within 30 million years.
>>>>
>>>> Their numbers suggest that Mercurian meteorites should be roughly one
>>>> third as common as those from Mars, for which the count now stands at 60.
>>>> Gladman conservatively suggests that at least a half dozen stones should
>>>> be
>>>> lying around somewhere on terra firma.
>>>>
>>>> Meteorite collectors would value a Mercurian meteorite above all others,
>>>> likely fetching $5,000 or more per gram, so they've been on the lookout
>>>> for one. A few years ago, prior to Messenger's arrival, meteoriticists
>>>> had speculated that the best existing match to Mercury were a rare
>>>> handful of ancient, basalt-rich stones known as angrites
>>>> <http://research.jsc.nasa.gov/PDF/Ares-1.pdf>.
>>>>
>>>> But even before Messenger's arrival, ground-based astronomers had
>>>> concluded that Mercurian surface rocks contained very little iron -
>>>> strange indeed, given that the innermost planet has an iron core that
>>>> takes up 80% of its diameter and more than half of its volume!
>>>>
>>>> "At that time," comments geochemist David Blewett (Applied Physics
>>>> Laboratory), "people were expecting Mercury to have a composition more
>>>> like a lower-iron version of the lunar highlands. We now know that it's
>>>> much different than that." After nearly a yearly scrutinizing the planet
>>>> from orbit, Messenger has confirmed that iron is in short supply at the
>>>> surface.
>>>>
>>>> Instead, the compositional clues suggest that a Mercurian meteorite would
>>>> be an igneous rock - or perhaps a fused breccia of different rock types -
>>>> rich in magnesium and volatile elements (especially sulfur and potassium).
>>>> This closely matches the composition of another rare meteorite group,
>>>> the aubrites. Also known as enstatite achondrites, aubrites are igneous
>>>> rocks dominated by the iron-free mineral enstatite (Mg_2 Si_2 O_6 ).
>>>>
>>>> But aubrites aren't from the innermost planet. For one thing, they're
>>>> too reflective - anything coming from Mercury would be much darker,
>>>> tinted by some yet-to-be-identified compound that's seen widely
>>>> <http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14492> in Messenger's
>>>> images. It might also smell faintly of sulfur, appear heavily shocked,
>>>> exhibit significant exposure to cosmic rays, and might even be slightly
>>>> magnetic. Such characteristics would certainly have come to the
>>>> attention of hunters and collectors, and it's safe to say that none of
>>>> the world's 40,000 well-documented meteorites are from Mercury.
>>>>
>>>> Yet dynamical probabilities argue otherwise, so why haven't such samples
>>>> been found? Gladman and Coffey didn't address how chunks of rock might
>>>> get blasted off the Mercurian surface, only that the high collision
>>>> velocities of asteroids and comets should make it easy to do so.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe the launch mechanics aren't understood well enough, suggests Jay
>>>> Melosh, an impact specialist at Purdue University. "Perhaps at the very
>>>> high speeds required for direct transfer, the fragments are simply too
>>>> small," he says. "These ejecta have to be launched from the surface
>>>> very close to the impact point - and perhaps our current models do not
>>>> give very good results here." However, Messenger finds that big impacts
>>>> on Mercury are accompanied by clusters of secondary pits, created by
>>>> tossed-out debris, that are generally much larger - not smaller - than
>>>> those around comparable lunar craters. "This fact is one of the current
>>>> big puzzles about the Mercurian cratering record," Melosh concedes.
>>>>
>>>> And so the search goes on for what will almost certainly be the most
>>>> celebrated meteorite discovery since the finding of stones blasted from
>>>> surfaces of the Moon and Mars a few decades ago.
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!
>>>> Visit the Archives at
>>>> http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html
>>>> Meteorite-list mailing list
>>>> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>>> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!
>>> Visit the Archives at
>>> http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html
>>> Meteorite-list mailing list
>>> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>>>
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!
>>> Visit the Archives at
>>> http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html
>>> Meteorite-list mailing list
>>> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!
>> Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html
>> Meteorite-list mailing list
>> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!
> Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Received on Sun 08 Jan 2012 09:23:05 PM PST