[meteorite-list] The Life of Slag/Slag-glass ...was What is this?

From: MEM <mstreman53_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 02:11:38 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <1371460298.73520.YahooMailNeo_at_web142402.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>

I don't know which is a sadder example of failed science education: some "NASA" "water cooler" engineer issuing a positive ID/letter of authenticity for something impossible and under the color of authority of NASA--(Another waste-fraud and abuse complaint to be made) OR the entire met central membership and not one poster can recognize silicate ==> slag <===on sight.? ( I am not saying that "everyone" should be a slag expert just that there should be more experts with critical vs casual identification skills given all the talent represented here.)

A bit more than a few would-be meteorite experts need to spend an extra 3 hours of field time getting to know ==> slag <== because I can't think of a location in the lower 48, nor in all of Europe that would be farther than 3 hours max from a graveled path or railroad that doesn't have tons of it on the surface.? ( I've found slag in Alaska but not in Hawaii where natural slag is known as pahoe-pahoe)

I was explaining the multitude of reasons that slag is found virtually everywhere--including Revolutionary and Civil War foundries, long left abandoned to rural pastures when I had someone once argue that his specimen couldn't be slag from a rail road because there had never been a railroad within miles.? I then showed him on the topo map where an abandoned rail right-of-way was less than 200 yards from the dirt road he found his "meteor-wrong" along.?

Ever since the industrial revolution, the smelting industry has been finding every possible way to get rid of it. I know of whole islands and whole mountains of slag. Green glassy foamy slag is the most common owing to the buoyancy of silicated minerals rising to the top of the mix in any ore smelting. Depending on the pre-processing inefficiency, there can be lots more slag than metal on each run--hence the need to farm the stuff off on others being thankful they had a use for it!? Ballast for road beds, dumping it off shore( See The Great Lake Emerald Meteorite saga) or using it for shoreline erosion control or using it as gravel for paving are just a few.? It is literally everywhere.?


It just takes some experience and exposure to become a slag expert.? I know first hand after sending some charcoal bearing volcanic glass to the Smithsonian for radio-carbon dating a hither-to-unknown volcano from middle Tennessee.? Mr Harold Banks returned the sample with a nice letter telling that 12 year old that his slag wasn't suitable for dating.? I later found that I had pulled it from a Civil War Cannonball foundry.? Point: slag is everywhere even if the original source is long gone. The slag last forever for human understanding, even across cultures and ages.? There are pre-historic slag piles on Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Egypt etc.? It is a fallacy of logic to believe that something "can't be slag" because you don't know exactly how it came to be in a location. Seems that to believe it therefore "came from space" seems to be the corollary which always follows.

The most frequent meteor-wrong brought in for identification, we should all get to know it by characteristic and by sight so that the kinds of disruptions we see every few weeks by the novice insisting that it couldn't be slag and must be a meteorite could be simply answered in the FAQ section.

Regards,
Elton
Received on Mon 17 Jun 2013 05:11:38 AM PDT