[meteorite-list] Grand Opening of UCLA Meteorite Gallery

From: wahlperry at aol.com <wahlperry_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2014 13:31:09 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <8D0DB8019758A7F-2638-3D01A_at_webmail-d281.sysops.aol.com>

Hi Alan and list

>The UCLA Meteorite Gallery's grand opening will be held at 4 p.m. on
Jan. 10 and is invitation-only. The event will honor Arlene and Ted
Schlazer, who donated >more than 60 exhibit-worthy meteorites to UCLA,
as well as a bequest for an endowed chair (the first in the UCLA
Department of Earth, Planetary and Space >Sciences) in cosmo-chemistry
and meteorite research. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block is scheduled to
speak at the opening.

Congratulations to Arlene and Ted for the great donation to UCLA , way
to go!

Sonny


-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Rubin <aerubin at ucla.edu>
To: meteorite-list <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thu, Jan 9, 2014 9:47 am
Subject: [meteorite-list] Grand Opening of UCLA Meteorite Gallery


I would like everyone to know that tomorrow afternoon, Friday Jan. 10,
is the formal grand opening of the UCLA Meteorite Gallery, located on
the third floor of the Geology Building on the UCLA Campus. The Museum
will be open weekdays from 9:00 A.M to 4:00 P.M. and the occasional
weekend afternoon. (Hours will be posted on our website:
www.meteorites.ucla.edu ) The gallery is free to the public. I
invite any meteorite enthusiasts visiting Southern California to come
by sometime for a visit.The press release is appended below.AlanSpace
rocks hit UCLA: California's largest meteorite museum opens on
campus(Note to editors and reporters: To attend the invitation-only
grand opening of the UCLA Meteorite Gallery on Friday, Jan. 10, at 4
p.m., please contact Stuart Wolpert at swolpert at support.ucla.edu or
310-206-0511.)California's largest collection of meteorites, and the
fifth-largest collection in the nation, is on display in the new UCLA
Meteorite Gallery, which is free to the public. The museum, located in
UCLA's Geology Building (Room 3697) is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4
p.m. and on some weekend afternoons; please visit the gallery's
website, www.meteorites.ucla.edu, for details.A centerpiece of the
museum is a 357-pound iron chunk of an asteroid that crashed into
Arizona some 50,000 years ago, creating a mile-wide crater just east of
Flagstaff. Visitors are allowed to touch the venerable object, which
like most other meteorites and like the Earth itself is 4.5 billion
years old, said John Wasson, the gallery's curator and a UCLA professor
of geochemistry and chemistry.Meteorites are rocks ejected from
asteroids, comets, planets or the moon that have traveled through
interplanetary space and landed on the Earth's surface. The vast
majority come from asteroids."Our goal is to make this gallery the
world's best scientifically oriented meteorite museum," Wasson said.
"Our collection is by far the largest in California and is a gift to
the people of Southern California. The opportunity to learn in
scientific detail about meteorites has not been available in California
before."The collection houses specimens of nearly 1,500 meteorites that
illustrate the scientific processes that were active in the early solar
system. About 100 of these - representing a wide variety of meteorite
types - are currently on display.These include chondrites, which
contain large numbers of tiny rocky spherules known as "chondrules."
The origin of chondrules remains very much a mystery, Wasson said. It
appears they were created from clumps of dust in the solar nebula - the
gas and dust cloud that existed before planets and asteroids formed -
and were "zapped" in a way that is still unknown. The gallery's images
of primitive chondritic meteorites taken with a scanning electron
microscope offer detailed views of chondrules.The museum also features
backlit samples of a class of beautiful meteorites called pallasites,
which contain silicate minerals mixed with metal. These specimens
formed at the "interface between the metallic core and the silicate
mantle" of an asteroid, Wasson said."We have no sample of the core of
any of the planets or even a major moon, but many of the iron
meteorites are samples of an asteroid's core, and they differ from one
another," Wasson said.Wasson, a member of UCLA's faculty since 1964,
has devoted his scientific career to studying meteorites."Meteorites
are fragments that were, in part, the building blocks of the planets,"
he said. "Many of these are the first rocks that formed anywhere in the
solar system. They have information about the earliest history of the
solar system that we cannot learn from the Earth itself."One of the
gallery's exhibits explains how to correctly identify meteorites.
Detailed explanations of the samples are provided in display cases and
brochures.Alan Rubin, the associate curator of the gallery and a
researcher in UCLA's Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences,
is an expert in identifying meteorites. He receives samples every few
days from people who believe they have found meteorites."They almost
never are real meteorites," he said, adding that "less than 1 percent"
actually come from beyond the Earth. Some of these objects mistaken for
meteorites - including ordinary rocks, petrified wood and metal slag -
are on display in an exhibit aptly titled "meteorwrongs.""For many
years, we've collected beautiful exhibit specimens of meteorites but
kept them locked in inaccessible cabinets," Rubin said. "It's great to
be able to put them out on display for people to see."UCLA's collection
of meteorites has grown to nearly 3,000 specimens under the stewardship
of Wasson and Rubin, and is among the most extensive in the world.The
UCLA Meteorite Gallery's grand opening will be held at 4 p.m. on Jan.
10 and is invitation-only. The event will honor Arlene and Ted
Schlazer, who donated more than 60 exhibit-worthy meteorites to UCLA,
as well as a bequest for an endowed chair (the first in the UCLA
Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences) in cosmo-chemistry
and meteorite research. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block is scheduled to
speak at the opening.The Meteorite Gallery is supported by UCLA's
Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences and Institute for
Planets and Exoplanets.UCLA is California's largest university, with an
enrollment of more than 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The
UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11
professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree
programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the
breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural,
continuing education and athletic programs. Seven alumni and six
faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.For more news, visit the UCLA
Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.Alan RubinInstitute of Geophysics and
Planetary PhysicsUniversity of California3845 Slichter Hall603 Charles
Young Dr. ELos Angeles, CA 90095-1567phone: 310-825-3202e-mail:
aerubin at ucla.eduwebsite:
http://cosmochemists.igpp.ucla.edu/Rubin.html----- Original Message
----- From: "Alan Rubin" <aerubin at ucla.edu>To: "Jim Wooddell"
<jim.wooddell at suddenlink.net>;
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014
9:30 AMSubject: Re: [meteorite-list] What is more important in
classification?>I always want a doubly-polished thin section to do
classification of stony >meteorites. To determine the petrologic type
of a chondrite, it is useful >to gauge the degree of recrystallization
(best done in transmitted light) >and look for the size of plagioclase
grains (which can be done in an SEM, >BSE mode of an electron
microprobe, and in reflected light, since >plagioclase is a darker gray
than olivine or pyroxene). To assess the >degree of weathering,
reflected light is most useful. The probe, of >course, will give you
the olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase, kamacite, etc. >compositions. But
in general, in order to get a feel for a stony meteorite >(in terms of
shock, brecciation, recrystallization, abundance of matrix >material,
etc.), I want to be able to use the probe and see the rock in
>transmitted and reflected light. I can also then probe interesting
>features that reveal themselves with the petrographic microscope. I
don't >worry so much about the fuzzy line between classification and
research.> Alan>>> Alan Rubin> Institute of Geophysics and Planetary
Physics> University of California> 3845 Slichter Hall> 603 Charles
Young Dr. E> Los Angeles, CA 90095-1567> phone: 310-825-3202> e-mail:
aerubin at ucla.edu> website:
http://cosmochemists.igpp.ucla.edu/Rubin.html>>> ----- Original Message
----- > From: "Jim Wooddell" <jim.wooddell at suddenlink.net>> To:
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>> Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014
7:57 AM> Subject: [meteorite-list] What is more important in
classification?>>>> Hi all!>>>> Just a few general questions...>>>> The
involves a mount and a thin section.>>>> What is more important
now-a-days in classification? This mainly >> revolves some questions I
have that I am>> not sure how to ask...mainly to those that
classify.>>>> If you have a million dollar Scanning Election Microscope
and can probe >> around and>> can determine classification from the
geochem and BSE images, how>> important is it to see the transmitted
and reflected features in a >> petrographic microscope?>>>> I suppose
my thoughts and questions are possibly in reference to new >>
technology vs. old>> technology....maybe not...but close and really
deeper than just yes and >> no answers. Not that SEM's are new
technology...just saying.>>>> I was told a while back you can not
classify without both. So Why??? >> Are the SEM's not capable of doing
what>> a petrographic microscope can do?>>>> Thanks!>>>> Jim>>>>>>>>>>
-- >> Jim Wooddell>> jim.wooddell at suddenlink.net>>
http://pages.suddenlink.net/chondrule/>>>>
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Received on Thu 09 Jan 2014 01:31:09 PM PST