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(meteorobs) Excerpts from "CCNet 110/2001 - 29 October 2001"
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From: Peiser Benny <B.J.Peiser@livjm.acdot uk>
To: cambridge-conference <cambridge-conference@livjm.acdot uk>
Subject: CCNet 110/2001 - 29 October 2001
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 12:47:08 -0000
CCNet 110/2001 - 29 October 2001
================================
[...]
(4) METEORITE HUNTERS SCOUR AMERICA'S SOUTHWEST
Space.com, 28 October 2001
(5) GOLDEN TRADE IN SHOOTING STARS
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utorontodot ca>
[...]
(10) RE: SPACE DRIFTERS (CCNet 19/10/01)
John Michael Williams <jwill@AstraGatedot net>
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(4) METEORITE HUNTERS SCOUR AMERICA'S SOUTHWEST
>From Space.com, 28 October 2001
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/meteorite_hunters_011028.html
By Foster Klug
Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) _ The sunshine sparkling on his meteorite-encrusted wedding
ring and Van Halen blaring from his car stereo, Bob Haag rolled into
Portales, N.M., looking for space rocks.
He had heard the news less than 24 hours earlier: Rare iron-rich stone
meteorites had landed near the eastern New Mexico town. Armed with a pocket
full of $100 bills and banking on another big score, the self-styled
``long-haired hippy kid from Tucson'' hit the road.
He was in town before the stones had time to cool.
This is the world of the meteorite hunter, where a handful of pros like Haag
and legions of metal detector-toting amateurs comb the Southwest in search
of celestial tidbits more valuable than gold.
``Without a doubt, I have the best job in the galaxy,'' Haag said. ``But you
don't have to be a rocket scientist. You do a little research, find where
meteorites have fallen, and just go there and look. That's it. There's no
magic.''
In 25 years of hunting meteorites, Haag has followed ``million-dollar
falls,'' multiple meteorite drops that happen about every 1,000 days, to
Egypt, Russia, Japan and more than 50 other countries.
He has built an extensive collection, which he said has been appraised at
$25 million.
``These are pieces of stars that have never been seen on Earth before,''
Haag said. ``It's so 2001 Space Odyssey, so Buck Rogers spaceman, so Marvin
the Martian. These are today's new treasures, and we don't even have to
leave the planet to get them.''
During his search in Portales in 1998, Haag started working the residents
immediately, handing out pictures of the meteorite and posting ``Wanted!''
posters at the town's barber shop and Wal-Mart promising a reward.
Soon, a crew of housewives, teen-agers and retired men were scouring the
desert scrub behind their homes.
Haag shelled out about $15,000 for three of the 60 meteorites that were
eventually recovered _ including $5,000 to a child on a bike. He guesses
that the three rocks are worth at least twice what he paid, though he hasn't
sold them.
Most hunters agree there's more to the quest than money.
``The excitement with meteorites is that these samples are parts of planets
that once existed somewhere in outer space,'' said David Kring, professor of
planetary studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson. ``Meteorites are a
piece of a very old puzzle _ 4 1/2 billion years of the solar system's
history that can be partially unraveled by studying the meteorite you hold
in your hand.''
The dry, wide-open spaces of the Sonora, Chihuahua and Mohave deserts of the
southwestern United States make for ideal meteorite hunting terrain.
Would-be collectors just have to be able to recognize them.
About 800 baseball-sized or larger meteorites have fallen in Arizona alone
in the past 300 years, but only about 40 have been recovered, Kring said.
He said he finds about one or two meteorites among the 600 rock samples
brought to his office by amateur rock hunters each year.
Jim Kriegh, a retired University of Arizona civil engineering professor,
wasn't even looking for meteorites when he made his big find.
While hunting for gold in remote northwestern Arizona in 1995, Kriegh
stumbled across a strewn field, the scattered fragments of a huge rock that
dropped out of its orbit between Jupiter and Mars about 15,000 years ago and
exploded over the desert.
Over two years Kriegh and his partners pulled more than 2,400 meteorite
pieces from what would become the Gold Basin Strewn Field. One of only two
strewn fields in Arizona, it is believed to be the oldest in the world
outside of Antarctica, Kring said.
To date, more than 5,000 meteorite pieces have been recovered in the area.
``It evokes all sorts of mysterious thoughts,'' said Kriegh's hunting
partner, Twink Monrad. ``There were wooly mammoths and prehistoric lions and
tigers and small horses in the area, and it just makes you wonder what they
saw when this space rock exploded. It's amazing.''
Monrad was a homemaker before Kriegh invited her to explore the strewn
field. Now, she makes the seven-hour trip from her home near Tucson to Gold
Basin a couple of times a month.
In 1999, she discovered a separate meteorite lying in the strewn field,
called the Golden Rule Meteorite after a nearby mountain peak. She
attributes her success to persistence.
``I firmly believe that if a person were to go over any square mile, time
after time, anywhere in the world, they'd also eventually find meteorites,''
she said.
This strategy, employed by Monrad, Kriegh and others who trek to Gold Basin,
is the same method favored by professionals like Haag.
Haag said he makes his money by simply being able to recognize the rocks
better than his competitors. He plucked his most valuable find, a rare moon
rock, from a pile of low-priced meteorites a collector was displaying at a
gem show.
But while he often sells the gemlike meteorites he finds for hundreds of
dollars per gram, some are off-limits.
A few years ago, Haag spent two months in a desert on the Libyan-Egyptian
border hunting for a rare Howardite stone meteorite. One night, he said, he
dreamed he saw the meteorite streaking through the sky and then bursting
into five fiery pieces. Two days later he found five Howardite pieces lying
neatly in the sand.
``This wasn't something to be bought or sold,'' he said. ``This was
something sent from heaven just for me.''
Copyright 2001, Space.com
==========================================================================
(5) GOLDEN TRADE IN SHOOTING STARS
>From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utorontodot ca>
[http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,3133525%255E421,00.html]
Sunday, 28 Oct 2001
Golden trade in shooting stars
SHOOTING stars landing in Australia are being plundered and sold to
collectors.
The meteorites, seen as fiery trails through the night sky, can be worth up
to 3000 times their weight in gold.
The Nullarbor Plain is one of the best places to find them, making it a
popular hunting ground for dealers undaunted by five-year jail terms or
fines of up to $100,000.
All meteorites found in Australia are protected by the Federal Protection of
Movable Cultural Heritage Act.
Despite the penalties, many space stones are sold overseas.
"They sell for big money these days and it is just too tempting for some
people," associate professor Vic Gostin, of Adelaide University, said. "It's
basically stealing."
Dealers often break meteorites into fragments, selling the pieces for
between $30 a gram and, in rare cases, $60,000 a gram. Gold is worth about
$20 a gram.
) 2001 News Limited
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* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
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(10) RE: SPACE DRIFTERS (CCNet 19/10/01)
>From John Michael Williams <jwill@AstraGatedot net>
Hi Benny.
The article by Duncan Steel was very interesting: In the Poynting-Robertson
effect, opposite frequency shifts in the two tangential directions would add
and would cumulate, the different tick counts of the two radiative clocks
cumulating over centuries.
There may be yet another force related to these: If we assume an
irregularly-shaped small object orbitting the Sun and not rotating except
secularly, the center of mass will tend to be located closer to the Sun than the
geometric center, in the radial direction. Somewhat like the equilibrium
rotation rate of Earth's Moon.
This implies that the total surface area receiving sunlight will be less
than that shaded, or directed away, from the Sun: The average such object
will have less surface area lighted than unlighted.
If we assume the object approximately in thermal equilibrium, there then
will be a net flow of heat away from the Sun side and into the larger-area,
cooler side. Imagine a teardrop-shaped object of fairly uniform density: Its
tail will tend always to be oriented away from the Sun, and the greater
surface area of the tail will lose heat faster than the Sunward area
(equilibrated with sunlight).
Heat flow is energy flow, and radiated photons carry momentum as well as
energy.
Therefore, one would expect a net transfer of linear momentum tending to
accelerate the object radially toward the Sun. This alone merely would in
effect increase G slightly, making the average orbit slightly smaller than
one without sunlight.
However, the angular momentum required to orbit such an object rigidly would
make the more distant side slightly lag the center of mass, on the average,
giving the linear momentum just mentioned a small tangential component,
accelerating the object slightly in its orbital direction.
The direction of the net force would be the same as that of the Yarkovsky
force, but it would not require rapid rotation. It only would require an
irregular shape and an equilibrium state making the rotation rate, on the
average, equal to the time for a recently completed orbit.
- --
John
jwill@AstraGatedot net
John Michael Williams
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