Hello all, Technically a meteor shower is an optical phenomena. Meteorites may fall from a shower, but that does not make the shower a Meteorite shower. There have been many showers that produced no discoverable meteorites. So why should we in mid-air change the definition? We shouldn't. That way everyone, starts by knowing wht the definition is of any event, or phrase, or phenomena . Now if you should read the meteorite list pages, than you would also know about how the authorities in Park Forest, Illinois, almost arrested a guy on Friday, because he was offering only $1.00 per gram. That was more than what this meteorite, if it is an LL6, would be worth. Mike Farmer, a dealer, did indeed buy one meteorite for $1500, and another for $2000. But that was only because the local Professionals had advised people not to sell to collectors and to dealers, while at the same time indicating that they would gladly accept donations of any and all material. Plus while I was standig there with Mike Farmer, l Mitterling, Steve Witt, and others, another party whom non of knew, was constantly bidding higher and higher prices and telling the finders that its price should be higher than $1.00 per gram and that it would be going up in coming months and years. So the price is artificially inflated because of someone who didn't know his head from a hole in the ground. See the meteorite list for more info on this. I was in the Park Forest public Library, and heard a librarian tell someone who had just walked in off the street that the value quoted in the papers that day of $500 per gram had gone up to $2000 per gram. Now that is stupid. But others also heard it. So the authorities, the professionals, and some know it all types have distorted, inflated and aggravated the entire situation. Bob Warren Obsevatory for Cometary Studies _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
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- Subject: (meteorobs) More meteorite from Benny Peiser's web site
- From: "Robert Gardner" <rendrag@earthlinkdot net>
- Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 15:06:34 -0800
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----------------------------"I could have gotten hit in the head by that thing," said Noe Garza,48, a steelworker. A few hours later he called his supervisor to report that he couldn't come to work Thursday. "I told him what happened, and he laughed and said, `OK, but don't use that excuse again.'"METEORITES MAKE FOR A ROCKY NIGHTFrom Steve Koppes <s-koppes@uchicagodot edu>Meteorites make for a rocky nightChunks break, enter homes in south suburbsBy Joseph Sjostrom and Deborah HoranTribune staff reportersPublished March 28, 2003A hail of meteorites pelted Illinois for the first time in more than60 years late Wednesday, poking holes in rooftops and bouncing aroundlike pinballs inside homes in the Chicago area.One fragment of what had originally been a single, large meteoritenarrowly missed a Park Forest man, crashing into the spot in hisbedroom where he had been standing only minutes before. The meteorflashed across the sky as it burst apart at about 11:50 p.m.,according to the National Weather Service, and was seen by peoplefrom Wisconsin to Ohio. Some thought the brilliant light might havebeen an attack."The sky just lit up," said Lauren Ellis of Plainfield, who wastraveling in a car when the meteor shot across the sky. "We were inshock. We pulled over because we thought it was a bomb."There were no injuries reported in Wednesday's meteorite shower,which rained at least two dozen chunks of material across the Chicagoarea. Police said meteorites crashed through the roofs of two homesin Matteson and Olympia Fields and hit three intersections. InSteger, a man found rocks in his driveway. And several people broughtrocks that appeared to be meteorite chunks to the Park Forest policestation."They might be out there for weeks picking these pieces up," said DanJoyce, a scientist at the Cernan Earth and Space Center at TritonCollege in River Grove.Scientists said they had not yet mapped out the trajectory of themeteorite, which exploded into small chunks as it entered the Earth'satmosphere.A 5-pound fragment fell through the roof of Noe and Paulette Garza'shouse in the 400 block of Indiana Avenue in Park Forest and bouncedabout the room. It punched a softball-size hole in the roof and thencrashed through the ceiling and shredded a set of venetian blinds. Itricocheted off a metal window sill, shot about 15 feet across thebedroom and shattered a floor-to-ceiling mirror before coming to reston the floor.Garza had been standing at the windowsill only minutes before themeteorite hit."I could have gotten hit in the head by that thing," said Noe Garza,48, a steelworker.A few hours later he called his supervisor to report that he couldn'tcome to work Thursday. "I told him what happened, and he laughed andsaid, `OK, but don't use that excuse again.'"Scientists say that every day about 50 tons of material from spacefalls on the Earth, most of it only the size of a grain of sand.1938 incidentsThe last time space debris large enough to be seen and recovered fellon Illinois was in 1938, when meteorites hit Benld and Bloomington inseparate incidents. In Benld, a 3-pound meteorite crashed through theroof of a garage and ripped a hole in a car seat. The seat andmeteorite are on display in Chicago's Field Museum.A few meteorites have been much larger. A meteorite 100 meters indiameter landed near Flagstaff, Ariz., about 50,000 years ago andleft a crater 1-mile wide. Scientists believe that a hugemeteorite--perhaps 10 kilometers in diameter--caused dinosaurs tobecome extinct when it slammed into the Earth some 65 million yearsago.Mark Hammergren of Chicago's Adler Planetarium said the rocks thatlanded late Wednesday were probably formed 4 billion years ago whenthe sun and planets became differentiated and settled into theirorbits. One mass of space debris failed to coalesce into a planet andinstead formed the asteroid belt, a band of rocks that circles thesun in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter.Over the eons, asteroids bump into each other, sending chips andchunks out of orbit. Some of them, Hammergren said, end up on acollision course with Earth.The Adler's Larry Ciupik guessed that the original meteor may haveweighed a few hundred pounds and was traveling 25,000 m.p.h. when ithit the Earth's atmosphere. Friction with the atmosphere producedheat so intense that the air around the meteor glowed, producing thebright light seen from Wisconsin to Ohio.The pressure of air on the meteor caused it to break apart, he said,with some of the little chunks disintegrating into brilliant streamsof light and a few larger ones making it all the way to the Garzas'bedroom and Brenda and Phillip Jones' basement in Olympia Fields."Amazing, amazing," said Ciupik, one of four Adler astronomers whostood in the Joneses' kitchen. They were scrutinizing thecantaloupe-size rock that had crashed through the Joneses' roof,penetrated the kitchen floor and hit the basement floor, where itbounced onto a table and came to rest on a pile of clothes."It had to be going hundreds of miles an hour to go through all thoselayers of roofing and floor," Ciupik said of the black and gray rock.Scientists said they were eager to get their hands on the chunks ofdebris to study qualities of the meteorites--includingradioactivity--that could dissipate with time."We can really learn a lot from meteorites about when the solarsystem was forming," said Meenakshi Wadhwa, director of meteorites atthe Field Museum. "They are as old as the sun."Deep questionsSeveral members of the McConathy family, who live next door to theGarzas Park Forest, were awake when the meteor illuminated theneighborhood with a bluish light as bright as daylight.Shirley McConathy wondered whether an enemy was attacking from thesky. Relative Tia McConathy pondered deeper questions."I thought, `Is this God? Are we going to die?' The light is whatreally freaked me out," she said.An Allstate Insurance Co. adjuster visited the Joneses' home Thursdayand told them the damage to their house was covered. He said it washis first case of meteorite damage in 33 years in the insurancebusiness.Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune============METEORITES CRASH-LAND IN SUBURBSFrom Steve Koppes <s-koppes@uchicagodot edu>Chicago Sun-Times, 28 March 2003BY KATE N. GROSSMAN STAFF REPORTERThe three giddy meteorite buffs descended on Park Forest earlyThursday morning, eager to poke and prod 10 pieces of rare gray andblack rock that littered the south suburban community Wednesday nightduring a meteorite shower."This is like winning the lottery, just without the money," said anelated Paul Sipiera, a meteorite collector and educator, as heexamined the stones collected at the Park Forest police station.This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Meteorite showerswith this many pieces occur in populated areas roughly every five to20 years, two scientists said, with the last known fall in Illinoisin 1938, according to the Field Museum. Showers can occur daily, butthe stones usually land in an ocean or forest.The Park Forest shower, as it will likely be dubbed by scientists, isalso unique because of the number and size of the stones, with two aslarge as 16-inch softballs and weighing about eight pounds.Researchers go gaga over these showers because meteorites--as meteorsare called when they land on Earth--help explain how the solar systemformed 4.5 billion years ago. Meteorites are as old as the solarsystem.Most rocks on Earth are 100 million years old or younger.By studying the fragments, scientists can learn about the chemicalcomposition of the solar system, its age and the chemical processesthat occurred as the solar system cooled from gas to solid planets."It's a window to our past," said Steve Simon, a University ofChicago professor who lives in Park Forest and was one of the threeenthusiasts at the police station early Thursday.Wednesday's midnight shower scattered stones across Park Forest, withabout 12 reported to police by day's end. At least two othercommunities, Olympia Fields and Matteson, also reported finding onestone each. Scientists speculate stones could also be found acrossthe Midwest.The fireball that preceded the shower--when the meteor entered theatmosphere and began breaking up--was seen across the upper Midwest.Simon saw the sky light up about 11:50 p.m. Wednesday.Before entering the atmosphere, the meteor was probably the size of aminivan and traveling up to 10 miles per second, said MeenakshiWadhwa of the Field Museum.When the meteorite hit homes, the fire station and streets in ParkForest, it was falling at about 120 mph.A piece of it slammed through the roof of Noe Garza's house into hisbedroom, smashing a window and windowsill and ricocheting across theroom to a mirror, which it shattered. Noe's 13-year-old son wassleeping only a few feet from where the meteorite hit.In Olympia Fields, police say, another large stone crashed throughthe roof of a home and ended up in the basement. There were noinjuries in either community.Despite the damage they cause, these stones can be quite valuable.Dealers are wiling to pay between $1 and $10 a gram for them, onecollector said.Copyright 2003, Chicago Sun-TimesRobert GardnerWhy Wait? Move to EarthLink.The archive and Web site for our list is at http://www.meteorobs.org To stop getting all email from the 'meteorobs' lists, use our Webform: http://www.meteorobs.org/subscribe.html
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