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Markets not only things that crash
Posted to the web on: 16 July 2008
Markets not only things that crash
John Kay
THIS month marked the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska explosion in Siberia. If you weren’t celebrating, you should have been. The incident was probably the nearest we have come to extinction in modern human history — and we survived.
A large object — presumably an asteroid or meteorite — collided with the Earth. If it had landed in Manhattan, it would have destroyed New York. A bit bigger, and it would have been calamitous wherever it landed. A similar event at Yucatan, 65-million years ago, wiped out the dinosaurs and most other species.
There are many catastrophes graver than meltdown in the markets. The road to oblivion has many unexpected turnings. Environmental catastrophes, such as meteorites or seismic events, may do us in. Something even more devastating than the Yucatan object is on its way, but it may be tens of millions of years before it reaches us.
Chance to buy a piece of the cosmos
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10:14am Tuesday 15th July 2008
By Staff reporter »
VISITORS to Seacombe Spaceport have a chance to hold a piece of the cosmos in the palm of their hands.
The meteorites, which have just gone on sale, are millions of years old and crashed landed in some of the Earth’s most remote locations.
"It’s not often people get the chance to hold a nugget of space. Now they can own one."
Ken Moss, Spaceport manager, said: “It’s not often people get the chance to hold a nugget of space. Now they can own one. Some of these meteorites are billions of years old – as old as the formation of the planets! “We’ve been working very closely with a guy called David Bryant, one of the largest importers of meteorites in the UK to bring these to Merseyside.
“We want to bring people of all ages closer to space and what better way than giving them the chance to touch a piece of They include fragments from the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, which exploded above Vladivostok in eastern Siberia back in February. 1947.
The nickel-iron material once formed the core of a small planet.
Solar-powered asteroids make their own moons
Most asteroids with moonlets started off as solitary bodies that split in two while sunbathing, new computer simulations suggest.
Once thought to be rare, dozens of binary asteroid systems – kilometre-sized rocks orbited by small moonlets – have been found in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter since the first asteroid pair was spotted by the Galileo spacecraft in 1993. And 15% of all near-Earth asteroids, which cross Earth's orbit, boast satellites.
Various theories have been proposed to explain how they formed. One suggests the pairs were created by collisions between older asteroids, but because of the huge distances between objects in space, such impacts are very rare.
Collisions may account for some large pairs of asteroids in the main belt, where asteroids orbit for billions of years, but the smaller near-Earth asteroids are much more likely to crash into the Sun or one of the inner planets before colliding with each other.
Source Of The Most Common Meteorites Discovered
ScienceDaily (July 10, 2008) — When observing with the GEMINI telescopes, two astronomers from Brazil and the United States discovered for the first time asteroids that are similar to “ordinary chondrites”, the most common meteorites found on Earth. Until now, astronomers have failed to identify their asteroidal sources because of the various geologic processes that occur after the meteorites are ejected from their asteroidal parent body.
Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing the first discovery by T. Mothé-Diniz (Brazil) and D. Nesvorný (USA) of asteroids with a spectrum similar to that of ordinary chondrites, the meteoritic material that most resembles the composition of our Sun. Most of the meteorites that we collect on Earth come from the main belt of asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter [1]. They were ejected from their asteroidal “parent body” after a collision, were injected into a new orbit, and they finally felt onto the Earth. Meteorites are a major tool for knowing the history of the solar system because their composition is a record of past geologic processes that occurred while they were still incorporated in the parent asteroid.
Fireball seen in county skies
Tuesday morning people as far away as Utah saw flaming object
It was a sight Visalia's Sheila Chartrand will never forget.
A fireball was streaking across the sky headed southeast Tuesday about 10:30 a.m. It appeared much larger than the sun, she said — larger even than a softball or CD held at arm's length.
"I just caught a glimpse of it as I stepped out onto my porch. It was the creepiest thing I've ever seen," she said. "It was so huge and so bright, all I could think of was, 'Oh, my god.' "
But her skeptical friends are having a hard time believing her story
"They all think I'm crazy," she said.
Chartrand wasn't the only one who saw the fireball, however. Reports flooded the San Bernardino County Fire Department dispatch center, and fire crews in Barstow also reported a flaming object in the sky.
The Tulare County Fire Department received no calls, but sightings of "an object as bright as the sun" came from as far away as Nevada and St. George, Utah.
NASA Finds New Type Of Comet Dust Mineral
NASA Finds New Type Of Comet Dust Mineral
ScienceDaily (Jun. 17, 2008) — NASA researchers and scientists from the United States, Germany and Japan have found a new mineral in material that likely came from a comet.
The mineral, a manganese silicide named Brownleeite, was discovered within an interplanetary dust particle, or IDP, that appears to have originated from comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup. The comet originally was discovered in 1902 and reappears every 5 years. The team that made the discovery is headed by Keiko Nakamura-Messenger, a space scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"When I saw this mineral for the first time, I immediately knew this was something no one had seen before," said Nakamura-Messenger. "But it took several more months to obtain conclusive data because these mineral grains were only 1/10,000 of an inch in size."
A new method of collecting IDPs was suggested by Scott Messenger, another Johnson space scientist. He predicted comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup was a source of dust grains that could be captured in Earth's stratosphere at a specific time of the year.
NWA's Second Class Meteorites?
"I ran across this article this morning. I do realize that it was written in 2003 but it does make one wonder as to the status of meteorites that come from the North West Africa region. Also, on a personal note, I do own a few unclassified and classified NWA's. Anything that comes from our asteroid belt and our solar system is good enough for me."
Skaal!
Ben de la Vega
NWA's: Second Class Meteorites?
By Norbert Classen, May 2003
On the collector's market, the prices of most Northwest African meteorites are still dropping while witnessed falls and historic specimens are getting more expensive. Are NWA meteorites less valuable, or is it a subliminal form of chauvinism making some people treat them like second class meteorites?
The NWA Dilemma
STUDY: Life's Raw Matereal Came From Space
From SPACE.COM
Study: Life's Raw Material Came from Space
By Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
posted: 13 June 2008
03:55 pm ET
Editor's Note: This story was updated at 3:45 p.m. EDT.
We may all be aliens, it seems.
Some of the building blocks of life on Earth came from space, according to a new study of molecules in meteorite fragments.
The study confirmed that some of the raw material for DNA and RNA found in a meteorite did not contaminate the rock after it landed on Earth, but actually originated in space.
The materials in question are the molecules uracil and xanthine, which are precursors to the compounds that make up DNA and RNA, and are known as nucleobases.
"We believe early life may have adopted nucleobases from meteoritic fragments for use in genetic coding which enabled them to pass on their successful features to subsequent generations," said the study's lead author, Zita Martins, a researcher in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London.
Martins and her colleagues detailed their findings in the June 15 issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Giant meteorite found in Sweden
From UPI.COM
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, June 13 (UPI) -- A massive meteorite weighing a staggering 2,607 pounds has been found near the northern Swedish village of Kitkiojarvi, officials say.
Thomas Osterberg, one of the two people who found it, said it was the biggest meteorite ever found in Sweden, the Swedish news agency TT reported.
He said it was egg-shaped, about one meter high with a diameter of about 70 centimeters at its broadest.
The finders say they hope to sell the whopper to the Swedish Museum of Natural History.
"It must stay in Sweden," Osterberg said.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/06/13/Giant_meteorite_found_in_Sweden/U...
Meteorite?
In May 2008 I was walking along the high tide pebble line at our local beach here in Bude, Cornwall, UK and stumbled across an unusual bolder/pebble that is completely out of character to any other stone on the entire beach. It weighs approximately 10 KG and due to being washed around by the sea it has a polished look and feel to it. It appears to have been molton at some stage and there are patches that appear to be iron oxide/corrosion in some of the holes that are on the surface. I am not sure whether it's iron yet as I only have a very weak magnet available here at the moment. But my feeling is that it has some iron content. It feels metalic. There is also a pattern running through it that look like lines/grain and in some of the surface holes you can see a kind of crystaline structure.
My first reaction was that it looked like a meteorite. I am completely new to the subject of meteorites and would really appreciate any feedback that can be passed my way.
Where would I take it to be tested? etc.
I live in Cornwall, England.
Many thanks
Rob
