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Kansas Soil Yields Massive Meteorite
ROMRIX writes "The Discovery Channel is reporting that Scientists have unearthed a 154 pound meteorite from a Kansas field using ground penetrating radar. The article also states that this type of radar may someday be used on Mars to locate water in a future mission."
So superman real right? heh knew it all along.
There are plenty of other places in our own world that could probably benefit from the discovery of water...try Africa. It seems like maybe that should be a higher priority?
I'd hate to get in the way of that radar if its moving 154 pound meteorites. My back of the envelope math suggests you could use it to microwave pizza leftovers the size of a small country. Like China.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Is it Smallville, Kansas? Because, uh, if it is, that's no ordinary meteorite...
I wonder, over the many millions of years that the earth has been around, how many other meteorites of this size or larger have struck ground and subsequently been covered with layers of dirt only to be uncovered later by construction workers who don't understand the value of the space rock, much less identify it as one.
One good thing about our travels to Mars is that every single person who will be there, at least for the early phases of the colony, will be scientists, so we won't have to worry about mislabelled meteorites.
Don't let the board of education find out about this.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
The dig was likely the most documented excavation yet of a meteorite find... "We know it is recent," said Carolyn Sumners, director of Astronomy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, as she surveyed progress on the dig. "Native Americans could have seen it."... The Brenham field was discovered in 1882. Scientists have since traced pieces of the shower as far away as Indian mounds in Ohio, indicating the meteorites were traded as pieces of jewelry and ceremonial artifacts. Certainly the most documented, but, I see a few hundred years of undocumented excavation in spite of that. I hope other excavations do better than that.
Scientists have unearthed a 154 pound meteorite [CC] from a Kansas field using ground penetrating radar.
Should have read "located with the help of ground-penetrating radar".
The largest meteorite found in the US is 15 tons, so 154 pounds isn't all that "massive". What makes this unusual is the fact that it was found using ground penetrating radar, a method that may also be used on Mars.
How much you want to bet they found a dead witch under the meteor?
Monstar L
UPDATE: The meteorite found beneath a Kansas family farm was unearthed today. While digging, a pod like container was found with an infant inside. The infant was healthy, as shown when it threw a rattle given toit over 100 yards. The Kents, who own the farm, said they are planning to raise the baby and name it Clark.
See, before humans figured out how to smelt iron out of ore, there were weapons made out of meteorite iron. A certain number of meteorites are nearly pure iron, and better yet, some is even already alloyed with stronger metals. They were rare and more expensive than gold, but it was a weapon which could pierce right through a bronze cuirass, and was often credited with magical properties. Kings and nobles paid a small fortune for them.
Some of the myths around that kind of equipment persisted even after it was known how to just smelt iron ore. E.g., the celtic myths about cold iron against elves. The only iron that can be processed without heating from start to finish is, you guessed, a chunk of stuff that was weapon-grade iron from the start, not ore. That's more often than not a meteorite.
So other than maybe modern times and construction crews with bulldozers, you wouldn't just throw away such a rock if you found one. You'd sell it to a smith for a small fortune, and he'd make a weapon for a king and sell it for a bigger fortune.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
GPR is a pretty common geophysical technique. Yes, it can be used to find meteorites, and yes it can (and will) be used for a future Mars rover mission. Such a system is already in development.
GPR is also used for many other things, like:
- groundwater contamination
- finding buried garbage
- finding voids under roads
- finding corpses
- determining stratigraphy of surficial sediments
For comparison several tons of meteoric material enters the Earth's atmosphere every day. If you've roof gutters try running a magnet over the accumulated sediment in the bottom of them, much of the metallic material collected thus is likely recently extraterrestrial in origin. This dust is considered an important part of the hydrologic cycle, providing upper-atmosphere nuclii for water to condense around and form raindrops.
Of meteoric material that reaches the Earth's surface structurally intact (roughly 1cc or larger) there are only about 500 or so objects a year, of which around 1% are recovered for study. The rest are finds of older falls.
These finds are easiest in plains where they stand out in the soft soil with little other stony material. Another good source is permanent ice & snow fields. In both wind erosion & frost heaving can leave these sitting out on the surface for the collecting. "Dust bowls", when local vegetation dries in a drought up and winds scour the soil away, and the many retreating glacers due to global warming, both yield rich harvests. There are also places where a larger meteor broke up at low altitude and showered the area with a rich concentration of smaller bits.
Lastly there is an active market in meteorites, for both hobbyist collectors and those who ascribe religious or spiritual aspects to these stones. Unfortunately their collection is typically undocumented, so any possibility of determining their age or circumstance in situ is lost. That they go directly into private hands means that they are generally unavailable for research. Not all meteorites are of great scientific interest, but several rare types do contain important clues to the nature of the early solar system and the current makeup of asteroids & other like objects.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I would like to clarify about your weeds comment. At least in Alberta Canada (part of the great plains the bread basket of the world) ahref=http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/dept docs.nsf/all/acts4705?opendocument/rel=url2html-95 8http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs. nsf/all/acts4705?opendocument/>
This list of weeds is pretty much standard for Canada and (my guess) the states. It's also a safe bet to say that 99% of them are NOT native to north america. Case in point the tumble weed is from Russia. I know it ruins all those spaghetti westerns.
Hee Hee The drinking bird does all the work!
Nuffsaid
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Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.