PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 123/2001 - 22 November 2001
=================================
"Tom Yuran recovered two rocks, one of which he had to pull
out of
the ground, the newspaper said. The rocks, which are rust-colored
on
one side and silvery on the other, weigh a total of about two
ounces.
Jim Seevers, an astronomer from Chicago's Adler Planetarium, said
the rocks are likely meteorites from the Leonids. The rust color
is "the
fusion crust," he said, which results when the rock is
seared by the earth's
atmosphere. "The rock probably chipped off and the shiny
silver they see
is the inside," Seevers told The Times. "It's most
likely iron and
nickel."
--Associated Press, 20 November 2001
"The chances these pieces are from the Leonid meteor shower
are
essentially zero," said Adler Planetarium astronomer Mark
Hammergren
Tuesday... Several factors make it unlikely that the rocks the
Yurans
found are meteorites, said Hammergren. "Meteors that come
from comets are
composed of very fragile dust," he said and the rocks found
by the Yurans
are far too large to have come from a comet. "Further,"
he said, "no
meteorites have ever been recovered from a meteor shower, ever,
and no
meteorites have ever been tied to comets as their point of
origin."
--Chicago Tribune, 21 November 2001
(1) ANOTHER FALSE ALARM? SPECTATORS NEARLY HIT BY METEOR SHOWER
The Associated Press, 20 November 2001
(2) SPACE ROCKS SLAM INTO INDIANA
Chicago Sun Times, 21 November 2001
(3) METEORITE CLAIM CALLED ROCKY: EXPERTS DISPUTE FIND IN INDIANA
Chicago Tribune, 21 November 2001
(4) SOHO'S LATEST SURPRISE: GAS NEAR THE SUN HEADING THE WRONG
WAY
Paal Brekke <pbrekke@esa.nascom.nasa.gov>
(5) WAS A COMET THE CHICXULUB DINO KILLER?
S.V. Jeffers et al.
(6) POLLEN SUPPORTS DINOSAUR-ASTEROID THEORY
Ananova, 21 November 2001
(7) NASA PROBE TO BLAST INTO COMET
Discovery News, 20 November 2001
(8) FORGET CHAOS THEORY: TEST TUBE HOLDS A TRILLION COMPUTERS
BBC News Online, 22 November 2001
(9) METEORITE CLAIM FROM LEONIDS?
Phil Plait <badastro@badastronomy.com>
(10) HOW TO CONVINCE POLITICIANS?
Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
==================
(1) ANOTHER FALSE ALARM? SPECTATORS NEARLY HIT BY METEOR SHOWER
>From The Associated Press, 20 November 2001
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-meteor.story?coll=sns%2Dnewsnation%2Dheadlines
HIGHLAND, Ind. -- Laura Yuran and her son Jonathon got a closer
look at the
Leonid meteor shower than they bargained for. Yuran and her
11-year-old son
believe they were nearly hit by chunks of the space rocks early
Sunday
morning.
The two were watching the meteor shower outside their
northwestern Indiana
home about 4 a.m. when hail-like objects began pelting them, The
Times of
Munster reported today.
As Laura walked toward the house to get her husband, Tom, a chunk
of rock
slammed to the ground near where she had been standing just
moments before.
"It went, 'Boom!' and I screamed," Laura said.
"Part of it hit the driveway
and the second part was embedded in the ground. I was afraid to
touch it."
Tom Yuran recovered two rocks, one of which he had to pull out of
the
ground, the newspaper said. The rocks, which are rust-colored on
one side
and silvery on the other, weigh a total of about two ounces.
Jim Seevers, an astronomer from Chicago's Adler Planetarium, said
the rocks
are likely meteorites from the Leonids. The rust color is
"the fusion
crust," he said, which results when the rock is seared by
the earth's
atmosphere.
"The rock probably chipped off and the shiny silver they see
is the inside,"
Seevers told The Times. "It's most likely iron and
nickel."
The Yurans contacted Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History,
whose
curator, Dr. Menache Wadhwa, asked them to bring one of the rocks
for
geologists to examine.
"She said we're the only ones anywhere who have reported
falling meteorites
from the Leonid meteor shower," Tom said.
After the scientists are done examining the possible meteorites,
Laura said
she hopes to put them in a display case and give it to her son
for his rock
collection.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
==============
(2) SPACE ROCKS SLAM INTO INDIANA
>From Chicago Sun Times, 21 November 2001
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-meteor21.html
BY ART GOLAB, STAFF REPORTER
Watching the Leonid meteor shower early Sunday, Laura and Tom
Yuran got a
big surprise: Chunks of space rocks nearly hit them.
"Go get your dad--it's hitting us!" Laura Yuran shouted
to her 11-year-old
son, Jonathan, as she ran for cover. Then a small chunk of rock
slammed into
the driveway near where she'd been standing.
''It went, 'Boom!' and I screamed,'' the Highland, Ind., woman
said. ''Part
of it hit the driveway, and the second part was embedded in the
ground. I
was afraid to touch it.''
Tom Yuran found his wife and son huddled under an awning on the
steps of the
back porch. He gingerly approached the larger of the two objects.
"I touched it with my finger, thinking it was going to be
hot," he said. "It
was actually cold."
One piece seemed to have broken off from the other. Both pieces
were a rusty
brownish-orange on the outside, and silvery on the inside, where
they had
apparently split.
The Yurans have an appointment today with Meenakshi Wadhwa, a
Field Museum
expert who will examine one of the objects. Wadhwa, curator of
meteorites in
the museum's geology department, said the rust color could be the
"fusion
crust," which results when the atmosphere sears the rock.
But she added that if it is a meteorite, it's unlikely to be
associated with
the Leonid shower, which occurs once a year when the earth passes
through
the orbit of the comet Tempel-Tuttle. Despite the term
"meteor shower,"
Wadhwa said no actual meteorites have ever been found in
conjunction with a
shower caused by a comet.
"It could, however, be a coincidental meteor fall," she
said. "Meteors fall
everywhere at random. . . . Every day, 50 tons of meteor
fragments hit the
earth, though most never make it to the surface."
But some do. And collectors pay up to $25 a gram for meteorites,
but the
Yuran family doesn't plan on selling theirs. "I don't know
if it has any
monetary value," said Tom Yuran, 51. "But, for me, it
definitely has a lot
of sentimental value."
Copyright 2001, Chicago Sun Times
=============
(3) METEORITE CLAIM CALLED ROCKY: EXPERTS DISPUTE FIND IN INDIANA
>From Chicago Tribune, 21 November 2001
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/chi-0111210078nov21.story?coll=chi%2Dprintmetro%2Dhed
By William Mullen
Tribune staff reporter
Two rocks that Highland, Ind., family members said fell into
their yard
early Sunday as they watched the spectacular Leonid meteor shower
will be
examined by meteorite experts Wednesday at the Field Museum.
Tom and Laura Yuran are convinced the rocks are meteorites that
rained down
on their yard from outer space during the meteor shower. Chicago
area
astronomers and geologists, however, are not convinced, at all.
Laura Yuran said the larger of the two rocks, measuring about 2
by 1 1/2
inches, slammed into a sidewalk about 4:30 a.m. Sunday. Later
they found
another, similar rock, with a crusty, rust-colored exterior and
shiny
metallic interior, measuring about 1 3/4 by 1 inches, in their
lawn.
"The chances these pieces are from the Leonid meteor shower
are essentially
zero," said Adler Planetarium astronomer Mark Hammergren
Tuesday.
The Leonid meteor shower is a predictable phenomenon in which the
Earth
plows through trails of tiny debris left behind by the comet
Tempel-Tuttle,
which passes near the Earth every 33 years.
The debris, usually no larger than a grain of sand, burns
intensely when it
strikes the atmosphere 60 to 70 miles above Earth, streaking
visibly across
the night sky as shooting stars.
Meteorites are meteors so big that they do not burn up entirely
in the
atmosphere and fall to earth.
Laura Yuran said her son, Jonathon, 11, woke her up at 4 a.m.
Sunday to go
outside with him to watch the well-publicized meteor shower.
"The sky looked like a beautiful light show festival,"
she said, "with
beautiful streaks of light. It sounded like little pebbles were
hitting the
ground all around us, like a hail storm.
"I started walking to the house to get my husband to come
out and look when
this thing fell like, Boom! It hit the sidewalk right by where I
had just
been standing. I screamed and my husband came running with a
flashlight."
The family soon found the two pieces of rock.
"They are silver and gold and a rusted color," said
Laura Yuran, a school
maintenance worker, "that shine real prettylike, turned in a
certain way,
like little diamonds."
Several factors make it unlikely that the rocks the Yurans found
are
meteorites, said Hammergren.
"Meteors that come from comets are composed of very fragile
dust," he said
and the rocks found by the Yurans are far too large to have come
from a
comet.
"Further," he said, "no meteorites have ever been
recovered from a meteor
shower, ever, and no meteorites have ever been tied to comets as
their point
of origin."
Most meteorites are pieces of asteroids crashing through the
Earth's
atmosphere, he said. A very rare few are pieces of rock that
exploded off
the surface of Mars or the moon from the impact of striking
asteroids,
sending them flying to Earth.
Meenakshi Wadhwa, a Field Museum geologist who has recovered Mars
meteorites
from expeditions to snowfields in Antarctica, said she will
examine the
Yurans' rocks when they bring them to her laboratory at the
museum
Wednesday.
"It seems improbable that they could be meteorites,"
she said, "but it is
impossible to say until I can see them.
"Certainly it seems impossible that they could be associated
with the Leonid
meteors. The chance that they are meteorites that fell
coincidentally from
another source during the meteor shower seems very unlikely
too."
As word of the falling rocks spread Tuesday, the Yurans said they
were
inundated by requests for media interviews, including scheduled
appearances
Wednesday via remote hookups with three national morning
television news
shows.
"Some people have asked if we were being hoaxed by some
jokers throwing
rocks into our yard," said Laura Yuran, "but that
couldn't be. We got up on
the spur of the moment, so nobody could have known we were going
to be
there.
"My God, if one of those things had hit one of us in the
head, we wouldn't
be here now."
Copyright © 2001, Chicago Tribune
==============
(4) SOHO'S LATEST SURPRISE: GAS NEAR THE SUN HEADING THE WRONG
WAY
>From Paal Brekke <pbrekke@esa.nascom.nasa.gov>
Mysterious clouds of gas falling towards the Sun have been
spotted with the
ESA-NASA SOHO spacecraft. They go against the fast-moving streams
of gas
that pour out continuously into space, in the solar wind. This
discovery
promises a better understanding of the sources of the solar
magnetism that
envelops the Earth, quarrels with our own planet's field, and to
some extent
protects us from cosmic rays coming from the stars.
Read more about this at (also images and movies):
http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=28996
Regards
Paal Brekke
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Paal Brekke,
SOHO Deputy Project Scientist (European Space Agency - ESA)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,
Email: pbrekke@esa.nascom.nasa.gov
Mail Code 682.3, Bld. 26, Room 001, Tel.:
1-301-286-6983 /301 996 9028
(cell)
Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA.
Fax:
1-301-286-0264
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
SOHO WEB: http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
=============
(5) WAS A COMET THE CHICXULUB DINO KILLER?
Jeffers SV, Manley JP, Bailey ME, Asher DJ: Near-Earth object
velocity
distributions and consequences for the Chicxulub impactor.
MONTHLY NOTICES
OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 327 (1): 126-132 OCT 11 2001
An Opik-based geometric algorithm is used to compute impact
probabilities
and velocity distributions for various near-Earth object (NEO)
populations.
The resulting crater size distributions for the Earth and Moon
are
calculated by combining these distributions with assumed NEO size
distributions and a selection of crater scaling laws. This crater
probability distribution indicates, that the largest craters on
both the
Earth and the Moon are dominated by comets. However, from a
calculation of
the fractional probabilities of iridium deposition, and the
velocity
distributions at impact of each NEO population, the only
realistic
possibilities, for the Chicxulub impactor are a short-period
comet (possibly
inactive) or a near-Earth asteroid. For these classes of object,
sufficiently large impacts have mean intervals of 100 and 300 Myr
respectively, slightly favouring the cometary hypothesis.
Addresses:
Jeffers SV, Armagh Observ, Coll Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, North
Ireland
Armagh Observ, Armagh BT61 9DG, North Ireland
Univ St Andrews, Sch Phys & Astron, St Andrews KY16 9SS,
Fife, Scotland
Copyright © 2001 Institute for Scientific Information
==============
(6) POLLEN SUPPORTS DINOSAUR-ASTEROID THEORY
>From Ananova, 21 November 2001
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_455244.html?menu=news.scienceanddiscovery
Experts say tiny grains of pollen discovered in New Zealand prove
dinosaurs
were killed by an asteroid.
The pollen was found in coal in the remote West Coast of New
Zealand's South
Island.
It shows evidence of the sudden death of a mixed forest.
The pollen was examined on a hunch by Institute of Geological and
Nuclear
Sciences paleontologist Ian Raine, accompanied by workmate Chris
Hollis and
Swedish researcher Vivi Vadja.
The trio found evidence of the sudden death of a mixed forest and
rapid
recolonisation by ferns in New Zealand - the opposite side of the
Earth to
the impact site - leading them to believe the asteroid impact
caused the
sudden destruction of terrestrial plants the world over.
Until now scientists believed that destruction of forests were
due to an
"impact winter" or impact-ignited wildfires largely
confined to the American
continent, within a radius of several thousand kilometres of the
inferred
impact site on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
The study has been published in the latest issue of international
magazine
Science, reports the Stuff website.
Copyright 2001, Ananova
=============
(7) NASA PROBE TO BLAST INTO COMET
>From Discovery News, 20 November 2001
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20011119/asteroid.html
By Irene Brown, Discovery News
Nov. 20 - Robotic probes have flown by asteroids and comets,
collected
samples for return to Earth and even landed on one of the small
primordial
worlds, but a new mission under development by NASA takes solar
system
exploration a step farther: into a comet's heart.
Called Deep Impact, the spacecraft is designed to slam into the
surface of
comet Tempel 1, creating a crater larger than a football field
and deeper
than a seven-story building. Its primary scientific theme is to
understand
the differences between the interior of a comet's nucleus and its
surface.
Comets are interesting to scientists because they contain
material, often
ice and dust, from the original formation of the solar system. As
comets
near the sun, the ice melts and releases dust particles: the
comet's tail.
Many comets far from the sun are hard to tell apart from
asteroids, which
are made of rock, and there's currently no way to properly
identify the
imposters.
The information is important for several reasons, including the
practical
though improbable scenario that at some time in the future, we
will need to
deflect a comet or asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
Knowing what's
inside the threatening comet or asteroid will be crucial to
developing
technologies to alter its path.
The idea to probe beneath a comet's icy surface dates back more
than 20
years. Data from a European probe dispatched to Halley's Comet
revealed a
mysterious black core, which puzzled researchers.
"We became increasingly curious as to just how this black
layer
accumulated," said Alan Delamere, who is overseeing
development of Deep
Impact's instruments and systems for Ball Aerospace and
Technologies Corp.,
which is building the spacecraft for NASA. "We suspect that
as the comet's
ice dissipates, dust is left, which becomes a loose, outer crust
insulating
the trapped, inner comet."
The probe is scheduled for launch in January 2004 and hit the
comet on July
4, 2005. With a variety of science instruments and imagers, the
spacecraft
will study how the crater is formed and what lies beneath its
outer surface.
"The mission is completely different, " said astronomer
Michael A'Hearn,
with the University of Maryland. "It is a real experiment in
which we do
something to another body in the solar system and see how it
reacts."
NASA approved the $280 million mission in May following an
18-month
preliminary design review.
Deep Impact will be equipped with a 770-pound copper impactor
that will
separate from the spacecraft a day before pounding into the
comet. A camera
on the impactor is expected to relay close-up images of the
comet's surface
until the crash. Cameras on the mother ship itself will then
record the
impact and image the interior of the comet.
"The biggest challenge of the mission is making sure we have
a very stable
flyby spacecraft that is able to track the event as the impactor
reaches the
comet," said Delamere.
"We'll have 800 seconds or so to gather images and data. All
this makes the
flyby spacecraft critical because it will be traveling through a
hazardous
area filled with cometary material - and fragments that could
destroy the
spacecraft."
NASA's last close encounter with a comet was Deep Space 1's flyby
of Comet
Borrelly in September. In February, the NEAR science probe
successfully
landed on an asteroid.
In addition to Deep Impact, NASA is planning to launch the
Contour mission
to study at least two comets close-up, while the European Space
Agency is
gearing up for its Rosetta mission to land on a comet and scratch
its
surface. Already en route to a comet is NASA's Stardust mission,
which is to
pluck samples of comet dust and return them to Earth.
Copyright © 2001 Discovery Communications Inc.
===========
(8) FORGET CHAOS THEORY: TEST TUBE HOLDS A TRILLION COMPUTERS
>From the BBC News Online, 22 November 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1668000/1668415.stm
By BBC News Online's Ivan Noble
A computer so small that a trillion of its kind fit into a test
tube has
been developed by researchers at the Weizmann Institute in
Israel.
The nanocomputer consists of DNA and DNA-processing enzymes, both
dissolved
in a liquid held in a test tube.
The inventors believe it could ultimately lead to a device
capable of
processing DNA inside the human body, finding abnormalities and
creating
healing drugs.
In the medium term it could be turned into a tool capable of
speeding up the
currently labour intensive job of DNA sequencing.
>From salesmen to genomes
DNA sequencing is part of the task of cracking the genetic code
of
interesting organisms as diverse as the pneumonia bug, the tomato
and the
human body to discover more about the way they function.
Professor Ehud Shapiro, head of the Weizmann team, says the DNA
computer is
an automaton, completing its work without human intervention at
each stage
of processing.
"Today it is limited to processing DNA which is
synthetically designed. In
the future it could process any DNA molecules," he told BBC
News Online.
The machine's input, output and software program are all DNA
molecules.
The Israeli team reads the output of the computer by running the
liquid
through an electrophoretic gel - the same process which produces
the
characteristic black and white bands of a DNA fingerprint.
Previous efforts
DNA computing took a leap forwards in 1994 when Leonard Adleman
of the
University of Southern California used DNA to solve a problem
commonly known
as the travelling salesman problem.
This problem sets the goal of working out the fastest way of
visiting a
given set of destinations.
Prof Adleman, co-inventor of the RSA encryption scheme which
protects most
secure transactions on the internet today, was exploiting the
advantages of
DNA computing over conventional silicon.
DNA stores a massive amount of data in a small space.
Its effective density is roughly 100,000 times greater than
modern hard
disks.
And while a desktop PC concentrates on doing one task at a time
very
quickly, billions of DNA molecules in a jar will attack the same
problem
billions of times over.
Nanoscale approach
Prof Shapiro and his team have taken a different approach.
Their goal was not to harness the power of biological computing
to solve
weighty mathematical problems, but to build a nanoscale computer
which takes
naturally-occuring information-bearing biological molecules such
as DNA as
an input.
Their success in creating a nanomachine that works on
synthetically produced
short DNA strands is a huge step towards this goal.
Mathematical inspiration
DNA computing research was inspired by the similarity between the
way DNA
works and the operation of a theoretical device known as a Turing
machine
and named after the British mathematician Alan Turing.
"Turing machines process information and store them as a
sequence, or list
of symbols, which is very naturally related to the way biological
machinery
works," Prof Shapiro said.
The nanomachine devised by his team is a special case of the
Turing machine:
a two-state, two-symbol automaton.
It distinguishes between two symbols, like the zeroes and ones of
a
conventional electronic computer.
The Israeli team's DNA computer is described in more detail in
the journal
Nature.
Copyright 2001, BBC
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(9) METEORITE CLAIM FROM LEONIDS?
>From Phil Plait <badastro@badastronomy.com>
Benny-
While watching TV this morning, I caught the tail end of a report
on NBC's
Today Show about a family who think some meteorites hit their
house the
night of the Leonids peak. They even had samples they showed
briefly (which
looked to me like sedimentary rocks, and not meteorites). They
were from
Illinois, and said scientists from the Field museum would be
looking at
their samples. I have not been able to find any more info on
this, even on
the Today Show website. I was hoping
some of the people who read CCNet may know more. I suspect this
will turn
out just like the case of a New Hampshire couple who thought they
got hit
last December. That turned out to be fireworks or something
similar. If
anyone has more info, please email me at badastro@badastronomy.com.
Thanks!
-Phil Plait
* * *
* * The Bad
Astronomer *
* * *
Phil
Plait
badastro@badastronomy.com
The Bad Astronomy Web Page: http://www.badastronomy.com
==============
(10) HOW TO CONVINCE POLITICIANS?
>From Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
Worth Crouch <doagain@jps.net>
wrote:
Considering the limited impact data available, and the chaotic
condition of the orbits of Earth crossing objects, I see little
reason
to delay the development of a comet/asteroid defense system. It
would
save our planet from far greater distraction than has been
documented
by all historic wars or worldly natural catastrophes. The
evidence indicates
that scientists believing otherwise are just hiding their heads
in the sand,
and doing a disservice to the human race by extrapolating
nonsense
without adequate data.
Good point with which few on CCNet would disagree!
But I don't feel scientists are the ones to hide their heads in
sand, rather
they face the uphill task of convincing politicians of the
legitimacy of
spending billions of dollars in order to reduce - not even
eliminate - the
grave risk.
Politicians used to calculate with rather short time horizons.
Solon of
ancient Greece is held in high regard by historians for his
visionary
conversion of agricultural lands to olive groves
over half a century. Cato and Winston Churchill were responding
to security
threats decades before the ordinary man would have woken up.
Very recently the Kyoto agreement has fired up many politicians,
notably
Auken the former minister of the Environment in my native
Denmark, who
commented sarcastically in a newspaper that it would take the
Atlantic Ocean
to wash up on the shores of Florida to alert George W. Bush to
the severity
of global warming. (This was before 9/11 of course).
It's a brandnew thing for politicians to think centuries or even
a
millennium ahead. But once they do, a set of disaster scenarios
surface and
demand to be taken very seriously indeed.
Yours sincerely
Jens Kieffer-Olsen, M.Sc.(Elec.Eng.)
Slagelse, Denmark
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*
FIELD EXPERT ROCKS METEORITE THEORY
>From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
[ http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0111220283nov22.story
]
Thursday, November 22, 2001
Field expert rocks meteorite theory
Scientist decides Indiana objects from inside Earth
By William Mullen, Chicago Tribune staff reporter
The theory that meteorites had fallen into an Indiana back yard
during the
Leonid meteor shower came crashing down Wednesday when a Field
Museum expert
examined the suspicious objects.
"This is terrestrial rock. It is not a meteorite,"
Meenakshi Wadhwa said
after a brief but careful initial examination of the small rocks
brought by
Thomas Yuran in two plastic bags.
Yuran picked them up from his Highland back yard about 4:30 a.m.
Sunday,
shortly after his wife, Laura, said she heard them crash with a
thud as she
and their son, Jonathon, 11, stood watching meteors streaking
across the
night sky.
As word of the occurrence spread, the Yurans became minor media
celebrities,
interviewed by local and national newspapers and television news
shows. On
Wednesday, Yuran said, they were interviewed by remote hookup at
their home
by Matt Lauer on the NBC network's "Today" show.
Several newspaper and television news crews were with Yuran later
in the
morning when he met at the Field with Wadhwa, a renowned
scientist who has
collected meteorites in Antarctica.
"I'm very glad you brought these here," she told Yuran,
an electrician.
"It's important for science that people who believe they
have found
meteorites to bring them to institutions like ours for
verification. It's
one of the ways we find new materials."
Before Wadhwa met with Yuran, she arranged for him to see the
Field's
impressive, permanent meteorite exhibit on the second floor of
the museum.
She also laid out several meteorites in her office from the
Field's
extensive collection for him to compare with the rocks he brought
in.
None bore any resemblance to the small, shiny, flaky stones he
recovered
from his yard during the meteor shower.
"It doesn't look like any meteorite that we know of,"
Wadhwa said as she
looked at the largest of Yuran's rocks, measuring about 2 inches
by 1 1/2
inches.
"These are not very uncommon to find in many places,"
she said. "It's a
micaceous rock, metamorphic, formed in extreme pressure and heat
deep in the
earth. How it happened to fall into your yard, I can't tell
you."
Yuran, who came to the museum alone because his wife had to work
and his son
was in school, accepted Wadhwa's verdict but still wondered if
the rock
didn't somehow come from space.
"I still strongly believe that it is too coincidental that
these rocks are
not strongly related to the meteor storm," Yuran said.
"They did come from
outer space; I'm confident of that."
Wadwha agreed to take a small sample from one of Yuran's rocks
and run a
more thorough analysis.
She assured him, however, that nothing of the size of those rocks
has ever
been known to come from the debris of the Tempel-Tuttle comet,
which is the
source of the Leonid meteors.
That debris rarely is larger than a grain of rice or sand, she
said. When
they strike the Earth's atmosphere 70 to 80 miles up, they burn
up with
extreme, bright intensity, the larger ones visible from the
ground as
shooting stars.
Meteorites are meteors so big that they do not burn up entirely
in the
atmosphere and fall to Earth. There is no known incident of comet
debris
surviving the fiery plunge through the atmosphere and landing on
the ground,
she said.
"You wouldn't expect to have something the size of [Yuran's]
rocks coming
from a cometary shower," she said. "From my experience
with meteorites, I'm
certain these did not come from space, but are simply mica."
Copyright © 2001 Chicago Tribune
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