Popigai Impactor Indentified

Paul H bristolia at yahoo.com
Fri Jul 23 14:08:09 EDT 2004

This week's issue of Science has a short paper, which
argues that a L-chondrite meteorite made the Popigai
crater in Russia. The citation is;

Tagle, R., and Claeys, P., 2004, Comet or Asteroid
Shower in the Late Eocene? Science. vol. 305,
no. 5683., pp. 492.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/305/5683/492

Popigai Impact Structure
http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/images/popigai.html

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA

Yanshan meteorite crater

Paul H bristolia at yahoo.com
Fri Jul 23 09:26:34 EDT 2004

I couldn't find any information about a "Yanshan
meteorite crater". Apparently, it is the "Yanshan
meteorite" as possibly discussed by Alexander Seidel
at:

http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2004-July/142637.html


What I found on the web was:

1. Xifengite at:
http://webmineral.com/data/Xifengite.shtml
http://www.mindat.org/locentry-5890.html

"Innermost in spheres, surrounded by nickel-iron
minerals and their oxidation products, apparently
of extraterrestrial origin, found in placers."

and 2. Gupeiite at:
http://webmineral.com/data/Gupeiite.shtml
http://www.mindat.org/locentry-5890.html

"Innermost in spheres, surrounded by nickel-iron
minerals and their oxidation products, apparently
of extraterrestrial origin, found in placers."

Some references for both minerals that I found are:

Dunn, P. J., Chao, G. Y., Fitzpatrick, J. J.,
Langley, R. H., Fleischer, M., and Zilczer,
J. A., 1986, New mineral names. American
Mineralogist. vol. 71, no. 1-2, pp. 227-232.
(February 1986)

Generalov, Mikhail and Naumov, Vladimir, 1996,
Iron-chromium carbides and iron silicides from
gold-platinum-bearing placer of the Urals (Russia).
Congres Geologique International, Resumes
(30th) [International Geological Congress,
Abstracts] vol. 30, no.2, pp. 447

Zuxian, Y., 1984, Two new minerals gupeiite and
xifengite in cosmic dusts from Yanshan. Yen
Kuang Tse Shih. [Acta Petrologica Mineralogica
et Analytica] vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 231-238
(September 1984)

Zuxian, Y., 1986, Some new minerals from platinum-
bearing rocks in Yanshan and Tibet regions, China.
Dizhi Yanjiuso Sokan [Bulletin of the Institute
of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences]
vol. 2, no. 15, pp. 49-57.

It appears that these minerals were first found in
"cosmic dust" (Dunn et al. 1986 and Zuxian 1984) and
later found in platinum-bearing rocks and placers
(Zuxian 1986 and Generalov and Vladimir 1996).

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA

Where Were You When It Happened 35 Years Ago?

Paul H bristolia at yahoo.com
Wed Jul 21 09:15:43 EDT 2004

Some 35 years ago, I was with my family at my
grandmother's house in Falmouth (Cape Cod), MA. There,
I watched the first step on the Moon with my whole
family, two parents and five kids, and my Mom's mother
gathered around the television. It was a bit surreal watching
the first step on the Moon live on television. (It was one
thing that science fiction writers apparently failed
to predicted.) Afterward, my grandmother talked about
how she felt when she first read about the Wright
Brother's flight. It was was weird to think about her
having seen it all from the Wright Brothers to Neil
Armstrong.

Before it, I had been following the entire space
program and watching almost every televised launch of a
manned- space vehicle and even launches of unmanned vehicles.
My mother would arrange with teachers to either let me

leave school for an hour or so to be home to watch a
manned launch or watch the launch at school on
television.

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA

Flaming Pigeons Source of Egyptian Fireball Reports (?)15JUL04

Flaming Pigeons Source of Egyptian Fireball Reports (?)

Paul H bristolia at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 20 17:32:23 EDT 2004

In "Fireball (sic) story from Egypt July 15" it was
written:


>> Dear All,

>> Does anybody hear abouth an event in the south

>> of Egypt where about 100 houses were burnt

>> due to fireballs falling on roofs and inflaming

>>the >> houses? >> Here is news report in Russian:

>> http://www.newsru.com/world/15jul2004/shar.html

>> Of course, maybe it is distortion by mass-media,

>>but anyway...

>> Best wishes,

>> Andrei Ol'khovatov


I found this version of the Egyptian Fireball Story

"Blazes in Egypt start "balls of fire" rumors
Reuters, Sun Jul 18,12:31 PM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=5706645
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=857&ncid=757&e=10&u=/nm/20040718/od_uk_nm/oukoe_odd_fire

"CAIRO (Reuters) - A series of fires in the southern
Egyptian province of Sohag has destroyed some 160
houses, giving rise to rumors that spirits are at
work or mysterious balls of fire are falling from
the sky, a local official SAYS.

But the causes are mundane -- kerosene stoves,
cigarette butts and electrical short circuits,
Brigadier Ezzat Aboul Kassem told Reuters on
Sunday. Flaming pigeons, their feathers set
alight in the blazes, may explain talk of
balls of fire, he added."

""Investigations have shown that there are burned
pigeons on top of some of the burned houses and
it's probable that they fell there after catching
fire at other houses," he said. "Maybe that
explains the rumors of balls of fire falling
from the sky.""

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA

Where Were You When It Happened 35 Years Ago.?

Paul H bristolia at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 20 01:08:21 EDT 2004

The questions are: "Where were you when
Neil Armstrong first stepped out on the
Moon 35 years ago?" "Where did you watch
it and with whom?"

35 Years Ago Tuesday Men First Stepped Foot on the
Moon
By My Wise County, My Wise County, Virginia
http://www.mywisecounty.com/news/071904-2.htm

First walk on the moon remembered 35 years later
CTV, Canada
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1090020187109_3?hub=SciTech


Commentary: US remains lost in space
By Martin Sieff, United Press International
Published 7/19/2004 5:30 PM
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040719-045828-8640r


Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA

Mysterious Rosicrucian Meteorite - What Was It?

Paul H bristolia at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 19 20:08:19 EDT 2004

I was searching through Google News Search Engine to
see if I could find anything more about the story of
the alleged fireball that set fire to the vollage in Egypt.
Instead the keywords "Egypt" and "meteorite" gave
me the following article:

"Rosicrucians make pilgrimage to San Jose"
Biloxi Sun Herald, MS, Jul. 03, 2004
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/9075308.htm.

Talking about the Rosicrucians' headquarters, it
stated:

"For generations of San Joseans, it's
an eclectic theme park incongruously
set in an otherwise ordinary neighborhood
of leafy streets and picturesque homes.
Its onion-domed planetarium, statue of
Pharaoh Thutmose III, 60-foot obelisk
and Egyptian-style buildings with
hieroglyphs and columns recall school-
day field trips."

Talking about children taking these fieldtrips, it
stated:

"Later, as adults, they may have strolled
its lush gardens or read about the mystery
of the missing 209-pound meteorite. (The
exhibit, which had been on display 40
years, was stolen by a former security
contractor and never found.)"

A 209 pound meteorite sounds like an awfully large
meteorite to have disappeared into thin air.

Does anyone know about the history of this meteorite
as to where it was found, type of meteorite, when
it was stolen, and so forth?

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA

Loaves and fishiness

Paul H bristolia at yahoo.com
Wed Jul 7 22:51:57 EDT 2004

Marc D. Fries wrote:


>I'm rather intrigued with Shirokovsky.


Yes, I agree, it is an interesting X-File type of
object. I might track down some metallurgists,
whom I know, to see what they have to say. Also, my
Russian wife can translate into and type letters
in Russian on my Russified Mac, if needed.


>In looking at the pictures, a couple of things

>jump out - first off, most of the pieces are shaped

>like loaves of bread, or like ingots.


In terms of being "...then sand-cast the resulting
melt into fine sand pre-forms roughly pounded out
to look like meteorites.", they seem to be too
ingot-like to have been made as deliberate fakes
formed to look like meteorites. To me, the ingot-like
forms suggest some sort of industrial by-product,
not something shaped to deceive. My (naive?)
impression is that we are dealing with self-delusion
on a massive scale instead of fraud.

That the olivines are of a type associated with Ni-Cu
ores and of the approximate age of Ni-Cu ores
associated such deposits suggests to me that whatever
created the Shirokovsky material might have something
to do with the smelting of such ores. The local Ural
olivines are far too old and not associated with
Ni-Cu ores from what I can tell and, thus can't be
their source. If Shirokovsky was made simply as a
fake,
the people involved logically wouldn't have ignored
local olivines,in favor of more distance olivines
associated with the Ni-Cu ores.

(Also, it doesn't look like it has been underwater
for 44 years. (Of course the water is cold, but
still there should be some obvious corrosion.)


>Secondly, the comment that the olivines did not

>equilibrate with the metal matrix, but rather

>"cooled quickly in a strongly oxidizing environment"

>is interesting. An oxidizing environment such as

>...air??


This is a devasating argument. Quick cooling
in an oxidizing environment certainly puts the
stake in heart, as if it was needed, of the
meteorite interpretation.

Also, I get the feeling that the promoters of it make
much of a nonexistent connection between the hole
in the ice and what was found on the bottom of the
reservoir. Given that the fall happened in 1956, how
do they know exactly where to search in 2002 some
44 years later? Are there any records of someone
determining the location of the hole in 1956 with a
survey before the ice melted?

It would be interesting to find out what sort
boat and barge traffic uses the Kosva River near
Shirokovsky. If there is any sort of commercial
or industrial traffic, there is almost an
unlimited variety of stuff that could get dumped
into the reservoir. I suspect the promoters of this
material as a meteorite likely don't realize that
all sorts of really weird stuff gets dumped into
reservoirs.

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA

Shirokovsky - Some Thoughts

Paul H bristolia at yahoo.com
Wed Jul 7 01:22:44 EDT 2004

Peter Marmet wrote:


>as far as I know, the lastest info is still this

>special statement of the meteoritical society:


http://www.meteoriticalsociety.org/bulletin/shirokovsky.pdf
"

One really curious thing about the Shirokovsky
material is that its K-Ar age of the olivine is
"about 270 million years". This is curious because
there are metalliferous ultramafic rocks of that age,
which contain dunite, a rock composed entirely of
olivine.

What is also most curious is that Au, Ir, and Os of
the olivine is typical of olivine found in Cu-Ni
deposits. It is curious because, there are large
ultramafic Cu-Ni ore deposits that occur in Russia
which contain olivine-rich rocks. For example,
there are "seven major ore deposits associated
with the basal portions of such olivine rich
intrusives" in the Noril'sk / Talnakh Ni-Cu-PGE
(Platinum-Group Elements) ore deposits. By coincidence

or not, these olivine-rich intrusives are part of
subsurface sills associated with extensive flood
basalt accumulations, called the "Siberian Traps",
is about 251 million years in age, which is quite
close to the "about 270 million years age" of the
Shirokovsky material. The inexact age determination
made on it, could be off by 20 million years.

Within the Central Urals, there are numerous
ultramafic
complexes that contain dunites associated with rich
chromite and PGE (Platinum-Group Elements)
mineralization and ores. Any of these could be
potential nearby sources of the olivine, which might
have been associated with ore being transported or
smelted.

Given the detailed analyses of the olivine in the
Shirokovsky material, a person should be able to
determine whether any potential / possible source for
the olivine described in the above Meteoritical
Society Report exists within Russia.

mark ford wrote:


>In all the pictures I have seen, to me

>it doesn't quite seem right for a

>pallasite the crystals look a bit too

>sharp and pointed', (just an observation)

>anyone agree with me?


I agree completely with you. Go read "[meteorite-
list] Shirokovsky Texture - A Red Flag As to Its
Origin??" at:

http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2003-June/091826.html

There I stated:

" I have been looking at a number of pictures of
fragments of Shirokovsky that were shown on
various web pages and pictures of pallasites.
After comparing them, there appears to be, in
my opinion, a rather drastic difference in the
texture of the olivine grains within each. In the
pallasites, indvidual grains are equant and either
rounded or euhedral. Also, in the pallasites, a
person can find examples of olivine grains that
have coalesced together.

Examples of this texture can be seen at:

http://www.meteoriteman.com/collection/thiel.htm
http://www.meteoriteman.com/collection/dora.htm
http://www.meteoriteman.com/collection/mtvernon.htm
http://meteorites.asu.edu/pallasite.jpg

In comparison, pictures of the pieces of
Shirokovsky that I have found have a different
texture. the olivine crystals are far more angular
and variable in outline than found in the pallasites,
for which I found pictures. In fact, some of the
olivine pieces in pictures of Shirokovsky are even
flat rectagular blades quite unlike anything seen
in true pallasites. In addition, I don't see any of
the merged / coalesced olivines seen in other,
Overall, the Shirokovsky has the appearance of a
terrazzo floor made up of fragmented rocks."

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA

Fires Threaten Graham Mountain Observatory (Arizona)

Paul H bristolia at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 5 23:51:32 EDT 2004

Fire still threatens Arizona observatory
Washington Times, DC -
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040705-021707-9766r.htm

"Phoenix, AZ, Jul. 5 (UPI) -- A stubborn wildfire in
southern Arizona remained a threat Monday to the Mount

Graham Observatory, considered one of the top
astronomy
sites in the nation."

Two wildfires threatening observatory and houses
http://www.10tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1999424

Yours,

Paul