[meteorite-list] NPA 11-05-1981 Prof says meteorite is industrial debris

[MARK BOSTICK]

Paper: Gettysburg Times
City: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Date: Thursday, November 5, 1981
Page: 22

Prof says meteorite is just a piece of industrial debris

     NORTH ADAMS, Mass. (AP) - An eighth grader who thought he found a 
meteorite in his back yard is the owner of what appears to be a piece of 
industrial slag, a Harvard professor said Tuesday.
     “By no means is it a meteorite.” said Dr. John A. Wood, a professor of 
geology involved in research on meteorites at the Smithsonian Observatory, 
which is affiliated with Harvard.
     He examined the baseball-sized object the boy said had fallen into the 
family’s vegetable garden Halloween night.
     “It is certainly nothing out of the ordinary and seems to be a piece of 
slag from an industrial process.” Wood said.
     Anthony J. Sankis Jr., a 13-year-old amateur astronomer, had said he 
spotted a red fireball shooting across the sky as he was adjusting his 
telescope Halloween night.  When he looked in the garden, Sarkis said he 
found a foot-wide crater containing a battered rock.
     The boy and his father took the rock to Woods for identification 
Tuesday morning after a physics professor at nearby North Adams State 
College agreed it may be a meteorite.
     During the weekend, a parade of curious people, including newspaper 
photographers, police and the mayor of North Adams, visited the Sarkis back 
yard to view the inch-deep crater.
     The family also maintained the object was still warm Sunday morning 
after a night outside, an occurrence Wood said “was simply impossible.”
     “I’m not into meteorites, but it looked very convincing to me.” the 
North Adams State professor, William G. Seeley, said Tuesday afternoon. “I 
told the boy’s parents to be very sure, because If it was a hoax it would be 
very easy to find out.
     “On the plus side, both my sons had seen a red track in the sky about 
the right time.  Something tripped in my mind when the boy said he was an 
amateur astronomer and had been reading about meteorites, but I wasn’t sure 
whether he said he had been reading about then before or after he found the 
object and convinced myself that the latter has been the case.
     “It’s my feeling now that someone probably played a prank on the boy,” 
Seeley said, “although the way the thing was set up that’s almost as hard to 
believe as if it had actually happened.”


(end)

Clear Skies,
Mark Bostick
www.meteoritearticles.com