[meteorite-list] Term Main Mass

[MexicoDoug at aol.com]

Hola Adam, Mike, Dean, Bob, and anyone else on  this subject,

You guys are all to be commended on your roles in the  recovery of these 
specimens.  The real question I see is not how many main  masses you have -but 
whether you have any main masses at all- from these dense  localities:  The 
system is quite arbitrary no matter how you attribute  subjective/random pairings.  
This shouldn't have any negative connotation  associated with it.  I posted 
something similar to this about a year or two  ago in this forum.

You all definitely have a lot of the world's biggest  pieces in your 
possessions, none of you massive dealers needs any bragging  rights from a viewpoint 
down here in the trenches, its not as if these were  Nobel prizes, nor is it 
comparable in 99% of the cases to Steve Arnold's gig.  This is unarguably an 
artificially manufactured situation in the dense  collection areas.  Besides 
Adam's, Mike's response was pretty  straightforward, too, and Dean's logic very 
intelligent as well, as well as the  rest...it really sounds much less 
scientific and more like discussion among  competing cereal companies on who can label 
the food as "Heart Healthy" and who  can't.  I'd go retro and just ask 
"Where's the Beef?" while we watch y'all  in this potentially high-steaks and 
breadwinning issue.

So as long as we  understand this is more of a Cola Wars' type question than 
a meaningful  scientific question, it's interesting to hear all these 
arguments and  occasionally add a peep or two in the shadow of the giants.

Maybe I'm  wrong, but we've seen this discussion in many presentations 
before.  That's  great, as long as everyone agrees that this is a commercial and not 
a scientific  issue.  It actually looks like you all do, in my (very) humble  
perception...Saludos, Doug

PS a known pairing series can be open to  interpretation, and are not 
exhaustive analyses, right?  The science  doesn't feel the need to address this 
issue, as far as I  gather...



In a message dated 1/19/2006 10:57:20 P.M. Eastern  Standard Time, 
raremeteorites at comcast.net writes:
If I followed this logic, I  would have 48 planetary "Main Masses." Yeah for
me! In reality, we have less  than a dozen as far as I am concerned. I will
stick to the what I believe are  the rules, the largest piece in a known
pairing series is the only Main Mass.