[meteorite-list] Strange Newspaper Headline About Meteorites

Wed Mar 8 15:22:32 EST 2006

Paul:

Did a Google search and found the following on CCNet Digest. 

http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc082198.html

Event occurred in Dec. 1997!

Larry

Co-editor Meteorite magazine

PLEASE NOTE: 

Information circulated on the cambridge-conference network is for 
scholarly use only. The attached text may not be reproduced 
or transmitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* 

CCNet DIGEST, 21 August 1998
----------------------------

(1) INTERSTELLAR METEOROIDS
    Duncan Steel <dis at a011.aone.net.au> 

(2) METEORITE DUST TO BE TESTED
    The Electronic Telegraph

(3) GREENLAND IMPACTOR MAY HAVE COME FROM INTERSTELLAR SPACE
    MSNBC Space News
    http://www.msnbc.com/news/189444.asp

(4) DOUBTS ABOUT INTERSTELLAR ORIGIN OF GREENLAND METEORITE
    Mike DiMuzio <mdimuzio at cisnet.com> 

(5) TASK COMPLETED IN GREENLAND
    The Tycho Brahe Expedition
    http://www.astro.ku.dk/tycho/tbe98/english/status/

===============
(1) INTERSTELLAR METEOROIDS

>From Duncan Steel <dis at a011.aone.net.au> 

Dear Benny,

Item from The Daily Telegraph (21 August 1998) appended.

The existence of meteoroids and/or comets arriving from interstellar
space is a subject which has been contentious for decades; see:

A.D. Taylor, W.J. Baggaley & D.I. Steel, Discovery of interstellar dust 
entering the Earth's atmosphere, Nature, 380, 323-325 (1996).

Duncan Steel

------- 
(2) METEORITE DUST TO BE TESTED

>From the Electronic Telegraph
International News
Friday 21 August 1998                           Issue 1183

Meteorite dust to be tested

DUSTY remains of a meteorite that crashed into Greenland are to be 
tested to see if it came from outside our solar system.

The extreme speed of the object, recorded on video film, suggests it 
may have come from interstellar space, which would mark a first if 
confirmed. A giant fireball was seen on 9 December over a large part of 
southern Greenland. Some reports said that "night was turned into day" 
and others likened it to "a giant millipede of fire with yellow, 
glowing legs".

The meteorite was calculated to weigh at least a ton. An expedition to 
the south-western part of the Greenland ice cap found no large 
meteorite fragments, only about 200 samples of dust.

END

Copyright 1998, The Daily Telegraph 

=======================
(3) GREENLAND IMPACTOR MAY HAVE COME FROM INTERSTELLAR SPACE

>From MSNBC Space News
http://www.msnbc.com/news/189444.asp

Sleuths bring meteorite dust from Greenland: Space rock may have come 
from beyond solar system

REUTERS

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Aug. 20 — A meteorite which crashed into Greenland 
last December may have come from outside our solar system, a Danish
astronomer said Thursday. He said that would be a “world first” in the 
meteorite field.

A FOUR-WEEK EXPEDITION to the southwestern part of the Greenland ice 
cap failed to find fragments of the meteorite but returned home 
Wednesday with about 200 samples of dust.

Astronomer Lars Lindberg Christensen of Denmark’s Tycho Brahe 
Planetarium, a member of the seven-man expedition, said analysis of the 
dust samples could yield clues to the origin of the meteorite.

“It may have come with enough speed that it actually originated outside 
our solar system. That would make it a world first,” he told Reuters by 
telephone.

The center has collected more than 100 eyewitness reports, three 
seconds of videotape and data from a U.S. defense satellite of the 
meteorite’s plunge through the Earth’s atmosphere.

Calculations based on the video frames of the meteorite’s descent, 
which lit up the night sky over Greenland on Dec. 9, put its velocity 
at 35 miles per second, or one and a half times the maximum speed of 
any known meteorite in our solar system, Christensen said.

At such a speed, the object would have disintegrated, and the only 
traces would be dust, he said.

“It also means that it is most likely that the snow samples contain 
dust from the meteorite,” he said.

The expedition collected enough dust to allow the particles to be 
examined thoroughly, revealing their molecular and atomic composition.

If analysis shows the dust particles are more than 4.5 billion years 
old, that would confirm that the meteorite originated in interstellar 
space, he said. Our solar system is thought to have formed 4.5 billion 
years ago.

Preliminary findings from the Niels Bohr astrophysics and geophysics 
institute and the geological institute of the University of Copenhagen 
could be ready in a matter of months, Christensen said.

Traces of more than 10,000 meteorites have been found on Earth, but the 
Greenland find is special because it is one of the few that have been 
seen plunging from space.

====================
(4) DOUBTS ABOUT INTERSTELLAR ORIGIN OF GREENLAND METEORITE

>From Mike DiMuzio <mdimuzio at cisnet.com> 

Reuters is reporting that the Danish Greenland Meteorite expedition
has ended without their finding any fragments from the fall last 
December.

However, they returned with over 200 dust samples. The scientists 
estimate that the meteoroid hit Earth's atmosphere at over 35 miles per 
second, 50 percent fster that the speed of any known meteorite.  This 
led them to speculate that the meteorite originated outside our solar 
system.

I find this pretty thin evidence, as I believe several meteor showers 
have meteor speeds estimated well in excess of 35 miles per second, but 
I could be wrong.  They plan on analyzing the age of the dust particles 
to see if they are older than the solar system.  Because of its speed, 
they speculate the meteorite disintegrated upon entry and any large 
pieces may never be found.

Of course, this is only speculation on their part, since they have yet 
to positively identify the dust as meteoritic in origin. A ststus page 
can be found

at  http://www.astro.ku.dk/tycho/tbe98/english/status/

Mike

=====================
(5) TASK COMPLETED IN GREENLAND

>From The Tycho Brahe Expedition
http://www.astro.ku.dk/tycho/tbe98/english/status/

(August 17)

The participants of the expedition have completed their task as well as 
could be expected under the given circumstances. The line of directions 
from the steering committee were followed, and in spite of the week
wasted (which is normal in Greenland, because of the changing weather), 
they still managed to cover a larger search area than originally 
planned. A week before the end of the expedition new information was 
received from the Czech meteorite expert Ceplecha and some American 
experts that the fall-out zone might be some km more to the north. 
These informations were e-mailed directly to the camp and plans were 
made to cover the new northern search area. 

The steering committee is satisfied with the fact, that the expedition 
managed to collect large amount of snow samples for further studies of 
possible dust from the meteorite. The team even had time to search 
large areas inside the search area for fragments - unfortunately with 
no luck. The studies of the snow in the search area were most important 
this summer, before the snow melts or is covered by new snow. 

The dust samples now have to go through a long and thorough test to 
determine if the samples contain authentic meteoric material or not. 
This week a team will be appointed to reach a decision hopefully within 
a few months. 