[meteorite-list] Lovina

[abudka at nycap.rr.com]

I am new to this type of discussion and joined the list because of my interest in Lovina.

Reading Darryl Pitt’s posting in Vol. 75, Issue 17, I am prompted to comment.

As I opened “Meteorite,” out flew the beautiful image of Lovina, with its very striking nickel-iron Widmanstätten morphology, cubic symmetry dendritic structures!  Here was additional, exciting evidence to confirm my insights that nickel-iron meteorites are primary crystallization structures!  

1.  While unusual – but not unknown - in the meteoritics world, such structures are familiar to casting metallurgists.  Show the Lovina image to a metallurgist or metallurgical engineer.  Do NOT tell that person that it is a possible meteorite, but ask him / her to describe how that object could have formed.  Then listen.  You will hear the word “casting.”

2.  Core? What core?  The concept of a meteorite parent body with a nickel-iron core is an old idea based on circular reasoning.  Does anyone think that a meteorite parent body can break apart, send pieces of its core to Earth and that we are looking at nickel-iron meteorites that came to Earth without ever reaching the melting point of iron, 1538 °C (2800 °F)?  

3.  Calling Lovina’s structure “ziggurat,” “pyramidal,” “pagoda,” “octahedral” or “Widmanstätten,” is Nature’s joke of the simplicity / complexity of cubic symmetry!

4.  When I was new to meteoritics years ago, I showed pictures of a potential meteorite to several meteoriticists.  I was assured that this could not be a meteorite because it was vesicular, and meteorites are NOT vesicular.  That proved to be incorrect because I have since seen images of vesicular meteorites, even nickel-irons.

5.  An alternate interpretation of the meteoritic Widmanstätten structure as a primary crystallization, 3-dimensional dendritic structure solidified under microgravity conditions is found at my website,

http://meteormetals.com/

For background on the circular reasoning behind how meteoritic Widmanstätten morphology became the Widmanstätten mechanism, click Learn More.

6.  Is Lovina a meteorite or a meteor-wrong?  Before that determination is definitively settled, we must have a new metallurgy for meteorites!

Phyllis Budka