[meteorite-list] Meteorite Men Comment

[ensoramanda at ntlworld.com]

Hi Paul,

Following on from your information about bog iron....I was recently shown a picture by a friend who had visited Orkney, off the coast of Scotland. It showed a rock labeled as a meteorite in a cabinet at the museum there. I had never heard of that before and followed it up with emails to the museum and other investigations. Apparently that was collected after a fireball was seen over the island many years ago and although it is still labelled as 'meteorite' in their small museum it has been independently looked at by a local geologist who seems sure it is bog iron. Apparently it is commonly found on the Island in the peaty areas.

I too am still not confident what that stone may be...I am sure it has never been tested for nickel. Meteorite or Meteorwrong? A new British meteorite or not? The finder's family say they have some other pieces and would send me samples, but nothing yet.

Anyone know the exact mechanism that forms bog iron?

Graham Ensor..UK

---- Paul Heinrich <oxytropidoceras at cox.net> wrote: 
> Dear Friends,
> 
> Meteorite Men is a great show. personally, I feel
> that it has a nice mix of science, humor, entertainment,
> and droll, low-key "adventure" that many shows needs
> to have.
> 
>  From my job, I can tell that bit definitely has generated
> a lot of interest in Louisiana, with a very definite increase
> in inquiries, about meteorites and meteorite hunting
> received by other geologists and I. There have been a
> bunch of rocks, some of which have been lying in people's
> closests for decades. Unfortunately, they have so far
> been meterwrongs and even one craterwrong. However,
> a person never knows when that meteorite that has been
> either sitting in someone''s porch as doorstop or in their
> garage for the past few years will finally make it way
> into my or some other geologist's office possibly because
> of the interest generated by "Meteorite Men".
> 
> One of the more strange meteorwrongs was a gneiss
> boulder about 1.5 to 2 meters in diameter that got pulled
> up in a fishing net off Grand Island, Lafourche Parish.
> The most frustrating meteorwrongs in Louisiana are
> "bog iron ores", which form in permanently saturated
> coastal plain soils and often are associated with springs.
> Pieces of this material have an unfortunate tendency of
> being dense, pitch black, and even magnetic. Certain
> pieces are troublesome because neither I nor any other
> geologist feel comfortable, despite what intuition says,
> about judging them as definite meteorwrongs without
> being able to inspect them in person.
> 
> I have been tempted to suggest to to a soil scientist, whom
> I worked with, that looking at the genesis of these "bog
> iron ores" would be a worthwhile project for a Masters
> thesis for some student. I and another geologist can at least
> now point out a number of places where they can be
> studied. They have a strange, although quite terrestrial,
> mineralogy.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Paul H.
> Baton Rouge, LA 70803
> http://www.scribd.com/etchplain
> 
> 
> 
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