[meteorite-list] Amateur Meteoriticists?

[Greg Hupe]

Well said, Martin.
Keep on bringing home the beef!

Best Regards,
Greg Hupe

On Oct 3, 2010, at 9:10 AM, "Martin Altmann" <altmann at meteorite-martin.de 
 > wrote:

> Hi Richard,
>
> I was thinking more to the aspect, in your originally posting, how  
> amateurs
> would collaborate with scientists and what their contribution to  
> meteorite
> science is.
>
> Hence not so what they achieve in the academic apparatus, in sense of
> publications and working in mineralogy, petrology ect. - as  
> meteoricists.
>
> But there also are some too.
> If you take the early Omani years, several of those, especially the
> pioneers, who hunted there and led teams, were trained geologists,  
> (even
> some working at a leading meteorite institute) and although the  
> background
> of their expeditions was a commercial one, they collected data and  
> did a
> field work, where the quality had no difference to that done by
> meteoricists, also resulting in various publications.
> Others, you heard it here on the list, are working several years on  
> a single
> strewnfield.
>
> The same you observe here and there with new falls. Also resulting in
> publications,
> where the field work, the strewnfield mapping, the reconstruction of  
> the
> track, the cataloguing of the finds ect. is done by non- 
> meteoricists.  Santa
> Vitoria, Bassikounou, Santa Lucia - with Sulagiri it was tried too,  
> but
> hindered by the local authorities -  there it is relatively otiose to
> discuss about the quality of the results, because in most cases,  
> there are
> no meteoricists on the scene, who would do this work and nobody else  
> caring
> for the new fall than amateurs.
> Others again, also a kind of research, investigate historic
> falls/strewnfields in literature and with interviews at the locals -  
> and
> find then still more samples in the field, sometimes new main masses.
> (Mounionalusta, Brenham, Seymchan, Brahin, Pallasovka, Pultusk,  
> Kainsaz,
> Vengerovo, Chiang Khan to name a few).
>
> Others again try to narrow down a possible strewnfield with the help  
> of
> fireball reports, eye-&earwitnesses, accidental recordings of  
> cameras and
> data retrieved from observing networks, some of them being able by  
> their
> professional background to do non-trivial calculations - that was,  
> how e.g.
> the recent European falls of Puerto Lápice and Maribo were recovered.
>
> Or remember how the main mass of the Neuschwanstein was found. There a
> non-meteoricist took the known data from the fireball network, but  
> changed
> the supposed parameters of the initial mass, did new calculations and
> aerodynamic modeling and calculated and predicted, that a mass shall  
> have
> felt outside the predicted strewnfield - and found it in the end!
>
> Here in Germany some amateurs installed automatic meteor cameras on  
> their
> roofs, which in case can supply important data.
> And the stations of the oldest intact fireball camera network of da  
> world
> are run an maintained solely by amateurs.
>
> Well, certainly the amateurs don't do the mineralogy, chemistry,  
> planetology
> - they are not trained in that, neither do they have the access to the
> sophisticated equipment necessary for that.
> And I don't know, sometimes I feel not so well, if they are animated  
> to do
> simple tests by their own.
> E.g. the imagination, that someone could throw a pristine new fall  
> into a
> beaker with water, to determine the volume for the density, is a  
> somewhat
> horrible one, isn't it?
>
> Well, so to compare it with the amateur astronomers, like the minor  
> planet
> observers, comet-hunters ect. Those gather important data for science.
> Meteorite amateurs gather often data and they gather the most  
> important of
> all, the hand-tight objects of research, this branch of science is all
> about:  the meteorites.
>
> And that is not to be underestimated. Not only in former centuries  
> most of
> the meteorites were recovered by amateurs, but with our desert- 
> decades, but
> also with the development of the amateur scene in other countries  
> like USA
> and Europe, you can see it from the bulletins, that these finds  
> produced by
> amateurs got ahead quite a while ago of those meteorites found by
> meteoricists, like in Antarctica or Oman - especially regarding the
> scientifically most interesting and important new finds, the  
> exotics, the
> rare types and the totally new materials. That's naturally, cause for
> getting something like this, because of the unbelievable rareness, you
> simply have statistically to find a laaaaarge number of more ordinary
> meteorites, until such an exorbitant one, will be among them.
> And as well as the scientific publications are concerned. Antarctica  
> ect.
> had a 20years head start, meanwhile, I never checked it, it could  
> well be,
> that the number of published papers based on analyses of finds of  
> amateurs,
> outmatches the number of papers about the Antarctic finds - and if  
> it's not
> yet the case, soon it will.
>
> So I think, that is the most important contribution to meteoritics  
> of the
> non-meteoricists.
> Also with very hands-on, if not to say trivial, advantages, which  
> sometimes
> are forgotten. On the one hand due to the regulations of the  
> classification
> process, a share of the amateurish finds lands on the desk of the
> meteoricists at no costs, but on the other hand also with the  
> commercially
> traded meteorites - the costs for the Antarctic campaigns are  
> partially
> known, the costs of the non-Antarctic-activities like e.g. Euromet are
> published,
> these mercantile meteorites they help to save a huge amount of  
> public money.
> That is an important aspect, in times where so many institutes have to
> struggle with tight budgets. In many countries and at many  
> universities, the
> meteoricists couldn't do their research on that level like today, if  
> there
> weren't the meteorites produced by the amateurs.
> And respectively the saved money can be used for more research.
>
> And that's why, Richard, you see me sometimes fulminate here on the  
> list,
> against calamitous developments in meteoritics in some countries.  
> There,
> where scientists didn't comprehend yet, how their meteorites are and  
> were
> produced and where they take efforts to ban all private and amateurish
> activities.
> The outcome, where that was made, was always the same fatal. A total
> breakdown of the find numbers of new meteorites. And a breakdown of
> scientific publications. Look Richard, Australia, was once meteorite  
> nation
> #2. Now less than 1 meteorite per year is still published there.  
> (Here in my
> home country, small, wet, green Germany, the most active classifier  
> alone,
> publishes more than 100 meteorites a year). Libya, they had better  
> find
> rates than Antarctica, since we have no amateurs there anymore,  
> almost no
> meteorites are found anymore - so they took themselves all  
> possibilities,
> that any form of meteorite science could be established there.  And
> unfortunately in so many other countries you will find still that  
> lack of
> knowledge among the meteoricists, where they still claim, that such  
> laws
> have to be introduced also in their countries. Algeria, Poland,  
> Argentina -
> to name only the recent sad catastrophes.
> That's no good.
>
> While in countries with more developed meteorite science, meteoricists
> recognize the contribution of the non-meteoricists as a matter of  
> course,
> even sometimes honoring them in adding them as co-authors of their
> publications.
>
> Amateurs and meteoricists
> Amateurs/hunters/dealers/collectors do not have any pretentions to  
> be called
> scientists or meteoricists.
> Nevertheless that what they are doing is and was crucial for modern
> meteorite science.
> They work on different fields and it was always a symbiosis between  
> them.
>
> The amateurs bring the beef, the meteoricists cook the dinner.
>
>
> Bon appétit.
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Richard Kowalski [mailto:damoclid at yahoo.com]
> Gesendet: Sonntag, 3. Oktober 2010 05:05
> An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com; Martin Altmann
> Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] Amateur Meteoriticists?
>
> HI Martin.
>
> I wanted to add that on the whole I do not consider meteorite hunters
> "meteoriticists".
>
>
> Now I want to be PERFECTLY CLEAR by what I mean here. I know that  
> the field
> of meteoritics heavily depends on meteorite hunters, both  
> professional and
> part-time, to find and bring in material for study, but as far as I  
> know, in
> most cases they are not doing the actual research of this material.  
> Now to
> qualify that statement. Photographing and recording the position of  
> a new
> find is important, but that isn't necessarily "science" or make the  
> data
> point recorder a meteoriticist.
>
> Additional questions that need to be answered to raise the quality  
> of this
> data can be what map datum was used to determine the position? What  
> was the
> accuracy of this data point? How many other measurements of this  
> location
> were determined and what were those accuracies? Is the reported  
> position a
> single position, an average or a mean of all the measured locations?
>
> Was the find made as part of a "random walk" or was the strewn field
> gridded? What was the length of each of the axes of the grid? How  
> large an
> area was covered beyond the finds so as to determine the size of the
> strewnfield?
>
> In my opinion these are just a few of the requirements that would  
> help raise
> the level of a meteorite hunter to a "field meteoriticist". I know of
> several hunters that do hunt regions with some scientific rigor with a
> greater interest in the data they are obtaining that what they could
> potentially sell their finds for.
>
> I am certainly NOT denigrating hunting for fun or profit. I only  
> want to
> point out that just because you make a single measure of a find's  
> location
> while gridding a strewnfield, and your data may in fact be very  
> useful to
> the science, that does not necessarily raise your efforts to that of a
> meteoriticist.
>
> Cheers
>
> --
> Richard
>
>
>
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