[meteorite-list] Lovina: most likely not a meteorite

[Darryl Pitt]

Greetings:

I just received a preliminary abstract on Lovina from Kuni Nishiizumi of UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory.  Kuni, the abstract's lead author, concluded it is unlikely Lovina is a meteorite. The markers analyzed were beryllium and chlorine concentrations and the paucity of cosmogenic radionuclides (only Gibeon and Nantan show less). One more round of tests will occur and further conclusions will be drawn from the same. The abstract entitled "Lovina: is this a Meteorite?" will appear in the MAPS volume associated with the 74th Annual Meteoritical Society Meeting this coming August.

It has been suggested by some diehards that the bubbling evident in the Lovina mass could have been the result of smelting, and that the lack of cosmogenic radiation could be explained by Lovina having been near the center of a much larger mass---as we know Lovina originated from at least a somewhat larger mass for the ziggurat structures to have formed.  However, in the spirit of embracing the most likely of explanations, it seems compelling to conclude that the most likely explanation for an expanding host of anomalies is Lovina's terrestrial origin. 

Accordingly, I've decided to no longer offer Lovina as a meteorite and have asked my webmaster to take down references to the same on Macovich.com at her earliest possible convenience. 


All best / Darryl