[meteorite-list] provenance

Wed Feb 15 14:34:09 EST 2012

"meant for fun not ... silly ... meteorites ... better "

"you love to jump in the time-machine to be there, when Shergotty was 
distributed"

Hi Martin,

I'm overly senstitive  to all the marketing gimmicks out there, so 
please excuse me if I missed the humor the first time through.  Your 
"meteorite born in the bulletin" comment which I took seriously I guess 
then was in reply to my comment about meteorites not having birth 
certificates, ok, got it now, and have lightened up a bit for an 
awkward smile.

Now as far as the time machine, I've beeen building one in the garage 
with this old manual I got on eBay, written by this authentic, nameless 
British scientist in the last 19th century who goes by the pseudonym 
"Time Traveler"; it's among the rest of my unfinished projects I trip 
over trying to take the car out to the market, but I finally realized 
that if I do get it built, if nothing else than to clear a walkway to 
the door, it would be a much more productive use just to go back and 
give myself slaps in the face when I was about to do a few stupid 
things - you know, like some old American TV show where two guys drive 
a semi and meet people along the road and act as their angels or 
another one of those where I just remember the introduction was 
inspirational music and a simulate floating in and above the clouds and 
some guy who was an angel who still hadn't finished his internship to 
be let in.

Better yet, I'd build the time machine in reverse, so instead of 
putting old me back in a younger world, it would just fry my own DNA 
back to the way it was and have the whole rest of the world travel back 
to me, just the way it is today ;-)

What's a few meteorites, you can get the most part of them, from 
reputable dealers and honest collectors today if you have a high 
frustration threshold, that would be such a waste for a time machine, 
you know, parts are more expensive than meteorites in the long run.  
Besides, how in the Dickens would I explain the provenance of a 
Shergotty I picked up while time traveling?  Would I claim the Ghost of 
Christmas Past was paid me a visit and dropped it off, or would I just 
resubmit it to science for inclusion in the dense strewn fields of time 
the editors and committees of the Bulletin will have to work out before 
they are even sure they know what to do with the complex world we 
already have ;-)
Kindest wishes

Doug

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Altmann <altmann at meteorite-martin.de>
To: meteorite-list <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wed, Feb 15, 2012 10:17 am
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] provenance

Hi Doug,

it was meant for fun, not for the silly discrimination which meteorites
would be better than others.

Though for an extreme purist of provenance and pedigree, those new finds
could be indeed ideal.

Cause he is then the founder of the pedigree, able to control the 
growth of
the meteorite's family tree, that what he is missing so often with his
historic specimens and their gaps from the day they once were picked up 
to
the day he put it in his showcase.

Do you remember still the times of the Dar al Ganis?
There for the collector it was something new and something extremely
thrilling,
that you could become the owner of a complete find or a main mass and no
matter whether it was an old OC.
And that for the same reasons I tried to mention.

Because in the post-Nininger-, post-Huss-, pre-desert-era with its only 
2500
meteorites + Antarctics, that was really a difficult task.

And if you remember those desert finds, they had a special prestige too,
Lucky 13, Calcalong, DaG 400, NWA 032...

That opened a new aspect and new possibilities in meteorite collecting.

Well of course it's the individual habit and taste, which particular
meteorites will make the individual collector happy.
Collecting of, in a manner of speaking - "vintage" meteorites - sorry 
for
the flat joke, all they have their 4.5 billion years - has without doubt
also very satisfying and interesting aspects.

Though I find also the idea fascinating and attractive, that - although 
one
needs certainly some patience - that in 40, 50 years I can say - I 
lived and
participated in the Golden Age of the Big Harvest, where so many of the
today so prominent (and desirable) meteorites were recovered.
Aura and patina - just some patience and they will come.

Doug, wouldn't you love to jump in the time-machine to be there, when
Shergotty was distributed, or to gather one of the first 
Krinov-Sikhotes -
or to the year, where the now so popular Murchisons were sent for 
pennies
around the globe? And I'm convinced, that they in their very beginning 
were
as boring for the collectors like today for the historics fan a 
Tamdakht or
a Bassikonou is boring.

Huh funny thought, that then in 50, 100 years they could speak about the
people we have here on the list, and it could be well possible, as we 
have
an inflation of communication compared to then, that the collectors will
speak about them like today about Foote or Ward and so on.

Meteorites are the oldest matter we can grasp, we are getting old...
If we allow us only a little longer interval on the time bar as a
perspective, instead to pause in the here & now,
then, I tink, these new finds could develop a very thrilling
attractiveness..

Best wishes!
Martin

PS:  >That's a new one on me!

And
> Respectfully, who made that rule?  "A meteorite is born, when it is
published in the Bulletin."

The convention :-(

Unpublished meteorites tend to get forgotten with time.
And then they are just like those meteorites, which remained unfound.

Note btw. also with the known meteorites and the tkws,
especially the mass finds, that there in the end and quoted since,
were always the weights, once published and overtaken in the Bulletins
respectively in the first Catalogues.
No matter how much was found later on after the first report in 
literature.

Or take a more recent fall, like Lampyairie or what his name was.
Hardly anyone remembers it after 10 years, and as it wasn't recorded in 
the
Bulletin,
I fear in another 20 years that fall will never have existed.

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