[meteorite-list] The Life of Slag/Slag-glass ...was What is this?

[Michael Brooks]

The media should think before they speak...Oh wait, sorry forgot it is the media. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 17, 2013, at 11:08 AM, plagioklas at arcor.de wrote:

> I told that this is slag, so you cannot say no one here recognized this slag as such.
> 
> Yes, this kind of slag is very common (i said it already), but as every kind of slag, it does not occur everywhere. I found rich occurrences of this glassy kind im my old hometown, but in my new hometown i found during my live just one piece of this glassy kind (and many pieces of other mostly completely crystalline kinds).
> Alexander
> 
> 
> ----- Original Nachricht ----
> Von:     MEM <mstreman53 at yahoo.com>
> An:      metlist <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Datum:   17.06.2013 11:11
> Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] The Life of Slag/Slag-glass ...was What is
>    this?
> 
>> 
>> 
>> I don't know which is a sadder example of failed science education: some
>> "NASA" "water cooler" engineer issuing a positive ID/letter of authenticity
>> for something impossible and under the color of authority of NASA--(Another
>> waste-fraud and abuse complaint to be made) OR the entire met central
>> membership and not one poster can recognize silicate ==> slag <===on sight. 
>> ( I am not saying that "everyone" should be a slag expert just that there
>> should be more experts with critical vs casual identification skills given
>> all the talent represented here.) 
>> 
>> A bit more than a few would-be meteorite experts need to spend an extra 3
>> hours of field time getting to know ==> slag <== because I can't think of a
>> location in the lower 48, nor in all of Europe that would be farther than 3
>> hours max from a graveled path or railroad that doesn't have tons of it on
>> the surface.  ( I've found slag in Alaska but not in Hawaii where natural
>> slag is known as pahoe-pahoe)
>> 
>> I was explaining the multitude of reasons that slag is found virtually
>> everywhere--including Revolutionary and Civil War foundries, long left
>> abandoned to rural pastures when I had someone once argue that his specimen
>> couldn't be slag from a rail road because there had never been a railroad
>> within miles.  I then showed him on the topo map where an abandoned rail
>> right-of-way was less than 200 yards from the dirt road he found his
>> "meteor-wrong" along.  
>> 
>> Ever since the industrial revolution, the smelting industry has been finding
>> every possible way to get rid of it. I know of whole islands and whole
>> mountains of slag. Green glassy foamy slag is the most common owing to the
>> buoyancy of silicated minerals rising to the top of the mix in any ore
>> smelting. Depending on the pre-processing inefficiency, there can be lots
>> more slag than metal on each run--hence the need to farm the stuff off on
>> others being thankful they had a use for it!  Ballast for road beds, dumping
>> it off shore( See The Great Lake Emerald Meteorite saga) or using it for
>> shoreline erosion control or using it as gravel for paving are just a few. 
>> It is literally everywhere.  
>> 
>> 
>> It just takes some experience and exposure to become a slag expert.  I know
>> first hand after sending some charcoal bearing volcanic glass to the
>> Smithsonian for radio-carbon dating a hither-to-unknown volcano from middle
>> Tennessee.  Mr Harold Banks returned the sample with a nice letter telling
>> that 12 year old that his slag wasn't suitable for dating.  I later found
>> that I had pulled it from a Civil War Cannonball foundry.  Point: slag is
>> everywhere even if the original source is long gone. The slag last forever
>> for human understanding, even across cultures and ages.  There are
>> pre-historic slag piles on Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Egypt etc.  It is a
>> fallacy of logic to believe that something "can't be slag" because you don't
>> know exactly how it came to be in a location. Seems that to believe it
>> therefore "came from space" seems to be the corollary which always follows.
>> 
>> The most frequent meteor-wrong brought in for identification, we should all
>> get to know it by characteristic and by sight so that the kinds of
>> disruptions we see every few weeks by the novice insisting that it couldn't
>> be slag and must be a meteorite could be simply answered in the FAQ
>> section.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Elton
>> 
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