Our good friends Geoffrey Notkin and Steve Arnold are starring in another TV Show, this time for The Science Channel. For more information please read the press release below and see their METEORITE MEN website. (more…)
Jim has just completed his third and much expanded edition of James Tobin’s history of the first hundred years of investigations at Meteor Crater. Jim has narrative tours of the sites on the crater rim and slopes, as well as a narrative hike of all the historic locations on the floor of the crater. The second half of Jim’s Meteor Crater book is devoted to historical papers by several of the earliest investigators. You can read more about Jim’s Meteor Crater Book in his monthly column in Meteorite-Times Magazine.
In late October you may have noticed that we put up a notice on our meteorites-for-sale.com site that we would be out of town for a week. We had not spent more that a day here or there hunting meteorites for a while so we took off for a whole week. Jim wrote an article which appeared this last November in our online Meteorite-Times Magazine and you can read about our meteorite hunting in Franconia. We hope you enjoy our meteorite hunting adventure. Paul and Jim
Take a large piece of rock moving very fast and slam it into the Earth and you can make a crater, release tremendous energy, and kill everything for miles around. But, you probably will not make tektites. These pecular pieces of natural glass have from what we can find, only been made by four impacts of asteroids into the Earth. (more…)
It seems that when the discussion of Martian and Lunar meteorites comes up two questions are always asked. First how do they get to Earth? And secondly, how do you know they are from the Moon or Mars?
Most meteorite are pieces of asteroids. Chunks of rock that orbit the Sun and are much smaller usually than any of the planets. When asteroids smash into each other bits are sent in every direction to wander in space on their own. If they get close enough to the Earth our planets gravity can capture them and pull them in. This is the story that most meteorites have as their history. (more…)
The Earth’s mass is 6,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 kilograms, roughly speaking and that is a lot of kilos. But tomorrow it will be just a little greater. Because today like everyday some rocks and dust fall into our gravity well and get caught. Most of this material will end up in the oceans since three-fourths of the Earth is covered by water. But, the rest will fall on the ground. The dust will never be found without special efforts to collect it. The larger chunks of rock however, may be seen burning through the atmosphere and get picked up. Or chunks that fell years or thousands of years ago may be found. These are meteorites and by comparison to anything else in or on the Earth they are the rarest. (more…)
Imagine a grass covered expanse with creatures both savage and exotic. Its 49,000 years ago and the North American Continent is in a brief interglacial period of warmth. This warmth has created a lush environment for Woolly Mammoths and other now extinct species. On an otherwise unremarkable day a bright light appears in the sky. Seconds later a fireball and explosion carve a hole in the ground three-quarters of a mile across and hundreds of feet deep. (more…)
The large meteorites seen in museums are often made of nickel iron. That might give one the impression that most meteorites are solid metal. But, the fact of the matter is that most meteorites are made of stone. In geology we talk about stones being made up of minerals. It is that way with meteorites as well. (more…)
49,000 years ago a small iron asteroid plunged through the Earth’s atmosphere. And though it was small in astronomical terms it created a crater three quarters of a mile across. Scattered around the crater were found starting in the 1880’s hundreds of chunks of meteoritic iron. As the years passed after their discovery thousands more were found. Today they are common in every museum collection of meteorites worldwide. They have often been the first meteorite private collectors bought as well. (more…)
Tektites are collected for their unique shapes and textures as natural oddities. They are glass. They are however, not glass like any other natural glass found on Earth. They form when asteroid hit the Earth and melt the rocks of our planet and send the liquid and vaporous rock material out to near space. (more…)
