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I found a Meteorite

Stub Mandrel

By Stub Mandrel
in The Astro Lounge

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Stub Mandrel

Stub Mandrel

Posted
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... in a drawer.

I found the little 'plastic card', actually a sealed plastic wallet with a printed card inside and a smaller capsule with bits of swarf in.

It was a Nestle give-away in 2001 and claims to be fragments of 'Kalahari Plateau SRC 11 Meteor'

The web address on it is long dead so no way of checking the 'authentication number', and all searches for the meteorite designation opnly thro up these nestle cards.

Is there a way of finding out more about this meteorite?

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Dave In Vermont

Dave In Vermont

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You can poke around in this site for a look-alike - maybe. But it also has links on books and other things that may be of help:

http://www.aerolite.org/merchandise/meteorite-hunting-kit.htm

I have a few meteorites. Collecting them is fun - but expensive. Hunting them is something I think of doing some year!

Dave

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Pondus

Pondus

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3 hours ago, Paul73 said:

Stupid question. Probably with a blindingly obvious answer.... How did you know that it was a meteorite???

Paul

 

56 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

It says 'meteorite' on the packing :-)

:laugh:. That one surely saved an otherwise miserable week.

 

R.

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JOC

JOC

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I've not found one, but I still maintain that my car got hit by one as I drove along.  I was driving locally, with no other cars around, and suddenly a brown object about the size of a large stone appeared out of the sky and struck the windscreen hard enough to crack it.  It bounced off and disappeared into the wilderness - I was doing about 35mph - I'd have never found it, but to this day I don't know where it came from and have often wondered if it could have been a meteorite.

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LukeSkywatcher

LukeSkywatcher

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On 09/04/2017 at 09:46, Stub Mandrel said:

... in a drawer.

I found the little 'plastic card', actually a sealed plastic wallet with a printed card inside and a smaller capsule with bits of swarf in.

It was a Nestle give-away in 2001 and claims to be fragments of 'Kalahari Plateau SRC 11 Meteor'

The web address on it is long dead so no way of checking the 'authentication number', and all searches for the meteorite designation opnly thro up these nestle cards.

Is there a way of finding out more about this meteorite?

I love meteorites. Small bits of the universe (solar system anyway) you can hold and feel (best not to handle them too much though). Ive been looking online (as you do) for this Kalahari meteorite and the only thing i can find is hundreds of the Nestle cards for sale for about $10 each. The website www.spaceresearch.com (as shown on the packaging) doesnt exist. 

From the images i have seen, to me they look like shards of metal/iron filings. Kind of hard to tell if they are genuine or not. TBH, i personally cant see how an iron meteorite could break up on entry into millions of minute tiny iron filings (if indeed the meteor was made of iron). Much less alone for so many tiny little filings of metal to be found. 

I have a few iron meteorites and the smaller ones i have are from the Sikhote-Alin fall in Siberia in 1947, and even they are fairly good sized bits of iron, which are classed as "shrapnel" meteorites. 

Call me a doubting Tomas, but i cant help but feel that this was just a "promotion" by Nestle back in the day just to sell their products. Let's be honest............what kid wouldnt want a box of Nestle cereal if they could get a meteorite inside, or have to send away for it (i dont remember this back in 2001). 

The language used: "Star Dust", "Falling Star" is fair enough. Its language that kids would understand. I dont see the simplistic terminology as an alarm bell. My meteorites come through FLO from a company called "Spacerocks".

I could be completely wrong about the whole thing. I just find it strange there is no reference online to the Kalahari SRC 11 meteorite.

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LukeSkywatcher

LukeSkywatcher

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22 hours ago, JOC said:

I've not found one, but I still maintain that my car got hit by one as I drove along.  I was driving locally, with no other cars around, and suddenly a brown object about the size of a large stone appeared out of the sky and struck the windscreen hard enough to crack it.  It bounced off and disappeared into the wilderness - I was doing about 35mph - I'd have never found it, but to this day I don't know where it came from and have often wondered if it could have been a meteorite.

I have my doubts that it was a meteorite which hit your windscreen. If it was big enough for you to be able to see it while driving (at the insane speed of 35mph) :icon_biggrin:............it probably would have completely taken your windscreen out. You say it was brown?. A stoney meteorite which has just made land fall (or car fall in this case) would have a blackened crust on it due to heat/friction from the atmosphere. It would have been travelling at the terminal velocity of a falling object here on Earth which is 120mph........far far less then when entering the atmosphere. 

A car going 35mph in one direction being hit by an object going at 120mph from the other direction. I think thats more then a crack in the windscreen.

A stone meteorite crust will usually only take on a brownish colour if it has been buried in the ground on impact, or due to weathering over many years of laying on the surface. 

I am by no means an expert on meteorites, but I am the family expert on them, and seen as its just me and the dog here today..............

When you start collecting them you do tend to learn a lot about them quite quickly.

I'm looking around online for my next one. I dont want another "small" one (have too many of those). I'm looking for something a bit bigger. Maybe something about the size of a snooker ball.

Expensive yes, but for me, meteorites are priceless. I dont think of the price when buying. Its the object of desire which i am paying for. 

P.S.~i am always looking at the ground when i am out and about for meteorites. I have more chance of winning the lottery even though i dont play the lottery. I have picked up a couple of blackened stones which looked very similar to my NWA 869 meteorites. 

Dont know why i bothered really. My 1st clue should have been the location i found them (on a pavement and middle of a road). They just looked so similar and kind of out of place where they were.

 

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Stub Mandrel

Stub Mandrel

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54 minutes ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

From the images i have seen, to me they look like shards of metal/iron filings. Kind of hard to tell if they are genuine or not. TBH, i personally cant see how an iron meteorite could break up on entry into millions of minute tiny iron filings (if indeed the meteor was made of iron). Much less alone for so many tiny little filings of metal to be found. 

Call me a doubting Tomas, but i cant help but feel that this was just a "promotion" by Nestle back in the day just to sell their products. Let's be honest............what kid wouldnt want a box of Nestle cereal if they could get a meteorite inside, or have to send away for it (i dont remember this back in 2001).

They get a lump of meteorite and cut it up into saleable chunks and these are literally the waste - swarf.

Here's a martian meteorite found as five stones totalling 10Kg,with 23 slices up for sale. The heaviest slice weighs 32.4 grammes and was for sale at about $14,500.

http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/news/space-and-aviation/2010-news-archive/slices-of-martian-meteorite-available-to-buy-for-up-to-14-500/3556.page

You could get about 300 slices of that weight from 10kg of meteorite, which is potentially a lot of cash, but most people don't have that sort of money, so they only make 23 slices, most of them smaller.

But cutting each slice is going to make a couple of spoonfuls of swarf, enough to fill a few hundred cards like the one I have.

No imagine a less valuable non-martian iron meteorite. weighing 10-20 kilos it gets sliced up into hundreds of pieces to be sold to collectors, and perhaps a kilo of it ends up as swarf. If each card contains 1/100 of a gram of meteorite bits, that's enough for 100,000 meteroite cards from the waste. But how much is a 'cheap iron meteorite'?

"a top quality one-kilogram specimen of the Campo del Cielo iron meteorite from Chaco Province, Argentina can be yours for about $400."

So the meteorite swarf in the Nestle cards is probably worth less than the plastic wallet it is inside, there's no reason to rip people off with bits of rusty cast iron.

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MoonNut

MoonNut

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Wow, I am loving this thread!

I live in Bahrain and have found a few "possible" meteorites while out in the desert on fossil finding trips, which are now fossil and meteorite finding trips!

The theory is that the desert rocks, being sandstone, erode away over time and the meteorites (being mush harder) will sit on the surface waiting to be picked up.

I have 3 which I am sure are not "Meteor Wrongs"  because they are slightly magnetic and have extensive Desert Glaze, indicating that they have been on the surface for a veeeery long time. I have researched many websites which explain how to identify a meteorite and they pass all the tests I can find.

This whole region was under the sea until about 20 million years ago, and has been eroding away nicely ever since.

Paul, I would very much like a second opinion, if you PM me your address I will send you one of my samples and you can tell me what you think!

I have attached some photos of all three, as A, B and C.

A.JPG

A-4.png

B.JPG

B-3.png

C.JPG

C-1.png

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MoonNut

MoonNut

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1 minute ago, Paul73 said:

This Paul doesn't know any where near enough to authenticate. 

Not sure about other Paul.

Paul

I have emailled a couple of "experts" but did not get a reply, they do say they are bombarded with messages every day (99.9999% of which are nonsense) so no surprise I have not heard back.

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John

John

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The only way to authenticate a meteorite is to have it analysed by a recognised meteorite lab such as the Natural History Museum. They do get bombarded unfortunately (poor choice of wording as well !). 99.9% of those that they do examine turn out to be of terrestrial origin.

I used to collect meteorites so I know a lilttle about the authentication process.

 

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MoonNut

MoonNut

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6 minutes ago, John said:

The only way to authenticate a meteorite is to have it analysed by a recognised meteorite lab such as the Natural History Museum. They do get bombarded unfortunately (poor choice of wording as well !). 99.9% of those that they do examine turn out to be of terrestrial origin.

I used to collect meteorites so I know a lilttle about the authentication process.

 

Ha ha, yes it was a poor choice of words, :/

Out in the desert there is only limestone, limestone and more limestone, so anything that is not and is even slightly magnetic was either dumped there by man (sadly getting worse by the day) was blown out of a volcano or fell out of the sky, so I am happy that my samples are most likely meteorites, I have considered sending them for authentication, but they are so small it is not really worth the time and effort.

For me it would be great, and proof enough,  if another enthusiast (or two) shared my opinion. I am not going to sell them so they will only ever be my personal collection with me believing they are real :happy7:

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John

John

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A number meteorite types are non-magnetic.

Proper analysis can determine the likely source of the meteorite, formation age, type, time in space, time on Earth and many other things. Without this info we have to assume terrestrial origin I think because the total amount of verified meteoric material is quite a bit less than the total amount of gold or platinum in the world today.

Many of the rocks that come from the deset regions of NW Africa and elsewhere in the world turn out not be be meteoric despite being collected by experienced collectors.

 

 

 

 

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MoonNut

MoonNut

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2 minutes ago, John said:

A number meteorite types are non-magnetic.

Proper analysis can determine the likely source of the meteorite, formation age, type, time in space, time on Earth and many other things. Without this info we have to assume terrestrial origin I think because the total amount of verified meteoric material is quite a bit less than the total amount of gold or platinum in the world today.

Many of the rocks that come from the deset regions of NW Africa and elsewhere in the world turn out not be be meteoric despite being collected by experienced collectors.

 

 

 

 

Good points, it would be good to know (if they are verified) where they are from etc. etc.

I found all 3 in the same area, I suspect they are fragments from the same meteor which exploded in the air or when it impacted the sea.

OK, if I get a positive response from any "enthusiasts" I will look at having them verified, then I will know for sure.

 

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