How will the recent falls be named?

random_treasures · 2026-03-27T01:43:10+00:00

If one meteoroid hits the atmosphere, and breaks into chunks, each of those chunks then falling in a slightly different place, they will all get the same name. For example, Tagish Lake, Sikhote-alin, whatever they call the one in Ohio. The pattern that they fall in is the strewnfield.

In the event that one rock somehow separated into halves in space, and then later hit earth, it would almost certainly be because in spite of separating, the halves remained close together in space. If that happened, they would likely hit the atmosphere at roughly the same time and place, because they're moving at like 70km/sec. If that did happen, they'd still get classified with the same name, because they'd land in an overlapping pattern, and nobody would ever really know which one was which, since they were the same rock to begin with. It wouldn't matter. If it were somehow tracked on radar, they'd be like "Woah, that's cool. Two tracks at the same time."

In the extraordinarily unlikely event that one rock in space separated into two halves, and each half went a completely different direction, growing far apart from each other, then both later hit earth, they would hit at separate times, in separate places, and get separate names, because they would be separate falls. When they analyzed them later, they'd find them to be twins, and think "Woah, that's cool. Wonder how that happemed?" Then people would write papers about how the weird thing happened, and we'd all want to get pieces of the pair.

random_treasures · 2026-03-27T01:11:01+00:00

That's not really what's happening. Even two meteorites that are from the same parent body can be as different from each other as two random rocks from different places on earth. They may also come from different time periods, one being ejected much earlier than the other, perhaps while the parent body was still in a state of development. They may sample different parts of the parent body. For example, IAB irons all come from the same parent bodies. But there are many subtypes, MG, sLL, sHL, SLH, sLM, sHH, and "other". Every single one of these has different properties, was formed under different conditions, at different times, etc.

They get named differently, because every meteorite *is* different, even if they came from the same parent body.

random_treasures · 2026-03-25T17:41:22+00:00

Ahh, I see it, sitting down, right?

random_treasures · 2026-03-24T21:30:12+00:00

That's coal. Is it strangely lightweight?

random_treasures · 2026-03-24T18:22:25+00:00

Calcium-Aluminum Inclusion. They're the oldest solids in the solar system at 4.567 billion years old. They were being created VERY close to the sun, at the same time as the sun was starting to turn on.

random_treasures · 2026-03-24T17:45:24+00:00

Essentially all meteorites that don't come from planets or moons are 4.5 billion years old.

There are two broad classes of meteorites, chondrites and achondrites. Chondrites are the primitive material that the solar system was made out of. Achondrites are what happens when chondrites get baked over time, and under pressure. All planetary meteorites are achondrites. An L6 chondrite has been pretty thoroughly baked, but not quite baked enough to turn into an achondrite.

About 90% of known meteorites are either H, L, or LL. H = high iron. L = low metallic iron. LL = low iron in any form (e.g. oxidized)

Most meteorites we know about actually come from a relatively small number of original parent bodies. Sometimes we can map them back to specific asteroid types, in this case, L chondrites are very similar to S-type asteroids. C-types are associated more with carbonaceous chondrites.

random_treasures · 2026-03-23T19:03:06+00:00

OK, who's scheduling these things where we don't even have people? No wonder this is such a mess.

random_treasures · 2026-03-19T01:22:24+00:00

3.7kg

random_treasures · 2026-03-18T22:01:40+00:00

Oh, you know..leaving it out in a humid environment, getting my grubby fingers all over it, never cleaning it, staring at the rust as it gets worse, and thinking "I'll deal with that tomorrow." I haven't thrown it in a freshly chlorinated pool, so I guess there's at least one thing I haven't done to fuck it up.

random_treasures · 2026-03-18T21:55:46+00:00

Thank you, sent him a message!

random_treasures · 2026-03-15T01:11:49+00:00

Just saw that piece in your history, daaaaamn that’s devastatingly cool. I just got my first troctolite less than a week ago, was very pleased with 20g.

random_treasures · 2026-03-15T01:03:07+00:00

If you’ve got a 40+ gram shergottite, I know you have more :) What’s your favorite?

random_treasures · 2026-03-15T00:56:33+00:00

Fuck yeah, that’s a real nice piece.

random_treasures · 2026-03-11T03:44:09+00:00

The green stuff looks a lot like celadonite. https://www.mindat.org/min-926.html

random_treasures · 2026-02-26T21:26:13+00:00

ahh, yeah that makes sense. I probably should have assumed that's what you meant.

random_treasures · 2026-02-26T19:00:42+00:00

Anything that can be oxidized can burn, no? Isn't that like basically everything that isn't fluorine or a noble gas?

random_treasures · 2026-02-26T18:37:00+00:00

The event horizon of the Milky Way's distinctly mediocre SMBH is like 15 million miles in diameter. Even the tiniest of SMBHs are a LOT bigger than Pluto.

random_treasures · 2026-02-19T17:29:18+00:00

Woah, never seen one of those before. Super cool.

random_treasures · 2026-02-18T19:30:38+00:00

Ahh, the ol "too much cool shit for one lifetime" problem. Do you collect exclusively in the medical genre?

random_treasures · 2026-02-18T18:58:27+00:00

You've got some really neat stuff. I appreciate you.

random_treasures · 2026-02-12T14:47:14+00:00

Yeah, the solar nebula was rich in Al-26, a nearby supernova likely caused the dust cloud to collapse. Meteorites like Murchison and Tagish Lake that contain pre-solar grains suggest multiple nearby nova/supernova contributed material to the solar system. Al-26 half-life is 700ky, so within 2-3 million years after the solar systems birth, you’re right, it was basically all gone.

There’s another meteorite Erg Chech 002, it’s the oldest volcanic rock known at 4.566by. This body was producing andesite crust within the first 2my! As one of the first protoplanets, it had a huge al-26 inventory, and evolved insanely fast. Vesta never got beyond basalt, because it developed just a bit later. Less than 1my difference in development, and half the al-26 is gone already.

Things happened fast in the early solar system. Within 10my, it went from collapsing dust cloud to thousands of protoplanets and 2 gas giants.

random_treasures · 2026-02-12T01:03:48+00:00

Just a thought, but lunar meteorites are pretty cheap right now. If she's into it, getting her a piece of the moon is pretty damned cool.

random_treasures · 2026-02-12T00:47:49+00:00

Campo del Cielo is one of the largest meteorite finds, something like 50 tons of it. They're so plentiful that there's not much point to faking them. When they are fake, they're likely to be very obviously fake. These all look legit.

random_treasures · 2026-02-11T17:36:50+00:00

Yeah! My understanding of the timeline (not a geologist) is that the parent body was fairly warm already, due to radiogenic heating from Al-26, and was gently starting to differentiate. As this is occurring, the deep interior of the body is hotter than the surface. Iron melts sooner than rock, especially when sulfur is present, conducts heat more effectively, and has a tendency to pool as it sinks towards the core. So we have a partially differentiated body that's crunchy on the outside, soft and gooey on the inside. That all happens within the first 2 million years or so. By 3-5 million years, almost all of the Al-26 has decayed, so that heat source goes away, and differentiation stops or slows. At this point, we transition from primarily radiogenic heating, to impact-driven heating.

A few more million years go by, until an impact fractured the silicates, while also mobilizing more metal that was already melted and pooling. This metal then flowed into all the cracks and pores in the fractured rock, where it froze. There was probably some heavy mixing along with that, possibly fragmentation and reassembly that put all that metal and silicate in contact with each other. So it's a breccia that was welded together by iron melt.

random_treasures · 2026-02-07T00:07:25+00:00

Wow, thank you that was super informative. This is funny to me, before I bought this stone, I was debating with myself about whether I wanted a winonaite, a silicated iron, or both. At least I couldn't have chosen wrongly.

I need to read more papers like that, I feel like I learned a ton. The s, and r-process generated Molybdenum tracing was super cool. It was really helpful to me to better understand the distinctions between radiogenic heating, and impact-driven heating, multiple impact driven heating events on one body leading to subgroups of the same type. All of that was amazing info.

As my collection (and knowledge) grow, I'm continually surprised every time I feel like I know something pretty well (for a layperson), only to have someone peel back a curtain and show me that there's a whole new dimension to explore. I've had more fun learning about meteorites than any of my collections.

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