Alan, Agee and Listers I have been reading what everyone has been saying and find it interesting the lexicon that has been used in the past and today in the meteoritic world. In the 1800's the use of thunder-stone, lightning stones, auralite was a house hold name for stones falling from the sky. I think it wasnt till the mid 1800's that meteorite was the word that would denote all stones that fell from the heavens, and to this day, meteorite has made it through time, unlike the other names because I think technology has allowed us to dismiss how meteorites were formed.
I do agree Alan, names and terms will be used till we find no use for them. Just think in 100 years from now when we have the means to mine from Mars and or live on Mars, will meteorites be the thing of the past from that planet? But I also do feel we need names, categories to distinguish one type of meteorite from another and feel that will help categorize them as such allow allow scientist and collectors a like to differentiate meteorites and where they come from. Lastly, the naming of NWA 7034...... What about Nilelite? The Nile river and NWA 7034 ( highest amount of water). Also we could just keep it at NWA 7034 Martian (basaltic breccia) which would be in accordance with ALH 84001 Martian (OPX) An orthopyroxene-rich martian meteorite. Shawn Alan IMCA 1633 ebay store http://www.ebay.com/sch/imca1633nyc/m.html http://meteoritefalls.com/ ________________________________ From: Alan Rubin <aeru...@ucla.edu> To: Carl Agee <a...@unm.edu>; meteoritelist meteoritelist <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com> Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 11:38 AM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Nwa 7034 The bottom line in all of this is that meteorite group names will last only as long as they're useful. The literature of the past is littered with group names such as grahamites and others I've forgotten because they fell out of use. Similarly, the term SNC is not used much these days although the individual group names survive. If scientisits no longer find it useful to use the term shergottite, then it will gradually fall out of use. If folks invent new names and no one uses them, then it doesn't really matter. An interesting analogy is that there are some unpopular models for chondrule formation, for example, (say gamma-ray bursts) that no one uses and thus don't pollute the literature. Alan Alan Rubin Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics University of California 3845 Slichter Hall 603 Charles Young Dr. E Los Angeles, CA 90095-1567 phone: 310-825-3202 e-mail: aeru...@ucla.edu website: http://cosmochemists.igpp.ucla.edu/Rubin.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carl Agee" <a...@unm.edu> To: "meteoritelist meteoritelist" <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com> Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 8:20 AM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Nwa 7034 Hi Jeff, Of course the comparison between chondrite groups and martian types is not perfect. The different martian types are not from different parent bodies, but we still don't know where they come from on Mars, and won't for a long time, not until we know the geology of Mars better. So for a large body like a planet, and given our fragmentary knowledge of Mars, different regions are more or less equivalent to different parent bodies. Describing martians with generic lithologic names that were developed for Earth geology is useful, but for example we don't hesitate to use the term mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORB) for Earth's most abundant rock type, which will never be found on Mars. The same is true for Mars because of a different planetary evolution. We are already doing this based on rover data, the term "Gusev basalt" is one example. SNC's plus ALH 84001 and NWA 7034 are, each type, glimpses of diversity of Mars' unique geology. Carl Agee -- Carl B. Agee Director and Curator, Institute of Meteoritics Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences MSC03 2050 University of New Mexico Albuquerque NM 87131-1126 Tel: (505) 750-7172 Fax: (505) 277-3577 Email: a...@unm.edu http://meteorite.unm.edu/people/carl_agee/ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jeff Grossman <jngross...@gmail.com> To: <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com> Cc: Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2013 00:06:22 -0500 Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Nwa 7034 There are two reasons why we can't get rid of carbonaceous chondrite group names. First, unlike Martian meteorites, we don't know where C chondrites came from. We can't point to a single asteroid as the source for any of them, let alone all of them. So the group names are still serving their basic purpose of ordering the chaos. Second, the only language we have to describe the rocks known as chondrites is by their group names. They can't be described with standard rock nomenclature. So this is not a fair comparison. I didn't say Martian meteorite names were not useful. I said they were archaic, historical artifacts. Jeff On 1/26/2013 11:38 PM, Carl Agee wrote: Hi Jeff and all you Nomenclature Enthusiasts out there: I think the martian meteorite names do serve a useful purpose, they are a sort of short-hand, so that you don’t have to be an igneous petrologist to know that one type of martian is different from another. So when we say a martian meteorite is a “NWA7034-ite”, or “blackbeauty-ite”, or a “saharite” or whatever name you want to pick, we are implicitly talking about a breccia, that is water-rich, alkali basalt, with higher-than-SNC oxygen isotope values, ~ 2 byo, etc. For example, like it or not, when we say “Allan Hills” the first thing comes that comes to mind is ALH 84001. When you say orthopyroxenite maybe not so much. If it’s such a great idea to do away with martian types, why don’t we go ahead and do away with all the carbonaceous chondrite groups like CI, CM, CV, etc. and just call them all carbonaceous chondrites, that of course have a wide range of compositions, textures, mineralogies etc.? Meteoritics isn’t the only science that has colorful nomenclature. Mineralogists still like to name new minerals after famous mineralogists, instead of just naming them by their chemical composition or crystal structure. Carl Agee ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com/ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com/ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
