Elton, As always you make some very good points. I agree that this is a glassy slag. But, the question is; Where did it come from? Did the MIR have any glass that could have melted upon re-entry? And who at NASA said it came from MIR? To me those are the critical questions because if for example A fellow at NASA named Grossman or Korotev said it I would tend to believe them. No need for pigeon holing material because it "looks" like slag. I know this is a stretch but, Some meteorites do look like slag. Look close at a hand specimen ( not a photo) of Vaca Muerta . Carl meteoritemax
-- Cheers ---- MEM <mstrema...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > 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 > > ______________________________________________ > > 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
