Greetings I'm rather intrigued with Shirokovsky. In looking at the pictures, a couple of things jump out - first off, most of the pieces are shaped like loaves of bread, or like ingots. Secondly, the comment that the olivines did not equilibrate with the metal matrix, but rather "cooled quickly in a strongly oxidizing environment" is interesting. An oxidizing environment such as ...air?? As in, someone melted some Ni-Fe, added crushed olivines, then sand-cast the resulting melt into fine sand pre-forms roughly pounded out to look like meteorites. The cooling time would be a matter of minutes. A little wire wheel action with a mild acid bath encore to clean it up, and voila - a "pallasite". In some ways I find this more interesting than an actual pallasite, and I'd like to get my mitts on a piece. Anyone have any to sell? Cheap? (I'm a stingy bastard) There are problems with that scenario, among them - are there any iron meteorites with almost 30% nickel? I went looking for matches beween Shiro. and other irons like Nantan for a source of metal but came up empty. Also - is it common for meteorite finders to ask to remain anonymous? ...like the "anonymous finder" who discovered Shirokovsky?
Cheers, MDF -- Marc D. Fries, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Research Associate Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Laboratory 5251 Broad Branch Rd. NW Washington, DC 20015 PH: 202 478 7970 FAX: 202 478 8901 ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list