Best,
JKG
At 06:36 AM 9/21/2004, chris aubeck wrote:
Dear list,
I would very much like to know how much of the following may be based on scientific procedure and observation, and whether as a whole it makes any sense at all. I found the text in an article dated originally to 1864 and have translated it to the best of my ability from Spanish (in which I'm fluent, but this was very technical). It was published in Argentina.
As usual with this kind of thing, I don't know where to turn, except to the experienced guys on this list.
I'll be doing the internet equivalent of sitting "glued to the screen" hoping someone can enlighten me!
Very best,
Chris
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I came across a great black rock, ovoid in shape and measuring around 30 rods in diameter in its widest part by 45 rods in length. I was quite astonished on seeing such a large, isolated stone, in the middle of the plains; what caught my attention above all was its dark and vitrified appearance at first sight. I examined it thoroughly and shortly I had no doubt, I was standing before an aerolite… but few of such enormity have been found to date.
Enthused by my discovery I telegraphed Mr. Smith (a geologist and a friend of mine who was then in Córdoba on the way to the mountains) to come and examine this curious piece of planetary matter. This he did and a few days later my friend Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones and I went off to investigate the aerolite scientifically. On the afternoon of the same day we began to bore a hole into it to analyze the diverse materials of which its interior was composed, and for this purpose we employed an Argentine laborer named Jesús Villegas. A notable feature, at first sight, are the cracks and crags from which considerable pieces must have come loose: the whole mass is covered in a certain black enamel, from 3 to 9 ½ inches thick. The interior contains 5% graphitic carbon, magnetic iron sulphate, a magnesium and iron carbonate, which could be considered a kind of breu merite, an extremely rare substance; silica, talc, some complex minerals that are not to be found on earth, for example, Sheibirsite, which is a double phosphorus of iron and nickel, ammonium hydrochloride, a very volatile salt, whose presence in the aerolite proves that the candent state of the surface did not last a long time and that the heat did not penetrate to the interior of the mass, and this concords with the low conductivity of its composition, and finally it contained cesium and some alkaline silicates that we are not familiar with.
At seven rods we have found ophite; at 15, granite. The stone was very hard and our boring progressed very slowly.
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