http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/15755710.htm
Doubts cast on meteorite By KEVIN MURPHY The Kansas City Star October 14, 2006 The object beneath a south-central Kansas farm field appears unlikely to be a meteorite, according to readings from special detection equipment taken Friday. Meteorite hunters and scientists are using NASA-leased ground-penetrating radar devices to examine several spots on a farm between Haviland and Greensburg, Kan., where meteorites might be buried. A metal detector had earlier found something that measured 12 by 18 feet, but apparently it is not a single object, meteorite hunter Steve Arnold said. "It's not looking monster huge," Arnold said. "It appears to be multiple pieces of something." The "something" could be several smaller meteorites or some sort of debris, Arnold said. In the past, Arnold has found horseshoes, steel wagon wheels, even a tractor engine. Last year, however, Arnold unearthed a 1,400-pound pallasite meteorite that was the largest of its type ever found. The current search for meteorites is part of a test that NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston is doing of the radar equipment, which can produce images of underground objects and formations. Scientists said the testing could lead to use of similar equipment on Mars. The Kansas meteorite search has also drawn the interest of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which has a film crew doing a program on meteorite searches and digs. The museum would like to put a newly found meteorite on display. Arnold said several sites would be dug Monday. Backhoes are used to reach the objects six or seven feet below ground. The object that had measured especially large also will be dug up, Arnold said, even though it may not be of the size his early metal detection indicated. "You always want something huge,' Arnold said, "but you can't really control that." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4258636.html Meteorite may point to an even larger find By MARK CARREAU Houston Chronicle October 14, 2006 Meteorite hunters from the Houston Museum of Natural Science and other Texas locations found a prize meteorite in a soggy Kansas wheat field on Friday, one that could be a centerpiece of a museum exhibit next year. But scientists also are checking the possibility that a tantalizingly large underground object, thought to be 12 by 18 feet, at the same site is a meteorite of record proportions. After digging 18 inches down near the large mysterious target, the meteorite hunters instead discovered several inches of rusty steel cable, according to expert Steve Arnold. "The whole thing could be cable, though that is weird for me to think. I just don't know," said Arnold, who reflected on his 15 years of prospecting for meteorites. "Much of the time you end up with farm implements or junk, what we affectionately call 'meteor wrongs.' You have meteorites and you have meteor wrongs," he explained. The Brenham "fall," an area named for a former post office in Kansas, was first noted more than a century ago by Indians who gathered small pieces of meteorite scattered across the prairie. Houston's museum already has a foot-long section from a windfall discovery of new pieces of the Brenham meteorite. It is tentatively scheduled for unearthing on Monday. The meteorite, a combination of iron and rock called Pallisite, could become a featured star in a museum exhibit on asteroids, comets and meteors for the fall of 2007. "We will have a rock to bring back to Houston," Carolyn Sumner, the museum's chief astronomer, said late Friday from the site in southwest Kansas. ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
