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Geology News
Meteors and Meteorites Current Events

Geologist Don Adair recently gave the Gunlock Meteorite to the Utah Geological Survey where it is now on display. He found it near the town of Gunlock in southern Utah in 1982 and later cut the specimen in half. The other half of the meteorite is at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

NASA Image

NASA has released images of Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two moons. These were captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 23, 2008. They show interesting geological features such as landslides and crater chains.

India’s Lonar Crater began causing confusion soon after it was identified in 1823 by a British officer named C.J.E. Alexander. However, scientists established Lonar’s status as an impact crater based on several lines of evidence, perhaps the most compelling being the presence of maskelynite.

They have not found an impact structure yet, but researchers have determined that an unusual layer within the Torridonian sedimentary rock sequence is an eject blanket. They have found shocked quartz, elevated iridium and chromium 53. They think that the impact occurred about 1.2 billion years ago and formed a crater about 4 miles across.

Researchers believe that they have found the site of the largest asteroid impact in the UK. The impact occurred about 1.2 billion years ago near the present-day town of Ullapool. There is no obvious crater at the site. Instead it is beneath the Minch, a waterway near Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

Geologist, Arthur Hickman, was researching iron ore deposits in Australia using Google Earth and noticed a circular structure. He suspected that it might be a previously unrecognized impact structure. He notified a colleague, who visited the site and confirmed that it was indeed an impact site.

The impact crater that was produced in Peru last September is getting careful investigation. At first some people thought that the whole story was fake, however, investigators have found “shock” features and an intimate mixing of meteoritic fragments in debris surrounding the crater.

Earth Observatory has a satellite image of the Serra da Cangalha impact crater of northern Brazil. This 220 million-year-old crater is in sedimentary rocks that are about 300 million years old. It is Brazil’s best preserved impact crater.

The structure, Upheaval Dome, in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park has been a delight for geological interpretation. The discovery of “shocked quartz” now seems to confirm that it is an impact structure.

Scientists are puzzled by a pair of odd meteorites. The meteorites are the first of their kind to be discovered, and nobody is certain where they came from.

Here is a list of the news items that were most popular with our readers for February 2008…

• New Duck-Billed Dinosaur Discovered in Mexico
• Coal Through a Microscope
• Volcanoes May Have Caused the Little Ice Ages
• Plastic: The Scourge of Sea Life
• Sir Charles Lyell’s Elements of Geology
• Photos from the Tucson Gem and Minerals Show
• Meteorites from Mercury
• Heated Debate Over the Definition of a Planet
• Theories on Grand Canyon Formation
• Who Buys High End Mineral Specimens?

Some meteorites contain lots of nanometer-sized diamonds. This was the first discovery that started scientists thinking about the possibility of diamonds in space. Now the Spitzer Space Telescope is going to look for them.

NASA Image

A team led by SpaceWorks Engineering won a contest in which there were required to design a mission that would launch, rendezvous with an asteroid and collect enough data in time for governments to decide whether or not to mount a mission to deflect it off its course.”

Meteorites from the Moon and Mars have been found on Earth but none have yet been found from Mercury. Is it possible for an impact on Mercury to launch a rock with enough energy to reach earth? Scientists from the University of British Columbia have done the math and believe that it is possible.

Early Tuesday morning a fireball illuminated the sky with a streak and explosion near Portland, Oregon. More details are given on the GEOTIMES website.

If you are going to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show be sure to see one of the world’s top meteorite displays at the Inn Suites Hotel. Aerolite Meteorites and Impactika will have a joint exhibit there between February 2nd and February 16th from 10:00 AM until 6:00 PM every day.

Asteroid 2007 TU24, discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on October 11, 2007 will approach to within 1.4 lunar distances (334,000 miles) of Earth on 2008 Jan. 29 08:33 UT. This object, between 150 and 600 meters in diameter. NASA has some additional details and a few very low resolution images on their website.

A small area in Manitoba has lots of water supply wells with elevated fluoride content. The geographic distribution of this problem is coincident with an ancient impact crater.

The asteroid on a possible collision path with Mars was discovered by astronomers at the University of Arizona. They estimate that it is about 164 feet wide, traveling at about 8 miles per second and if it hits Mars it will create a crater about the size of Meteor Crater in northern Arizona.

NASA Image

An asteroid known as 2007 WD5 is speeding towards Mars and scientists believe that it has a small chance of hitting the planet in January. It could make a hole in Mars about the same size as the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona.

In September, a meteorite impact in southern Peru caused a local panic when many people who visited the impact site became ill. Fortunately, the illnesses were not long-lasting and the 40-foot diameter crater has been declared a “National Heritage Site” by the regional government of Puno, Peru.

The Kalahari 009 meteorite has been determined to be part of the moon based upon the type of oxygen it contains. It is also composed of rock that is 4.35 billion years old and of a composition that implies that it was dislodged from a lunar lava flow.

An article on Bizarre Stuff explains what micrometeorites are and how you can collect them yourself with a magnet. The article explains how to collect them from rain water or melted snow. They are very tiny and you will need to view them with a microscope. You can find a second article on this same topic at Solarviews.

Lots of people are curious about meteorites or find an interesting rock that they suspect might be a meteorite. Here are links to some of the best-on-the web resources that you can use to get a preliminary answer. They can help you decide if your specimen might be a meteorite that is worth more detailed investigation.

Aerolite Meteorites
Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory
Meteorite Market
University of New Mexico

A 30 pound piece of the famous Willamette Meteorite was put up for auction this weekend in New York City. Pre-auction estimates were expecting it to fetch over $1 million. The bidding fizzled at only $300,000 and it was then withdrawn from the sale by the owner.

Here is a story about Bill Dale, one of the two people who “discovered” the Willamette Meteorite. More interesting to me was the account of the meteorite being stolen by Ellis Hughes from its original resting place. This was no minor theft - the meteorite weighed 15 tons and that was a lot harder to move in 1902 than it would be today.

A piece of the Willamette Meteorite is being auctioned in New York today.

On October 28th, Bonhams auction house in New York will feature a sale devoted exclusively to meteorites. Included in the sale are two widely known specimens. One is a 1410 pound Brenham meteorite found near Greensburg Kansas and the other is a 30 pound section cut from the famous Willamette meteorite that is on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York.

I don’t think I believe this one, but once in a while I am surprised…. A guy in Gardnerville, Nevada says that he found an 1800 pound meteorite with a device that detects radio signals emitted from minerals. He says that he was two miles away when he picked up the signal.

About 450 million years ago an object from space crashed into the area that is now Ames, Oklahoma producing a crater that is several miles across. The town of Ames is now located in the center of this crater. Several producing oil wells have been developed in the crater in what most would initially believe to be an unlikely location for a hydrocarbon reservoir. A museum featuring the crater will be dedicated in Ames on August 18th.

About 1.85 billion years ago a meteorite impact formed a large crater in the Sudbury district of Ontario, Canada. Debris from that impact was scattered across thousands of square miles. Recently, the Ham Lake fire exposed pieces of impact debris in northern Minnesota and provide interesting clues to understanding the unusual nature of the impact crater.