[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Meteorite Trivia Questions

 

Steven Excell wrote:

Does anyone know why OLD HOMESTEAD 001 (the howardite from Nullabor, Australia) has the 001 designation in its name???

Similarly, why does REID 013 (the brachinite from Nullabor, Australia) have the 013 in its name???  (There is an older Reid H4 chondrite not to be confused with Reid 013)

The numbering of Saharan meteorites makes some sense because there are no nearby landmarks in the vast desert, but the numbers in these two meteorites is a complete mystery to me.

Someone asked me, and I said, "Heck, if I know."

Steve
Seattle, Washington USA
excell@cris.com

 Steve,
the Nullarbor area of Australia is called the Nullarbor Plain. But how plain is it?
Definitely one of the most featureless areas on the planet. Makes the Antarctic look like Manhattan. An arid  particularly-flat, limestone plain which contains the longest straight stretch of railway in the world (over 300 miles without a bend, nothing to go around!). Technically I think it may be a desert but rather than sand dunes it is covered by native shrubs rarely over knee-height. You can drive all day at 80mp/h without seeing a single tree, thus Null-Arbor (No-Tree). This is 170 000 Sq Miles of white very flat ground. When you are standing on it, you are the tallest structure, organic or not, to the horizon. Lizards and insects will be attracted to you because you will be the best shade they will see in a lifetime.

Great for finding meteorites, terrible for finding your own location. Any location. There are just are no features with which to relate a meteorite find. Well,one of the early suggestions was to use a very local feature but we would be up to Wombat-hole 3500 by now.

But enough tourism. The lack of geographic features has led to a meteorite nomenclature system where names have been applied to geometrically shaped areas similar to a map index. Any meteorite being found within this designated area will be given that name and a three digit number usually in chronological order of discovery eg, Mundrabilla 012. So this does not necessarily relate to Mundrabilla Station or any geographic feature at all, it was just a local name applied to one of the designated areas which may be hundreds of miles from any 'real' Mundrabilla-features. It was the twelfth find within the Mundrabilla block and the names of the blocks and their area is based on Nullarbor names but is essentially made up like a jigsaw puzzle. The 'Old Homestead' must have been a Friday afternoon effort while I think the name 'Reid' is from one of the railway sidings in the area. When they start running out of relevant names perhaps they will start on relatives and beers, or even The Simpsons.

Obviously there will be some anomalous examples where older finds don't fit the 'new' system or the finds are outside one of the designated areas but I'm sure you don't expect this meteorite science to be perfect, eh?

For better grammar and less drivel see Bevan A W R and Binns R A 1989a in Meteoritics 24:127-133.
cheers
Mark Thompson
Western Australia
 

References: