[meteorite-list] Tagish Lake petri dish

From: joseph_town_at_att.net <joseph_town_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Apr 25 20:37:12 2006
Message-ID: <042520060112.29669.444D777700016726000073E521603759640299019BA1089F0A9C0106_at_att.net>

Hi all,

I've been following this story for a while. I'm sure many on the list have as well. My question is simple. How can a meteorite that has traveled through our murky atmosphere, excuse me Canada, that falls on the surface of a lake and has been stored in some guys freezer be considered as pristine as if none of those things happened?

I can see that his stuff might be in a better state of preservation than most but will the tater tots smeared on it be a subject of new studies and scientific conjecture? Were they just stored in a household freezer all these years? If so they have been in a petri dish.

Bill

 
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Armando Afonso" <armandoafonso_at_oniduo.pt>
> Calgary - To scientists, they are priceless clues about the origins of
> life, but now, six years after he found some frozen meteorite fragments
> that weigh roughly as much as two blocks of butter, a Canadian has
> cashed in.
> The price tag: $750,000.
> And as a bonus, the space rocks that landed in Canada and were poised
> to go to the United States are staying here.
> "It's been a little tortuous at times," Jim Brook said yesterday from
> his home in Atlin, in the northwest corner of British Columbia, not far
> from where the meteorite crashed to Earth.
> "There was no significant interest in Canada for quite a while, and
> eventually, we were able to get something lined up, so I'm glad they're
> staying," Mr. Brook said.
> The meteorite fragments will be housed at the University of Alberta
> in Edmonton and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
> For almost seven million years, the space rock travelled at 10
> kilometres a second and covered a distance of a half-billion kilometres
> before it collided with the Earth's atmosphere in January, 2000.
> The 200-tonne rock was between 25 and 30 kilometres above the ground
> when it exploded and emerged as a fireball over parts of British
> Columbia and Yukon.
> Several hundred pieces, some as large as footballs, landed on frozen
> Tagish Lake, which straddles the B.C. and Yukon boundary.
> Miraculously, about 850 grams of the Tagish Lake meteorite remained
> in a pristine state.
> The fragments were frozen and uncontaminated despite a fiery descent
> to Earth.
> "This material is extremely rare," said Sonia Lismer, manager of
> movable cultural property with Canadian Heritage, which kicked in more
> than $437,000 to keep the meteorite in Canada.
> Mr. Brook, who is a resort operator and has a scientific background,
> missed the light show, but a week later, he spotted the dark chunks of
> rock while driving his pickup across the lake.
> He knew not to contaminate them by touching them with his bare hands.
> "It's pretty amazing when you consider that they came down right
> there on the lake and at that time of year, when there was some snow
> around," he said at the time.
> "The whole thing was a real stroke of luck."
> He put the rock fragments in his freezer.
> Researchers determined that the meteorite, which is fragile and more
> ice-like than rock-hard, was the first to come from a thick band of
> asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.
> NASA scientists found previously unseen organic material in the
> carbonaceous chondrite fragments. They detected tiny globules of
> hydrocarbons, which were formed long before our own solar system and
> are the perfect homes for primitive organisms.
> Under Canadian law, meteorites belong to the person who finds them.
> Mr. Brook began shopping the fragments around.
> He found buyers in the United States, but Ottawa turned down his
> application for an export permit because it aims to keep cultural
> property of outstanding significance and national importance at home.
> Last June, the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board, an
> independent tribunal, gave federally designated Canadian institutions
> six months to match the market value of the rocks. If they failed, Mr.
> Brook could sell them as he pleased.
> The University of Alberta, the Royal Ontario Museum, Natural
> Resources Canada and the Canadian Space Agency began fundraising, but
> applied for federal grants to make up a $313,000 gap.
> The grants were approved late last year and announced yesterday.
> "It's going to enable a really wonderful camaraderie of experts
> sharing this material for research and it's going to build on the
> existing research that has already taken place with NASA and that
> research is going to extend globally," Ms. Lismer said.
> The University of Alberta has 650 grams of the fragments and the ROM
> has 200 grams. The ROM will display a 52-gram fragment.
> Christopher Herd, a professor with the department of Earth and
> atmospheric sciences at the University of Alberta, said the frozen
> fragments will allow researchers to see organic molecules that are
> naturally within the meteorite as well as volatile substances - perhaps
> extraterrestrial ices.
> "It gives us a snapshot of what was happening when the solar system
> formed 4½ billion years ago and it's unlike any other meteorite even of
> its own kind," Dr. Herd said.
>



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