[meteorite-list] More on "main mass"

From: Matson, Robert <ROBERT.D.MATSON_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Jan 20 01:54:24 2006
Message-ID: <A8044CCD89B24B458AE36254DCA2BD070B1710_at_0005-its-exmp01.us.saic.com>

Ken writes:

> There is only one main mass to a "Fall".

>From a philosophical standpoint, sure. But from a point of
practicality, you will rarely know if you have identified the
"main mass" of a fall or not. So in common usage, main mass
is altered to mean the "largest known mass". As Steve Arnold
aptly demonstrated, the title of "main mass" is fluid.

In areas of dense collection -- including Antarctica, NWA,
Oman, Roosevelt County, and the desert southwest of the U.S. --
incomplete or missing pairing information makes the determination
of the "known" main mass of a fall ambiguous.

I don't know why a collector would place any extra value on
a specimen claiming to be the main mass and coming from one of
these areas. Most NWA designations refer to single stones, so
in effect "main mass" is just a marketing term.

Ken finished with:

"In my mind where the society has really lost it giving separate
numbers to the same "Fall" (event) of meteorites."

I can think of nothing better that they could have done. The
dendritic system of undocumented recovery, transport, visual
sorting, arbitrary grouping, selling and reselling effectively
scrambles the individual strewn fields. Only with the rarest
meteorites types is it sometimes possible to reunite specimens
belonging to the same fall.

--Rob
Received on Fri 20 Jan 2006 01:53:55 AM PST