[meteorite-list] UNM scientist studies the authenticity of meteorites

From: Shawn Alan <shawnalan_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2015 14:21:37 -0700
Message-ID: <20150204142137.e8713c95af9984a493c5db01816d4c10.c383af3f52.wbe_at_email22.secureserver.net>

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UNM scientist studies the authenticity of meteorites

In 2011, Carl Agee received a rock in the mail from a meteorite
collector in Morocco. At the time, nobody knew what it was or where it
had come from. Even for Agee, director of UNM?s Institute for
Meteoritics, the rock?s origin remained a mystery for quite some time.

?This collector sent it to me because no one knew what it was, and it
took me months of laboratory analyses to figure it out,? Agee said.

At the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, he tested the
rock?s chemical composition, isotopic composition, and mineralogy to
determine its makeup.

?From all of those different lines of evidence, the picture that
emerged was that it was a meteorite from Mars,? he said.

Now, Agee is being funded by NASA to study the meteorite, known as NWA
7034, or ?Black Beauty? for its dark color.

There are several reasons why NASA is interested in Black Beauty. Tests
showed that it contains 10 to 30 times more water than any previously
studied Martian sample. Agee and his team also found that the meteorite
is composed of a variety of minerals, ranging from 4.4 to 2.1 billion
years old.

?There are different fragments of the Martian crust all together in
the same meteorite in addition to the water, so there?s a record of
the surface processes on Mars for about two billion years,? Agee said.

Black Beauty is also notable, Agee said, because it is very similar to
the rock samples that are currently being collected by the two rovers on
Mars, which use a robotic remote sensing technique to identify the
rocks? composition.

?Black Beauty finally forms the first tangible meteorite link to the
rocks that NASA?s rovers are sampling in outcrops on Mars,? Agee
wrote in the Universities Space Research Association?s report for the
Eighth International Conference on Mars. He notes that the meteorite
provides insight into volcanic activity on the planet, which is one of
his research specialties.

While Agee is best known for his work in meteoritics, he was originally
trained as a geologist, which is how he began researching volcanoes. He
said he became interested in planetary geology while working on his
doctoral degree at Columbia University.

?If you?re trained in geology, planets are like whole new worlds to
map out and understand,? Agee said.

After finishing at Columbia, he taught at Harvard for eight years before
moving to Houston to work at NASA?s Johnson Space Center. He said he
came to UNM because he enjoys the intellectual atmosphere of a
university.

?I have contracts for NASA that I work on, so I?m still involved
with them,? Agee said. ?In addition to Black Beauty, they have also
funded me for years to study the processes of planetary volcanism.?

He uses the department?s high-pressure laboratory to simulate the
conditions of planetary interiors to study the behavior of magma, he
said.

Source: http://www.dailylobo.com/article/2015/02/2-4-agee-profile
Received on Wed 04 Feb 2015 04:21:37 PM PST