Deception Point Page 20

This first sample here, corky said, pointing to a shiny, jet-black st unmatchable, is an iron-core meteorite. genuinely heavy. This little guy landed in Antarctica a few years back.Rachel analyze the meteorite. It most for sure looked otherworldly-a blob of heavy grayish iron whose outer crust was burned and blackened.That charred outer layer is called a fusion crust, bad said. Its the result of extreme heating as the meteor falls through our atmosphere. altogether meteorites exhibit that charring. bad moved quickly to the next sample. This next one is what we call a stony-iron meteorite.Rachel canvass the sample, noting that it too was charred on the outside. This sample, however, had a light-greenish tint, and the brush section looked like a collage of colorful angulate fragments resembling a kaleidoscopic puzzle.Pretty, Rachel said.Are you kidding, its gorgeous Corky talked for a minute about the high olivine guinea pig causing the green luster, and then he reached dramat ically for the third and final sample, handing it to Rachel.Rachel held the final meteorite in her palm. This one was grayish brown in color, resembling granite. It felt heavier than a terrestrial stone, but not substantially. The only interpretation suggesting it was anything other than a normal rock was its fusion crust-the scorched outer approach.This, Corky said with finality, is called a stony meteorite. Its the most common class of meteorite. More than cardinal percent of meteorites found on creation atomic number 18 of this category.Rachel was surprised. She had always pictured meteorites more like the first sample-metallic, alien-looking blobs. The meteorite in her hand looked anything but extraterrestrial. off from the charred out-of-door, it looked like something she might step over on the beach.Corkys eye were bulging now with excitement. The meteorite buried in the ice here at Milne is a stony meteorite-a lot like the one in your hand. rocky meteorites appear alm ost identical to our terrestrial igneous rocks, which makes them tough to spot. Usually a blend of lightweight silicates-feldspar, olivine, pyroxene. Nothing too exciting.Ill say, Rachel thought, handing the sample back to him. This one looks like a rock someone left hand in a fireplace and burned.Corky burst out laughing. One hell of a fireplace The meanest blast furnace ever built doesnt come close to reproducing the heat a meteoroid feels when it hits our atmosphere. They get rapedTolland gave Rachel an empathetic smile. This is the good part.Picture this, Corky said, taking the meteorite sample from Rachel. Lets imagine this little fella is the size of a house. He held the sample high over his head. Okay its in space floating crosswise our solar system cold-soaked from the temperature of space to minus one hundred degrees Celsius.Tolland was chuckling to himself, apparently already having seen Corkys reenactment of the meteorites arrival on Ellesmere Island.Corky began lowe ring the sample. Our meteorite is moving toward earth and as its getting very close, our gravity locks on accelerating accelerating Rachel watched as Corky sped up the samples trajectory, mimicking the acceleration of gravity.Now its moving fast, Corky exclaimed. Over ten miles per second-thirty-six thousand miles per second At 135 kilometers above the earths surface, the meteorite begins to encounter friction with the atmosphere. Corky agitate the sample violently as he lowered it toward the ice. Falling below one hundred kilometers, its starting to glow Now the atmospherical density is increasing, and the friction is incredible The air around the meteoroid is becoming incandescent as the surface material melts from the heat. Corky started making burning and sizzling sound effects. Now its locomote past the eighty-kilometer mark, and the exterior becomes heated to over eighteen hundred degrees CelsiusRachel watched in disbelief as the presidential award-winning astrophysicist shook the meteorite more fiercely, sputtering out juvenile sound effects.Sixty kilometers Corky was shouting now. Our meteoroid encounters the atmospheric wall. The air is too dense It violently decelerates at more than three hundred times the disembowel of gravity Corky made a screeching braking sound and soggyed his descent dramatically. Instantly, the meteorite cools and stops glowing. Weve hit sin flight The meteoroids surface hardens from its molten stage to a charred fusion crust.Rachel heard Tolland groan as Corky knelt on the ice to perform the coup de grace-earth impact.Now, Corky said, our huge meteorite is skipping across our lower atmosphere On his knees, he arched the meteorite toward the ground on a shallow slant. Its headed toward the Arctic Ocean on an nonparallel angle falling looking almost like it leave skip off the ocean falling and He touched the sample to the ice. BAMRachel jumped.The impact is cataclysmic The meteorite explodes. Fragments fly off, skipp ing and spinning across the ocean. Corky went into slow motion now, rolling and topple the sample across the invisible ocean toward Rachels feet. One piece keeps skimming, tumbling toward Ellesmere Island He brought it right up to her toe. It skips off the ocean, bouncing up onto land He moved it up and over the tongue of her shoe and rolled it to a stop on top of her foot well(p) her ankle. And finally comes to rest high on the Milne Glacier, where snow and ice quickly cover it, protecting it from atmospheric erosion. Corky stood up with a smile.Rachels mouth fell slack. She gave an impressed laugh. Well, Dr. Marlinson, that explanation was exceptionally Lucid? Corky offered.Rachel smiled. In a word.Corky handed the sample back to her. Look at the cross section.Rachel studied the rocks interior a moment, seeing nothing.Tilt it into the light, Tolland prompted, his voice warm and kind. And look closely.Rachel brought the rock close to her eyes and tilted it against the dazzling halogens reflecting overhead. Now she saw it-tiny metallic globules glistening in the stone. Dozens of them were peppered throughout the cross section like minuscule droplets of mercury, each only about a millimeter across.Those little bubbles are called chondrules, Corky said. And they occur only in meteorites.Rachel squinted at the droplets. Granted, Ive never seen anything like this in an earth rock.Nor will you Corky declared. Chondrules are one geologic structure we simply do not have on earth. Some chondrules are exceptionally old-perhaps madeup of the earliest materials in the universe. Other chondrules are much younger, like the ones in your hand. The chondrules in that meteorite date only about 190 million years old.One hundred ninety million years is young?Heck, yes In cosmological terms, thats yesterday. The point here, though, is that this sample contains chondrules-conclusive meteoric evidence.Okay, Rachel said. Chondrules are conclusive. Got it.And finally, Corky said, heaving a sigh, if the fusion crust and chondrules dont convince you, we astronomers have a foolproof method to get meteoric origin.Being?Corky gave a casual shrug. We simply use a petrographic polarizing microscope, an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer, a neutron activation analyzer, or an induction-coupled plasma spectrometer to measure ferromagnetic ratios.