Why this rock is
probably not a meteorite:
This is a sawn
face of a 1-pound chunk of metal that someone sent. The width is
2 cm. The finder thought it was an iron meteorite.
There are 4 things about this object that argue that it is not
a meteorite. (1) Though not so evident in this photo, the surface
is much too rough for a meteorite. (2) There are too many holes
- void spaces
- and
they are irregular in shape. Iron meteorites aren't so full of
holes (see Campo del
Cielo, Glorieta
Mountain, and Gibeon).
(3) If you can see through the saw marks, there's some fine-grained
texture (the squiggly lines) that suggest this thing was flowing
while it was partly solid. Such a texture is never observed in
an iron meteorite.
(4) Finally, on the right there are globs of copper imbedded in
the iron! Iron meteorites don't contain be globs of copper.
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What is it?
Something man made, like industrial debris or the product
of an intense fire that incompletely melted and mixed the metal.
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