In another era, I would probably have been a naturalist, not for the philosophy so much as for the penchant to collect examples of the history of nature. I’m a big fan of museums and preservation – and yet, deep down, there’s that small part that wants to have the little bit of that in my own study at home. It’s why you can find, hidden between my books and knickknacks, a fossilized fish or shell leaning against the weight of all those bound words. None represent anything unique in the world, per se, and yet in my home I have a small piece of pre-human history.
So when I found out we were going to be selling Mars and Moon rocks at work (real ones!), I knew that if the price was right, I’d have to do it. This week, I did. What came in the mail was a padded yellow envelope, reminding me of a misspent youth ordering things from the back of comic books (remember when they used to have those ads?). And here they are!
The fragments in question both came from meteorite that in turn were ejecta from their respective heavenly bodies during (you guessed it) other meteor impacts. The mind warping part is knowing that sitting on my desk are fragments from rocks that traveled across interplanetary and interlunal(?) space to be on my desk. How friggin’ awesome is that?
It’s all coincidence that these arrived within 24 hours of the events in Russia and the “near miss” with DA14, and yet makes them sitting on my desk all the more poignant. If you haven’t seen the footage from the various Russian dashboard cameras, you should. (If you want to know why there are so many dashboard cameras in Russia, that’s explained too. No relationship at all to the lightning strikes on the Vatican or a dozen other “its a sign!” things this week either.
Update: For the curious, the authentication of the Martian meteorite fragment marks it as coming from the Tissint meteorite. The Lunar meteorite is a piece of NWA5000.
Related articles
- Meteorite explosion shakes Russian region of Chelyabinsk (guardian.co.uk)
- Asteroid explosion largest in a century (smh.com.au)
- Jupiter and the Moon Have a Close Encounter in the Sky February 18, 2013 (myscienceacademy.org)
