The best unexpected opportunity ever
Oct. 19th, 2007 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twilight33I was sitting at the information desk during my regular assignment this afternoon & the phone rings.
My internship supervisor: Ask them to release you for 10 minutes and come down here NOW. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Me: Uhhh.. ok.
I go downstairs, my supervisor says "Follow me!" and we go out the back entrance and through a few hallways where a clearly excited crowd is standing around.
On a table, resting on a rectangular piece of grey foam, was the world's largest lunar meteorite. It was a pockmarked erratically shaped sphere in shades of beige, grey & black (kind of similar in appearance to Mac over here), about a foot in diameter.
I got to both touch and hoist it up in my arms; it weighed at least twice as much than I thought it should by appearance. I was completely in awe bordering on rapture: I was holding the largest chunk of the MOON that had traveled to Earth by itself! OMG! I carefully handed it off to the second-in-command, who clearly was holding on for dear life so she wouldn't drop it & exclaimed that I must be strong because I made it look lighter than it is.
Everyone there was absolutely beaming, from the researchers to the photographer to the people coming & going as word spread through the halls about it. This is what I absolutely love about academia... you never know what cool thing you will encounter and when, but when you do everyone gets caught up in the excitement of learning from and sharing in it.
I quickly went back to the desk to the quizzical look of my partner. I told him the room number and brief directions but not what was going on... just that he had to go. He came back with the same beam everyone else had... "that was SO cool!"
To put things in perspective, according to the St. Louis website, 99.8% of all meteorites are asteroids and the remaining .2% are lunar and Martian. Of lunar meteorites, 90% weigh 10-1600 grams. This one is 20% of the total weight of all lunar meteorites found to date. I'm horrible at guesstimating, but it was well over the 13.5 kg of the 1999 #1.
It was discovered in the Saharan Desert approximately two months ago and arrived at the University of Washington yesterday in a box that looked like it had been dropped 100 times. Why they got to claim this first to study over everyone else in the world, I have no idea. One of the researchers told me after it was found they broke off a small chunk of it to test, determined it was lunar, then made arrangements to ship it here. It'll take them about 6 months to know test results determining the age of the meteorite, when it was projected from the moon, how long it was in space, and when it might have crashed on Earth. It was found mostly buried in the sand by a man who was hauling around his legless brother in a cart; he was pretty sure the guy has a fleet of Land Rovers by now.
There will be an article about it in the campus news soon & and I can hardly wait to read it. The reason the meteorite & researchers were in the hallway is because it was just outside the photography studio & apparently enough people knew what was going on that they stayed around to chat.
This was also by far the most valuable thing I have ever held (Kieran notwithstanding): Cost per gram for lunar meteorites on eBay supposedly range from $800 - $40,000. Per gram. The researchers seemed remarkably unconcerned that anyone would try to cut & run with it as we carefully passed it around, probably because the thing was so heavy and there is a community of trust.
OMG. I still can't quite believe it. I actually wrapped my arms around part of the Moon today, and not just some speck of dust from it in the palm of my hand.
My internship supervisor: Ask them to release you for 10 minutes and come down here NOW. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Me: Uhhh.. ok.
I go downstairs, my supervisor says "Follow me!" and we go out the back entrance and through a few hallways where a clearly excited crowd is standing around.
On a table, resting on a rectangular piece of grey foam, was the world's largest lunar meteorite. It was a pockmarked erratically shaped sphere in shades of beige, grey & black (kind of similar in appearance to Mac over here), about a foot in diameter.
I got to both touch and hoist it up in my arms; it weighed at least twice as much than I thought it should by appearance. I was completely in awe bordering on rapture: I was holding the largest chunk of the MOON that had traveled to Earth by itself! OMG! I carefully handed it off to the second-in-command, who clearly was holding on for dear life so she wouldn't drop it & exclaimed that I must be strong because I made it look lighter than it is.
Everyone there was absolutely beaming, from the researchers to the photographer to the people coming & going as word spread through the halls about it. This is what I absolutely love about academia... you never know what cool thing you will encounter and when, but when you do everyone gets caught up in the excitement of learning from and sharing in it.
I quickly went back to the desk to the quizzical look of my partner. I told him the room number and brief directions but not what was going on... just that he had to go. He came back with the same beam everyone else had... "that was SO cool!"
To put things in perspective, according to the St. Louis website, 99.8% of all meteorites are asteroids and the remaining .2% are lunar and Martian. Of lunar meteorites, 90% weigh 10-1600 grams. This one is 20% of the total weight of all lunar meteorites found to date. I'm horrible at guesstimating, but it was well over the 13.5 kg of the 1999 #1.
It was discovered in the Saharan Desert approximately two months ago and arrived at the University of Washington yesterday in a box that looked like it had been dropped 100 times. Why they got to claim this first to study over everyone else in the world, I have no idea. One of the researchers told me after it was found they broke off a small chunk of it to test, determined it was lunar, then made arrangements to ship it here. It'll take them about 6 months to know test results determining the age of the meteorite, when it was projected from the moon, how long it was in space, and when it might have crashed on Earth. It was found mostly buried in the sand by a man who was hauling around his legless brother in a cart; he was pretty sure the guy has a fleet of Land Rovers by now.
There will be an article about it in the campus news soon & and I can hardly wait to read it. The reason the meteorite & researchers were in the hallway is because it was just outside the photography studio & apparently enough people knew what was going on that they stayed around to chat.
This was also by far the most valuable thing I have ever held (Kieran notwithstanding): Cost per gram for lunar meteorites on eBay supposedly range from $800 - $40,000. Per gram. The researchers seemed remarkably unconcerned that anyone would try to cut & run with it as we carefully passed it around, probably because the thing was so heavy and there is a community of trust.
OMG. I still can't quite believe it. I actually wrapped my arms around part of the Moon today, and not just some speck of dust from it in the palm of my hand.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-20 05:30 am (UTC)Do you know the source online where you heard about it, please?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-20 06:07 am (UTC)