-40%
Nantan - Iron IAB Meteorite - DG-30 - W/COA - 6.9g Fragment
$ 7.89
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Description
Nantan - Iron IAB Meteorite - China - 1958#DG-30 - W/COA - 6.9g Fragment
Definition of a Meteor and a Meteorite
: A meteor is a natural object originating extra-terrestrially in outer space. It is also sometimes called a “meteoroid.” A meteorite is a meteor or a fragment of a meteor that has landed on a planet. When a meteor falls to earth, it may become super-heated and glow, leaving a trail of smoke and gas as it hits our atmosphere. This meteor is also known as a “shooting star.”
Meteoric Origins
:
It is always a wondrous thing to speculate on the origins of a meteorite. We know that the iron in this particular meteorite had its origin in the heart of the hydrogen furnace of some long-dead star billions of years ago. It was slowly created from the gravitational mating of countless quadrillions of sub-atomic particles over billions of years.
We also know that once the iron and other elements were formed within a star, they would reside there in its core until the star burned out, a process that takes billions more years, perhaps 5 to 15 billion years. Then, in the last days of its existence, that star would most likely explode in a cataclysmic event known as a “Supernova,” liberating the iron and other heavy and light elements from the control of what had become an immense gravitational hold.
If we follow this logic, this blown-up now-freed material, which ranged in size from dust particles to huge mountain-sized chunks of iron-nickel, silicon, and all the other elements, would have been flung at super-fast speeds deep into space. From this release, the material would then have slowly begun to merge with other chunks of like material through gravitational attraction.
From these beginnings, the planets began to form from the dust and chunks of exploded suns, getting bigger and bigger (and stronger and stronger due to increased gravitational attraction), pulling in more and more of the space debris. Besides this accumulation of dust and rocks, such a forming planet would experience constant bombarded with meteors and asteroids for millions of years, slowing building up the size of individual moons, planetoids, and planets. In this way, the planets were formed, and then our own solar system slowly took shape.
It is believed that most of the meteorites striking the earth now came from a planet that once existed between Mars and Jupiter. At some time during the solar system’s 4.6 billion year life, for unknown reasons, that planet was mysteriously destroyed, and all of its matter, including its dense iron-nickel core, was fragmented into billions of pieces, creating the asteroid belt. (This brings to mind the fictional planet, “Krypton,” written about as the home but destroy home planet of Superman.)
There is a 2005 newspaper article by Reuters News Service (
January 19, 2005
) that makes this point more clear. According to the article, it was reported that NASA’s Rover, “
Opportunity
,
”
came across a
basketball-sized nickel-iron meteorite
while traversing a wide area of Mars called the Meridiani Planum. This meteorite is from the same asteroid or asteroid group as our meteorite and the famous Canyon Diablo iron-nickel meteorites
.
We now know that these meteorites from the asteroid belt are elsewhere in space and have probably hit every planet and moon in our system
.
Originally Found
: The
area in China where your meteorite landed is
Quanxi
Province
(pronounced ‘gwong-she’), in Nandan (Nantan) County.
Date of Witnessed Fall
: The meteorite was witnessed by thousands of people, mostly peasant farmers, in May of the year 1516. This was in the Ming Dynasty period of
China
, a very illustrious time for the Chinese people.
Recorded History
:
The Chinese have kept always impeccable records of their history of any kinds of major events, such as wars, royal power shifts, and celestial events. So it was in
May 1516, that during the Chinese year “Jiajing,” it was written by scholars and astrologers in the local records that, “stars fell from the northwest; five to six fold long, waving like snakes and dragons in the sky. They were as bright as lightning and disappeared in
seconds.” Like burning cinders, each of the thousands of meteors soaring above Nantan that night burned super-bright as they were momentarily super-heated in the upper atmosphere, then dropped to the ground, later to be found as heavy burned rocks in the farmer’s fields.
It is estimated that the original meteor weighed more than 9,500 kilograms (about 1,900 lbs.) before it entered our atmosphere. This weight estimate includes what may have been lost to climatic exposure and weathering during the past 500 years. The remaining unweathered and semi-weathered stocks are probably less than half of the original fall.
It is believed that when this big iron meteor hit the upper atmosphere at an estimated speed of 20,000 to 40,000 miles per hour, it exploded, shattering into thousands of pieces in an instant. These pieces, continuing at super-fast speeds, fell as brightly lit shooting stars that eventually hit the earth over an elliptically shaped strewnfield 17 miles long by 5 miles wide.
From 1516 until 1958, the local Chinese farmers considered the meteorites a nuisance because they interfered with farming and were a back-breaking pain to move. Sometimes the larger meteorites (weighing 100 lbs and up) were just left in the fields. Where and when it was feasible (and the stones not so heavy), the farmers would move the smaller meteorites, these “heavy stones from heaven,” to make stone piles at the ends of planting rows, some of them reaching six feet or higher.
Over the years, with each succeeding generation of farmers in the
Nandan
County
district, the origins of the meteorites were slowly forgotten, and the meteorites were seen as just piles of useless stones, too heavy to move. So they mostly just stayed there. This was true until 1958
.
Then everything changed!
This was the time of Mao Tse Tung, the founder of “The People’s Republic of China,” a communist dictatorship much different from the
China
we have today. He was the country's absolute ruler, and was called “Chairman Mao” by everyone.
Mao, in keeping with economic and cultural planning, thought it necessary to help advance the people and devised a plan known in English as "
The Great Chinese Cultural Revolution
," which was also known as “
The Great Leap Forward
.” During this time, Mao and his followers strongly encouraged all the people, nearly 700 million, to become socially active, to conserve and recycle everything, and never to waste
any reusable
materials. It was believed that everyone should conserve resources, and through these efforts by the people, a new modern
China
would result. Many people became fanatic about this, and many changes were made in
China
during this period, some changes, not the best.
This was a time of great social upheaval and confusion in
China
’s history.
One incident related to your meteorite is
China
’s mad rush to collect steel and iron scrap in its earlier years. These scrap metals were sought to help bolster China’s fledgling steel industry to save money (which was in very short supply). At that time, most of the country consisted of small farmers and tradespeople. The large industries we see now, which make many of the Western world’s consumer products, didn’t exist then.
The farmers in
Nandan
Province
were called upon to do their share, to provide any kind of usable junk or scrap to help support the national cause of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.” Many of these farmers knew that there were piles of rust-covered rocks that they and their ancestors had pulled from the fields during the past years and that they were made of some kind of metal. So they offered up these heavy iron rocks as part of their contribution.
However, when the iron smelters tried to melt these old rocks with the other scraps, they ran into a problem: The iron in these stones just wouldn’t behave like normal iron ore, resisting even the highest smelter temperatures (the special iron-nickel composition of Nantan meteorites needed much higher temperatures to melt it, much higher than the small local wood and coal burning smelters could provide.) The government sent experts who researched the village's history and learned that these chunks of what was thought to be iron ore were actually of extraterrestrial origins. And that’s how Nantan meteorites, and their history as one of the few observed large meteorite fall, became finally re-discovered after being “lost” for nearly 500 years.
-----------
Official Classification
:
Iron - Nickel
. Octahedrite Type IIICD
. Octahedrites have, as a predominate feature, an intermediate content of nickel and contains taenite and kamacite, and magnetite/Fe
3
O
4.
.
Nantans have a general chemical composition of Fe 92.35%, Ni 6.96%, with several rare trace elements such as C, Cu, Co, S, P, Cr, Ga, Ge, As, Sb, W, Re, Ir, Au, Ru, Pd, Os, and Pr.
It is the cross-intersecting of the two main metal minerals, Taenite and Kamacite, in their respective and distinctive planes that creates the Widmanstatten design. This pattern can best be observed when sectioning and polishing an octahedrite/iron-nickel meteorite, then etching it in a weak acid solution e.g., nitric acid.
It is a fact that only 5% of all meteorites striking the earth are of the iron-nickel classification.
Kamacite is the commoner of the two nickel-iron alloys found in
iron meteorites
; the other is
taenite
. It contains 4% to 7.5% nickel, and forms large crystals that appear like broad bands or beam-like structures on the etched surface of a meteorite; its name comes for the Greek word for "beam
."
Taenite is less common of the two nickel-iron alloys found in
iron meteorites
. It
contains 27% to 65% nickel, and forms small crystals that appear as highly reflecting thin ribbons on the etched surface of a meteorite; the name comes for the Greek word for "ribbon."
The shapes and sizes of Nantan meteorites are very diverse. Shapes range from flat, to spherical, triangular, oval or egg-like, irregular, etc. Generally, new meteorite surfaces are black in color, and usually have angular or round melted pits or depressions, commonly called “oblations,” and sometimes referred to as the “thumbprints” of a meteorite. Many Nantans show this. Some that have been exposed to the elements and weathered appear brown in color and lack the melted surface look. However, a lot of Nantan meteorites have been restored through special cleaning to a bright finish and polishing so that the natural etching is evident and then coated (usually with acrylic lacquer) to prevent oxidation.
Magnetism
: Meteorites and natural iron deposits sometimes become magnetized on earth from lightning strikes and other electromagnetic exposure.In olden days, magnetic stones (iron ore and meteorites), commonly known as “lodestones,” were believed to be magic and were oftentimes used in divining the future or in religious worship. There are many claims made for magnets and for meteorites. In some remote cultures of antiquity, meteorites were believed to be messages (or messengers) from the gods, since they came from the heavens. Sometimes they were considered omens of things yet to come, advanced “blogs” foretelling of future happenings, sent to mankind so he could prepare himself.
Other cultures strongly believed that meteorites held great powers of fertility; shamans and tribal wise men would sometimes order that these seeds from heaven be shaped into fertility objects used (and worshiped) by people of the tribe.
Magnetism has held a universal fascination for people of all ages during all of recorded history. In earlier times, it was believed that “natural” magnets, such as lodestones, contained the souls of loved ones or of minor deities.
In more modern times, over the past 100 years, magnets are thought to contain the power to heal the sick, to promote well-being, good health, and longevity. Today, health-related devices using magnets are quite popular and are now supported by scientific research.
Magnetism, in the form of magnets and electro-magnetism, is today the "magic" driving force of most appliances and machines in the world we live in.
-----------
Your meteorite shows that it has survived extreme heat and pressure as it hurled from outer space towards earth at super-super-sonic speeds those many years ago.
Truly, this is an authentic relic of both supernova and vanished planet that is a genuine extra-terrestrial product. It has now become your own special
piece of the greater universe outside of earth, a real connection between you and a greater unknown, yet a new universe of infinite possibilities. And you can hold it in your hands.
-----------------------
Maria and Staff
Maria’s Meteorites & Gifts
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100
Rancho
Mirage
,
CA
92270
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Form 25996-15