Martian Meteorite NWA 4925

If you have been following my blog for any length of time you'll know I have purchased both Lunar and Martian property. Well now I have in my possession both Lunar and Martian actual property in the form of rocks!! That's right I have actual pieces of both celestial bodies that I can hold.


I know what you're saying, "Big Whoop", wow I can't believe you said that, ...well actually you didn't say that, I wrote it, but that's besides the point, just think about it, I am holding a piece of a celestial body other than Earth's.

It's journey probably started when a meteor pierced through the Martian atmosphere and collided with the planet, ejecting rock faster then the Martian escape velocity into space, it ventured forward into our Solar System to be captured by Earth's gravitational pull to become a falling star to land on our planet, then it was found by a lucky person. Some of the fallen meteorite will be used as research and some to be sold on eBay and in meteorite stores.... enter moi, I put it under a microscope to show you all what it looks like, what a fantastic journey.


How do we know it's from Mars? Well with all the information scientists have gather from spacecrafts such as the Voyagers, Rovers and Phoenix we know the mineralogy of the planet and Martian Meteorite NWA 4925 is a perfect fit. There are only around 50 Martian meteorites that we know of to date that have landed here on Earth, so they are fairly rare and expensive, but there are some Martian Meteorite owners that have cut up some of their meteorites into tiny little pieces so as to make it affordable for people like you and me to own.

As you can see from the above image the samples are very small so you have to be very careful with handling the sample, least you loose it. The very first thing I did when I got one of my samples was open the box to play with it.... not a good thing, dropped it on the carpet, down I go, the cat too, looking for my missing rock, the cat's all over it, I'm on my hands and knees , I'm pushing the cat away, the cats barking at me, I'm barking at the cat, not a pretty site. Finally found it before the cat, put it under the microscope and the images above are what the sample looks like at 40 and 100x magnification, geez what I do for science.





Between the mechanical breakdowns at CERN and their regular winter shutdown looks like the LHC will be down now till next spring. Cern has been plagued with problems, from mechanical to idiot hackers, it's been a Public Relations nightmare. CERN is still getting calls and emails about the imminent destruction of the planet by the Black holes they hope to create, hopefully once they are up and running spring 2009 they will have a little better luck.

I'll leave you now with a video of Martian Meteorite NWA 4925 taken with my Celestron Digital Microscope.