New director appointed to Vatican Observatory

Pope Francis on Friday named Brother Guy Joseph Consolmagno, SJ as the new director of the Vatican Observatory. Jesuit Br Consolmagno is the current President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, as well as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Castel Gandolfo, one of the largest in the world.

His research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system.

Br Guy Consolmagno SJ was born in 1952 in Detroit, Michigan. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in 1974 and Master of Science in 1975 in Earth and Planetary Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his PhD in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona in 1978. From 1978-80 he was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Harvard College Observatory, and from 1980-1983 continued as postdoc and lecturer at MIT.

In 1983 he left MIT to join the US Peace Corps, where he served for two years in Kenya teaching physics and astronomy. Upon his return to the US in 1985 he became an assistant professor of physics at Lafayette College, in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he taught until his entry into the Jesuit order in 1989. He took vows as a Jesuit brother in 1991, and studied philosophy and theology at Loyola University Chicago, and physics at the University of Chicago before his assignment to the Vatican Observatory in 1993.

In spring 2000 he held the MacLean Chair for Visiting Jesuit Scholars at St Joseph's University, Philadelphia, and in 2006-2007 held the Loyola Chair at Fordham University, New York. He has also been a visiting scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center and a visiting professor at Loyola College, Baltimore, and Loyola University, Chicago.

Br. Consolmagno has served on the governing boards of the Meteoritical Society; the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) Division III, Planetary Systems Science (secretary, 2000 - present) and Commission 16, Moons and Planets (president, 2003-2006); and the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences (chair, 2006-2007).

He has coauthored five astronomy books: "Turn Left at Orion" (with Dan M. Davis; Cambridge University Press, 1989); "Worlds Apart" (with Martha W. Schaefer; Prentice Hall, 1993); "The Way to the Dwelling of Light" (U of Notre Dame Press, 1998); "Brother Astronomer" (McGraw Hill, 2000); and "God's Mechanics" (Jossey-Bass, 2007). He also edited "The Heavens Proclaim" (Vatican Observatory Publications, 2009).

Br Consolmagno is curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Castel Gandolfo, one of the largest in the world. His research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system. In 1996, he spent six weeks collecting meteorites with an NSF-sponsored team on the blue ice of Antarctica, and in 2000 he was honored by the IAU for his contributions to the study of meteorites and asteroids with the naming of asteroid 4597 Consolmagno.










Source: indcatholicnews.com

A Couple Built a Meteorite Museum in the Middle of the ATACAMA Desert

Walk to the edge of town and then keep walking. There you’ll find a humble museum with a lot of heart. (Photos: Jo Piazza)

What’s a guy to do with millions of dollars worth of meteorites stored in a bunker deep below the desert?

Open a meteorite museum of course. And so that is exactly what Rodrigo Martinez after more than thirty years of collecting space junk from the Atacama desert in Northern Chile.

Martinez, a marine biologist by trade, discovered his first meteorite in the nearby Imilac crater in 1983 and he has been hooked on the hunt ever since. The Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, makes meteorite spotting easier than in most locations on the planet, due to both the climate and the fine red-and-brown sand which makes black space rocks particularly easy to see.

As he acquired a collection of meteorites, Martinez became something of an obsessive about the hobby and developed his own laboratory to analyze and classify the rocks as actual meteorites and not just black rocks misplaced in a sea of red.

Many of the meteorites are out in the open for visitors to handle.

Two years ago, Martinez constructed the Museo del Meteorito, a geodesic dome built on family land on the outskirts of downtown San Pedro de Atacama, about a 5-minute walk from the main drag of Caracoles. Signs for the museum are papered all over town and certain street corners are equipped with handmade rustic arrows pointing the visitor away from the adobe buildings and into the desert.

Follow them and you will arrive at the museo.

Martinez built everything himself, from the dome to the intricately detailed exhibits, many of which are more thorough than a meteorite exhibit you might find in a much fancier museum in a much fancier city.

“It was always a dream of mine to have a museum,” Martinez told me. “If we had more money, we would do a much bigger museum.”

It’s true, the museum is modest — really just a single room — but the exhibits are wildly informative and thorough.

Lest you think Martinez is something of a crackpot, let me tell you that there is actually some high-quality science happening here. Martinez promises all his meteorites are certified by NASA, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the French Centre Européen de Recherche et d’Enseignement des Géosciences de l’Environnement.


Today, Martinez claims to have more than $29 million in meteorites ready to be displayed, all of them from this region in Chile. Unlike most museums in the Northern hemisphere, visitors here can touch and handle the rocks.

Some of the larger pieces of rock weigh more than 30 kilograms. Martinez attaches magnets to them to show the composition of the metals.

There are guided tours in both Spanish and English and Martinez is often present to answer questions. He can tell you which rocks came from the mantle of a broken-down planet and which from the crust. He can even tell you about what happened when they hit the Earth, and give you an approximate estimation of when they arrived here.

The Atacama is littered with amateur astronomers ready and willing to show you some spectacular stars, but Martinez wants you to know that what he does is not astronomy.

The meteorites are grouped according to where they have been found and Martinez can decipher whether they came from a single planet.

“It is planetary geology,” he insists with a shy smile.


Intrepid space-junk seekers with some cash to spare can hire Martinez to take them out on a mission. He would be the first to tell you that you could go out into the desert on your own with a magnet and start a hunt for meteorites yourself, but there’s some comfort in bringing an expert along for the ride. The price is steep, just over $700 for one person, but it does include keeping any meteorites you may find. Martinez will cut the rocks with his specialized machinery and begin a preliminary study of its layers.

He tests the rock for nickel and ionizes the cut to look for conclusive evidence that you have discovered a meteorite. Martinez will then send it off to the proper authorities to be authenticated. That is a little harder for an amateur to do with just a map and a magnet.

Martinez and his wife run the museum together.







Source: www.yahoo.com

There’s a Fine Line Between Gift-Shop Rocks and Meteorites

METEORITE HUNTERS SEARCH FOR treasures from space, pushing aside the terrestrial in a quest for the alien.Alexandra Lethbridge sees their work as a metaphor for how people are too often chasing the exotic at the expense of the familiar. “We crave to see and experience things that are strange and different to us, but quite often, we’re overlooking the true nature of the things that surround us,” she says.

The British photographer believes Earth can inspire just as much wonder as anything else in the galaxy. To prove it, she created The Meteorite Hunter. The photo book documents the work of a fictional meteorite prospector and the stunning otherworldly locales her objects come from.Click to Open Overlay GalleryThe .

But here’s the twist. The pictures depict the wonders of earth andspace, but you don’t know what’s what. The rock you’re scrutinizing might be a chunk of NWA Chondrite L5 meteorite discovered in the Sahara or a bit of azurite purchased in a gift shop. Likewise, that spectacular photo of a crater might have been taken by Buzz Aldrin as he walked on the moon, or by an Arizona tourist just feet from his car. Telling the difference between the two can be frustratingly difficult. “The whole project revolves around the uncertainty of the reality of what you’re looking at,” she says.

Lethbridge spent months weaving fact and fiction to create the collection. She purchased a bit of meteorite–or what she was told was a bit of a meteorite—on eBay and humbler rocks like pyrite and labradorite in museum gift shops. She also rummaged through photographic archives at NASA and elsewhere, and combed through antique stores and yard sales for images she could easily manipulate. Some of her images are collages of multiple photos, while others have been augmented with paint to further blur the line between what’s real. “I was trying to create a landscape that was representing something that we haven’t experienced,” she says.

The Meteorite Hunter elicits surprise and awe, leading you to reconsider how you view Earth and see it as a wonderful, amazing place. Lethbridge likens the feeling to the overview effect, the sudden appreciation many astronauts report feeling after seeing our planet from space. “It’s at that moment,” Lethbridge says, “that we break out of our normal perspective and can then experience something extraordinary in the ordinary.”

Source: wired.com

Anthropology professor gives Kansas BC presentation on meteorites

Wichita State University anthropology professor Donald Blakeslee gave a presentation at Boot Hill Museum on Wednesday regarding a pre-history of Kansas.

The presentation focused on how Kansas came about around the 1590s when explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was documented to have arrived.

Then in 1601, Juan de Onate, founder of New Mexico was documented to have found one of the first civilizations already inhabiting Kansas.

"When Onate sent out explorers to document the areas of a found civilization," Blakeslee said. "They had to make maps in order to navigate the locations.

"A man that had been captured by Onate was from the Kansas area at the time who drew the map to allow Onate to reach the location.

"An eyewitness of the account from 1601 shows that a map was drawn after Onate arrived that showed houses among cornfields spread out over a distance, as well as a village and a crossing of a big river into the town.

"That map was later recognized to be the location of what is now Arkansas City."

The other part of Blakeslee’s presentation was how Native Americans used found meteorites to make tools and headdresses.

"Pawnees in 1808 were found to have made materials from meteorites as well as made shrines around them," Blakeslee said. "There is even a rock with carvings depicting falling stars near the location of the palasite meteorite impact site that is now in Greensburg.

"Most of the meteorite shrines across North America seem to sit on top of a hill and show no signs of actual impact at those sites.

"It is therefore perceived that the meteorites were moved to those locations.

"Therefore, the fact that these meteorite tools and shrines were found in the 1600s it can be said that continuous intellectual traditions occurred throughout North American history despite what some historians believe were not the case.

"One historian is even quoted as saying, ‘the only three great civilizations that developed historical continuous intellectual traditions were India, China and Europe.’"





Source: dodgeglobe.com

'Mountain-sized asteroid' that could wipe out Earth heading OUR way

NASA is monitoring the "close Earth" pass of the mountain-sized space rock - which measures 1.5-miles across - that will hurtle past the planet at 45,450mph, or 70 times the speed of a jumbo jet, on July 25.

The "cosmic close shave" comes as scientists and astronomers tomorrow join forces to demand more global action to develop systems on Earth that could destroy or divert a large asteroid, in the event one could take a direct collision course with the planet.

The asteroid due to approach Earth at the end of July, named 1999 JD6, is 15 times the size of anything else on the radar and dwarfs the three recent large passes that had some astronomers spooked.

These included the 1km-wide Icarus which passed five million miles away this month, the 1mile-wide 1999 FN53 in May and the 1km-wide 2014-YB35 in March.

Today is the first ever World Asteroid Day, backed by Queen legend Brian May and TV astronomer Professor Brian Cox, and will see events take place all over the globe including at the Science Museum in London.

Although 1999 JD6 is expected to pass Earth safely at a distance of around four million miles, it is feared a rock of a similar size will one day be on a direct path with our planet, meaning action would have to be taken to prevent the devastation that would follow.

If such a large asteroid hit us or broke up in the Earth's atmosphere, it would be like hundreds of nuclear bombs exploding and send tsunamis rippling across oceans.

Asteroid 1999 JD6 is also coming in much closer this time than the 12.4million miles it passed by Earth on its last encounter five years ago in July 2010.

In May, when 1999 FN53 passed at 6.6million miles, worried astronomers warned it was an eighth of the size of Mount Everest and a collision would be nothing short of catastrophic triggering mass destruction, earthquakes and global extinction.

Bill Napier, professor of astronomy at the University of Buckinghamshire, said: “People are concerned about an impact from a very large asteroid, and the impact of something of this scale would be nothing short of global.

“It would undoubtedly lead to the deaths of around 1.5 billion people, we are looking at a mass extinction of humanity.

“To understand the impact of something on this scale, you would have to look to the science fiction writers, it is incomprehensible.”

But organisers of World Asteroid Day are just as, if not more, concerned about smaller asteroids of up to 150 metres in length striking the planet.

Alarmingly, a 70metre-long asteroid called 2015HM10 - the size of a jumbo jet - will skim Earth just a week after World Asteroid Day on July 7.

NASA is monitoring the path of this rock, which will shoot past at 18,600mph and just 275,000 miles away - only just a little more than the distance from Earth to the Moon (239,000 miles).

And 12 days later on July 19 a "bridge-sixed" 500metre-long asteroid will pass Earth at 1.5million miles.

World Asteroid Day takes place on the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska asteroid strike, the most recent major collision in world history.

It saw a 50-metre lump of extraterrestrial rock explode above Siberia, sending meteorites hurtling down.

Flattening around 80million trees and sending a shock wave across Russia, measuring five on the Richter scale, it would have been catastrophic had it taken place over a major city.

Prof Alan Fitzsimmons, expert in asteroids and comets at the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast, told Express.co.uk: "Although astronomers have spotted almost all the big asteroids that come near our planet, the upcoming close approach of 2015HM10 on July 7 just beyond the Moon is a sign that we've still got much more work to do.

"This is not an unusual event and there are millions of asteroids this big to find. If one this size hits us in the decades or centuries to come it would be similar or larger than the Tunguska impact in 1908."

These smaller asteroids are known to travel much nearer to Earth and could even strike out of the blue - like the 20-metre long meteor that unexpectedly exploded above Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013, injuring 1,500 people and damaging around 7,000 buildings.

NASA admits it has no idea where 98 per cent of smaller asteroids and large meteorites are heading at any time.

Professor Cox is certain there is already an asteroid with Earth's name on it, so action needs to happen now.

However, he believes warnings are not being taken seriously enough, and that is why he is backing the global campaign.

Ahead of World Asteroid Day, he spoke of a near miss "the size of a bus" last year, adding: "There is an asteroid with our name on it and it will hit us."

He continued: "We didn't see it coming. We saw it on the way out, but if it had just been a bit further over it would have probably wiped us out."

That asteroid flew by at a staggering 38,000 miles from Earth - only a sixth of the way to the Moon.

Former astronaut Ed Lu says the asteroid threat is so real he described it as a "cosmic roulette" and "blind luck" is our saviour so far from a serious impact.

NASA largely in agreement with the campaigners.

It has recently scoffed at conspiracy theorist predictions that a huge asteroid will destroy the Earth in late September.

But, NASA scientist Jason Kessler, who runs the 'near Earth" asteroid programme that monitors around 1,400 space rocks within six million miles of us, said: "The likelihood of something hitting us in the future is pretty guaranteed, although we're not freaking out that there is an imminent threat."

NASA believes an asteroid won't happen for a few hundred years, giving humans time to develop systems to deal with the threat.

And Express.co.uk reported earlier this month, that may include firing nuclear weapons to either blast them before impact or send them off course to avoid a strike.

Source: express.co.uk

Scientists find methane in Mars meteorites

An international team of researchers has discovered traces of methane in Martian meteorites, a possible clue in the search for life on the Red Planet.



The researchers examined samples from six meteorites of volcanic rock that originated on Mars. The meteorites contain gases in the same proportion and with the same isotopic composition as the Martian atmosphere. All six samples also contained methane, which was measured by crushing the rocks and running the emerging gas through a mass spectrometer. The team also examined two non-Martian meteorites, which contained lesser amounts of methane.

The discovery hints at the possibility that methane could be used as a food source by rudimentary forms of life beneath the Martian surface. On Earth, microbes do this in a range of environments.

"Other researchers will be keen to replicate these findings using alternative measurement tools and techniques," said co-author Sean McMahon, a Yale University postdoctoral associate in the Department of Geology and Geophysics. "Our findings will likely be used by astrobiologists in models and experiments aimed at understanding whether life could survive below the surface of Mars today."

The discovery was part of a joint research project led by the University of Aberdeen, in collaboration with the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, the University of Glasgow, Brock University in Ontario, and the University of Western Ontario.

"One of the most exciting developments in the exploration of Mars has been the suggestion of methane in the Martian atmosphere," said University of Aberdeen professor John Parnell, who directed the research. "Recent and forthcoming missions by NASA and the European Space Agency, respectively, are looking at this, however, it is so far unclear where the methane comes from, and even whether it is really there. However, our research provides a strong indication that rocks on Mars contain a large reservoir of methane."

Co-author Nigel Blamey, of Brock University, said the team plans to expand its research by analyzing additional meteorites.

Yale's McMahon noted that the team's approach may prove helpful in future Mars rover experiments. "Even if Martian methane does not directly feed microbes, it may signal the presence of a warm, wet, chemically reactive environment where life could thrive," McMahon said.
Source: http://phys.org/

Thieves Steal Massive Meteorite Worth $12,000 From Australian Museum

Crystal Caves museum owner believes the theft of 12kg Wolf Creek specimen was more about pursuing an object of desire than its monetary value.




A rare meteorite the size of a soccer ball has been stolen from a Queenslandmuseum whose owner suspects the work of an unscrupulous collector.

The 11.25kg space rock, worth more than $16,000, was stolen from the Crystal Caves museum in Atherton, north Queensland, early on Monday.

The museum’s owner, Ghislanie Gallo, said she believed the theft – which police suspected was carried out by two men in hooded jumpers with white masks – was less about the meteorite’s value than it being an object of desire among a narrow group of enthusiasts.

The meteorite was only recently donated to the museum, which is permitted to display it but not sell it.

The rare specimen was discovered in Wolf Creek in Western Australia in 1973, the year before the area was declared a national park and all meteorites subsequently found deemed property of the crown.

Gallo said she understood it was illegal to take Australian meteorites out of the country. Media attention generated by the theft also meant “it’s going to be pretty hard to shift”.

“There’s a big part of me that’s hoping whoever did is freaking out right now and is going to dump it at my back gate. That would be the ideal outcome,” she said.

CCTV footage of the suspected thieves obtained by police has fuelled Gallo’s suspicion that “whoever broke in was doing it for somebody else”.

“Somebody who really wanted it found a couple of hoodlums and said, ‘I’ll give you a couple of grand to break into Crystal Caves and steal this thing’,” she said. “They probably had no idea what it was and what it was worth to a collector.

“People that are into this stuff – it’s from outer space and people have all these metaphysical ideas about properties of things from outer space.

“Who knows, maybe it was a nutter with enough cash to pay somebody to go and steal it from them?”

Gallo said she had been approached by a collector at her Cairns shop several months ago wanting to buy a smaller Wolf Creek meteorite she had.

“I said, I’m not selling it to you, it’s not for sale,” she said.

“Then we got this much bigger meteorite donated to us and we did get a bit of TV publicity from that. You start thinking about people like that and you go, maybe it’s a case of ‘you won’t sell me one, I’ll just help myself’. I don’t know.”

Atherton police senior sergeant Richard Trotter said he understood the value of the meteorite was not widely known in the town before the robbery.

“Would you know what a meteorite is worth? Because I certainly didn’t,” Trotter said.

“It’s an unusual thing for somebody to go to that much trouble to steal. And it would stand out certainly if somebody put it up on eBay, wouldn’t it? I can’t imagine it being that easy to move on for any sort of profit. It’s a very strange thing to see, to be honest.”

Trotter said no information from the public had yet been forthcoming. He renewed an appeal to hear from anyone “who might know the faces on the camera or have heard something or seen something or been offered a piece of the meteorite”.

Astronomy expert David Reneke, from Australasian Science magazine, told the ABC the meteorite could be broken up into smaller pieces and sold on the black market.


“These things are valuable for a lot of reasons, not only because of the mineralogy but because of what they represent,” he said.

“These bits of rock are usually between 4.5bn and 5bn years old. They come from a place between Mars and Jupiter and if you ever wanted a pristine part of a planet like Earth, this is where you go.”

Gallo said she believed there was “no way” a thief who had any appreciation of meteorites would break it up for sale.


“I don’t think it’s about the value. I think a collector wanted it,” she said.

“Why would you bust up a perfect specimen into little pieces? That would break my heart if that happened. That’s like breaking up the Mona Lisa and selling it in bits.”




Source: theguardian.com