What to Do If You Think That You’ve
Found a Lunar (or Some Other Kind of) Meteorite

http://meteorites.wustl.edu/what_to_do.htm

Since I began my web site about lunar meteorites, I have received numerous inquiries. In 2009, I was contacted 972 times by 396 persons who thought that they had found or bought a meteorite, had questions about meteorites, wanted to sell me meteorites, or whom chastised me because they found my admittedly rude admonishments below to be too rude. (These totals do not include the gentleman from Sweden who sent me 3813 e-mails with a total of 85,101 attached photos of rocks he claims to be lunar meteorites but which are not). I have spent much time answering e-mail messages, looking at photos, examining rocks, bothering my colleagues, and even chemically analyzing several rocks.  Other scientists who study meteorites have had the same experience. As the public’s interest in meteorites increases and the price of rare meteorites remains high, I expect such inquiries to increase.  In order to strike a balance between the use of our limited resources and providing a service to the community, I have adopted the policy described below.

What You Should Do

Despite my rude admonishments, you still want to know if your rock is a meteorite and I feel some obligation to respond to your interest. Also, there is a chance, although a very small one, that your suspicions are correct and that you have actually found some kind of meteorite. So, here’s what you should do.

First, go through the checklist on my Some Meteorite Realities website. Look at the photos. In fact, look at all the photos on my web site A Photo Gallery of Meteorwrongs. Read the words. Just because your rock doesn’t look like one of my meteorWRONGS doesn’t mean that it’s a meteorRIGHT. Check out the links to other sites with photos of rocks that are and are not meteorites. Read what other people have said.

Second, if you think you’ve found an iron meteorite or you think the stone contains metal, do a nickel test. If the test is not positive, the rock is not a meteorite.

Third, if you to contact me, please use e-mail. Do not call me on the telephone. Provide the following information:

• Your name. I feel no obligation to respond to persons who do not have the courtesy to provide me with their real name.
    
• Where you found the rock.  Country, or state (if U.S.) where you found the rock.  It would also help if you are more specific (“in a bean field,” “on top of my house,” “in my neighbor’s basement”).
    
• Tell me why you think it’s a meteorite.  Examples of good reasons: “It has what I think might be a fusion crust,” “I heard a loud noise and saw this rock bouncing down the driveway,” “There aren’t any other rocks like this around here.”  Examples of bad reasons: “It looks like a rock on your web site,” “It’s magnetic,” “I’ve always wanted to find a meteorite, sell it, and get rich.”
    
• Tell us the size, either weight or volume.  “It’s the size of my little brother’s head” is OK.  Better, send me the length, width, and depth as well as the weight.

If you can, include a digital photo or two (in focus!) with your e-mail.  Include some object like a hand, coin, or ruler in the photographs for scale. Otherwise, send the rock or a piece of the rock.  I will take a serious look at any rock that you send, as long as you don’t send many rocks and you provide the information requested above.  Send the rock to:

I’d rather have the whole rock, but I only need a piece at least the size of a golf ball to examine. Unless your rock is very beautiful, you will not be decreasing its monetary value by breaking off a small piece. As one meteorite dealer told me, “Every time I saw or break a meteorite in two I’ve increased its value.”  Be sure to send me your return postal address, e-mail address, and the cost of return postage if you want your sample back. I will not save rock samples for more than a few months after examining them. If you send me the whole rock and I decide to analyze a portion, I will saw or break off a small piece and send the rest back to you. 

If you do send more than one rock, please give each of them names or numbers so that I can distinguish them when I communicate with you about them.  I will not respond to letter requests that contain only photographs, requests that are made by telephone, or any request that does not include your name and information about where the rock was found (country or state). 

Although I urge you to bring your rock to a local college or university and show it to a geologist or planetary scientist, very few scientists at universities have ever actually seen a lunar or martian meteorite.  Even those who study lunar or martian meteorites have usually only see photos or very small chips.  A lunar or martian meteorite that is found in a temperate climate will be weathered and look very much like an unspectacular terrestrial rock (see Los Angeles). There are no simple or cheap tests that will allow anyone to honestly and confidently say “This is a lunar meteorite” or “This is a martian meteorite.” All such tests are time consuming and expensive.

What You Shouldn’t Do

Don't call me on the telephone. Don’t send me long e-mail messages. I won’t read them. I’ve been sent maps, movie files, videotapes, and CD’s and ZIP files full of photos of the find location and the tree that got struck. I didn’t look at them. I’m sure that there’s a really good story that goes along with your rock. I’ve heard it already. (OK, that’s not really true. Some people have sent me some really good stories that I will treasure forever.) I’m mainly interested in the characteristics of the rock, not the circumstances of how you found it. I do want to know, however, why you think it’s a meteorite. Don’t send me long descriptions of the rock. That doesn’t help. (In one of my other lives I’m a birder, which is the what nonbirders call a birdwatcher. Birders have this saying, “The hardest bird to identify is one a nonbirder describes to you.”)

Don’t send me your whole rock collection or photos of your whole rock collection. I won’t look at them and probably won't respond to you. If you do send photos, send a few well-focused, well-exposed, close up pictures. (That’s not easy to do with many digital cameras.)

Don’t bug me. It may take me a few weeks to respond.

What I’ll Do

1. I’ll look at the rock and maybe show it to my friends. I might measure the specific gravity, if you send me at least 10 grams. Some terrestrial rocks can instantly be recognized as not being meteorites. For example, no stony meteorite has a specific gravity greater than 4. No meteorite has layered features or swirls, yet many terrestrial sedimentary rocks are layered. (Layering occurs because the rocks formed at the bottom of an ocean or a sea. There are no seas on asteroids, Mars, or the Moon.)  If there is nothing about the rock that suggests to us that it is a meteorite, then I will not continue with further tests.  It’s my call.
   
   
2. If I suspect that your rock could be a meteorite, I will then attempt to interest my colleagues who do Raman spectroscopy to examine your rock. Raman spectroscopy is a fast and nondestructive way to identify minerals in rocks. If the rock contains minerals that are known to be rare or absent in meteorites (e.g., quartz, calcite, or hematite), I will not continue to do further tests unless some other aspect of the rock suggests that it is a meteorite.
   
   
3. If after these tests I am sufficiently intrigued, I will ask our over-worked postdoctoral fellow to make a polished thick section and examine the mineral compositions with the electron microprobe. He’ll say something like, "Not another meteorwrong!" but he’ll probably get around to doing it eventually. He knows what to do and he’s good at it. We may also analyze the chemical composition by instrumental neutron activation analysis. Together, these techniques can identify a real meteorite 99% of the time. 

If at any step I believe that there is little chance that the rock is a meteorite, then I will discontinue further tests. I will contact you with an explanation of why I believe that the rock is not a meteorite. Often I will not be able to say exactly what type of rock it actually is because I will not be interested in pursuing the tests that it would take to positively identify it.

Like your family doctor, I admit that I might be wrong, particularly if I only do a quick visual assessment.  You may really have a meteorite and I may think that it is not.  You are always entitled to a second opinion.  Rocks that are basalts (solidified volcanic lava) and related volcanic rocks are common on Earth, Moon, Mars, and occur among the meteorites from asteroids. All of the tests that identify a basalt as being a meteorite and not from Earth are time consuming and expensive. If your basalt doesn’t have a fusion crust, I am not going to want to spend the time and effort it would take to prove that it is or is not a meteorite.

I will acknowledge that I have received your rock (send me your e-mail address).  Please note that I won’t have an answer for you for several weeks, and more likely several months. Your tax dollars pay me to do a variety of things that NASA wants done, so I only deal with potential meteorites occasionally.  The tests of step 3 above are sufficiently complicated and expensive that we only do them for our own samples a few times a year. Be patient.

Finally, be advised that I reserve the right to post photos of your rock - ones you provided me or ones that I take myself - in my “A Photo Gallery of Meteorwrongs.”  No names are used.  Our main goal here is education, not ridicule. 

What I Won’t Do

I will not pursue the mineralogical or chemical tests necessary to prove that a rock is a meteorite unless I believe that there is a good chance that the rock is a meteorite.  I have discontinued the service of analyzing for a fee any rock that you send; send it to someone else for analysis (see above). I won't respond to e-mail messages that make little attempt to provide the information I request above in the "What You Should Do" section.

Rite and Wrong

Here are two look-alike rocks, each about 6 inches across. One of the rocks is a meteorite, the other is a meteorwrong (click on image for enlargement). The meteorite has a specific gravity of 3.4; the meteorwrong has an specific gravity of 4.5. The meteorite is magnetic; the meteorwrong is not. The meteorite leaves only a weak streak; the meteorwrong leaves a dark reddish streak. The meteorite has a fusion crust on the side facing us. The meteorwrong has a shiny surface that looks something like a fusion crust, but is not. Though hard to see in the photo, the meteorite has regmaglypts but the meteorwrong does not. If we were to cut the rocks in two, the meteorite would have an interior that is grayer (less red) than the surface and it would have shiny metal grains because it is an ordinary chondrite. The meteorwrong would be rusty red throughout because it is a hematite concretion. It is impossible to identify a meteorite from a photograph. Many Earth rocks look like some meteorites. Some meteorites look a lot like Earth rocks. (The rock on the left is the meteorite).

If Your Rock Is a Meteorite

If I and my colleagues conclude that your rock is a meteorite, I will urge you, with my help, to follow the procedure for legitimizing meteorites and making them “official,” as described at this web site:

   http://meteoriticalsociety.org/simple_template.cfm?code=pub_bulletinsubmit

Please note that “20% of the total mass or 20 g, whichever is less, must be deposited in a museum or other institutional collection that routinely makes material available for scholarly research. Meteorites lacking type specimens will NOT be approved by the Nomenclature Committee.” 

If your meteorite is not “approved by the Nomenclature Committee,” then it will provide little or no monetary value to you.  I will not provide you with a "Certificate of Authenticity" or the equivalent. I know some meteorite dealers if you are interested in selling your meteorite.  However, nearly all meteorites are ordinary chondrites, which do not have a high commercial value unless they are spectacularly attractive or are of special interest, like the Park Forest meteorite (an L5 chondrite, which is common) that fell in Chicago in 2003 (samples are being sold by dealers for $35-50/gram; dealers will pay less to you).

I and my colleagues will want to do a thorough characterization of the meteorite. Such a characterization may involve colleagues at other institutions. We will then want to publish the results in a scientific journal. The more publicity and exposure that your meteorite gets in the scientific literature, the more valuable it will be. Also, the more papers I publish, the sooner I can retire and search for meteorites. Be aware, however, that most meteorites are not special and may not get more than a paragraph in The Meteoritical Bulletin.

Finally, if you should find a large, attractive meteorite, I’ll probably urge you loan it to Washington University so that we can put it in our museum. We’ll put it right next to the tag saying "On loan from <your name here>."

WWW http://meteorites.wustl.edu//