Please Help... Meteorite?

[Yagershots]

Thank you for viewing and any feedback. It’s been awhile since I have logged into the site. My days before were spent in the CRH forum.

I found this in NE PA the other day. Very heavy for its size and is extremely attracted to a magnet.



The two above were taken in sunlight. Small gold’ish flecks

 

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[Terry Soloman]

Not a meteorite. That is a piece of iron slag.

 

[Zyk]

What is a sure fire way to tell if what you found is a meteorite without marking up the surface??

 

[Terry Soloman]

What is a sure fire way to tell if what you found is a meteorite without marking up the surface??

There are many folks that will talk about scratch tests and opening up a window on the specimen, but that is all bull*(^$. Take the specimen to your local geology professor, or send it to a certified lab.

 

[richtink]

What I would do is find someone into lapidary and have them cut a slice. If it is stony meteorite you should be able to tell.

 

[Red-Coat]

There is no sure fire way to confirm a meteorite by external observation and non-destructive testing. Even things claimed to have been observed falling often turn out to be terrestrial stones dropping from the undercarriage of aircraft or being thrown large distances by trucks travelling at high speed.

There are a number of ways to confirm that an item is not a meteorite, but nothing which works conclusively the other way round. The best you can do is look for features which are potentially diagnostic as a way of narrowing down specimens which justify further (expert) testing.

‘Windowing’ to get a view of the interior is an additional useful way of gathering more information. That can again tell you if there are features which rule out a meteorite, or help you narrow down promising specimens… but you need to know what you are looking for and what you are looking at. Most people don’t have that kind of knowledge but, at a simple level, it’s not a meteorite if:

- It’s obviously metallic or has metallic flecks but is not strongly attracted to a magnet.
- It has exterior vesicles as anything other than small and part of a thin glassy fusion crust.
- It has interior vesicles in significant numbers or of significant size.
- It contains visible quartz crystals or other sizeable crystals which aren’t yellowish/greenish.

 

[Red-Coat]

What I would do is find someone into lapidary and have them cut a slice. If it is stony meteorite you should be able to tell.

It very clearly isn't a stony meteorite and - even if it were - the confirmatory diagnostics may or may not be present (or interpretable by a non-expert) depending on its classification. If it's from a nickel-iron class (for which the external appearance would be more consistent than for a stony class) then, again, the confirmatory diagnostics may or may not be apparent and often require etching to accentuate them.