Starship Asterisk*

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hH-S9IfUThOHwaT8hY2e2W_x8FbQ?docId=CNG.40ba3241f001073c9480c67ef9571a8d.11 wrote:
Meteorite from Mars fell in Morocco
By Jean-Louis Santini (AFP) – 5 hours ago

[size=150][color=#0000FF]The Martian meteorite '[i]Tissint[/i]' (AFP/HO, Carl B. Agee)[/color][/size]

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WASHINGTON — Rare and expensive fragments of a Mars meteorite fell from the sky in July over Morocco, a team of international scientists confirmed. A fireball in the sky was observed in a remote region of southern Morocco by nomads who tracked down fragments of the seven kilogram meteorite, marking only the fifth time in history that a Mars rock has been seen falling to Earth.

A team of eight experts with the Meteoritical Society analyzed the pieces and determined that they are authentic chunks of the red planet, said Carl Agee, part of the team and curator at the University of New Mexico. "This discovery is tremendously important because of the quality of the sample," Agee told AFP.

The Moroccans who found the fragments quickly sold them to dealers, and museums scrambled to purchase them at a range of $500 to $1,000 dollars per gram, said Agee, whose museum now possesses a 108 gram piece. The price for meteorites ranges from 10 to 20 times the price of gold.

"Some of these meteorites have atmospheric gas trapped inside glassy material. When they are heated and released in the laboratory and measured it's identical to the Mars atmosphere that all the Mars probes have measured," said Agee. "All planets, like Venus, Mars and Earth, they have very different atmospheres," he added. "It's like a fingerprint."

The meteorite was named Tissint, and its discovery was documented in the Meteoritical Society's latest bulletin issued January 17. "At about 2:00 am local time on July 18, 2011, a bright fireball was observed by several people in the region of the Oued Draa valley, east of Tata, Morocco," it said. "One eyewitness, Mr Aznid Lhou, reported that it was at first yellow in color, and then turned green illuminating all the area before it appeared to split into two parts. Two sonic booms were heard over the valley." By October, "nomads began to find very fresh, fusion-crusted stones in a remote area" about 50 kilometers east-southeast of Tata.

Agee said such Mars meteorite events only happen about once every 50 years, with the last such event in 1962 in Nigeria. Of about 100 Mars meteorites currently in Earth collections, only five have been seen to fall. The first known meteorite from Mars was found in France in 1815, a specimen called Chassigny that Agee described as "probably one of the most expensive meteorites in the world." Pieces of Mars are believed to have broken loose at some time in history when a massive meteor crashed into the surface of the red planet, sending chunks hurtling through space. Some of the debris has moved fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of Mars and eventually fall to Earth. Agee said scientists will examine the Moroccan meteorite for radioactive signatures left by cosmic rays, signaling how long its journey has been, possibly thousands or millions of years.>>

http://thebestofhabibi.com/no-1-winter-1994/berber-dances/ wrote:
III. BETROTHAL DANCE OF TISSINT: Pursuit, Persistence and Victory

<<Tissint is located in the south of the Anti Atlas, about 40 km from the Algerian border. The betrothal dance celebrated there involves the whole community. This danced ceremony predates Islam. It continues in spite of efforts by conservative religious elements and bureaucrats to convince the people of Tissint to abandon it as heretical and against the Hadith, and use only religious contracts, ceremonies and bureaucratic paperwork to legalize their unions. Fortunately, its continued inclusion in the Marrakesh Folk Festival by the Ministry of Culture keeps the anti-dance wolves in Tissint at bay for the present.

The women’s festival clothing is marvelous: a long, flowing black overrobe with multicolored zigzag embroidery at the shoulders and across the chest, tied at the waist with a multi-colored woven wool belt ending in tassels hanging almost to the feet. The black head veil is held in place by embroidered bands hung with silver coins and almost unbelieveably elaborate large silver jewelry, chains and ornaments.

The men wear flowing blue ghandouras over white kaftans, with black cloth wound into turbans on their heads. Each has a dagger at his left hip, its sheath attached to a braided cord hung over the right shoulder and across the chest.

The bendir players, clappers and chanters sit in a circle in the center of the dance space, not only musicians and accompanists for the festivities, but chaperones making sure the limits of propriety are adhered to.

After the group of mostly young men and women dance a while to a relatively lively tempo, one of the young women detaches herself from the group. One of the young men stands, holding overhead the corded belt from which his silver dagger dangles: he offers his protection. It is an official, public proposal of marriage, usually known about and agreed to in advance, but not always. Suprises do occur!

He dances after her, whirling and swooping, the dagger held high, swaying on its cord. She constantly flutters her shoulders like a frightened bird, hands palms up, elbows gracefully bent, while she flees from him for a while. She then approaches, coyly whirling and escaping at the last moment.

When done “for real,” this “mating dance” goes on for quite a while, to show that she is “hard to get” and he is undaunted in the face of resistance, because he truly wants her for his wife. Once she lingers in front of him long enough for him to slip the corded belt over her head, they are officially betrothed. He kneels before her beauty and acceptance of his proposal. Shoulders still fluttering, she makes a last circuit of the group, showing off his dagger around her neck: she is under his protection.>>

BMAONE23 wrote:
I wonder if it contains any Blueberries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Two impact craters on Olympus Mons: the 15.6 km-diameter Karzok crater and the 10.4 km-diameter Pangboche crater. The craters are notable for being two of several suspected source areas for shergottites, the most abundant class of Martian meteorites. At a height of nearly 22 km, Olympus Mons is the youngest of the large volcanoes on Mars, having formed during Mars' Amazonian Period.[/color][/b]

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<<By the early 1980s, it was obvious that the SNC group of meteorites (Shergottites, Nakhlites, Chassignites) were significantly different from most other meteorite types. Among these differences were younger formation ages, a different oxygen isotopic composition, the presence of aqueous weathering products, and some similarity in chemical composition to analyses of the martian surface rocks in 1976 by the Viking landers. Several workers suggested these characteristics implied the origin of SNC meteorites from a relatively large parent body, possibly Mars. Then in 1983, various trapped gases were reported in impact-formed glass of the EET79001 shergottite, gases which closely resembled those in the martian atmosphere as analyzed by Viking. These trapped gases provided direct evidence for a martian origin. In 2000, an article by Treiman, Gleason and Bogard gave a survey of all the arguments used to conclude the SNC meteorites (of which 14 had been found at the time) were from Mars. They wrote, "There seems little likelihood that the SNCs are not from Mars. If they were from another planetary body, it would have to be substantially identical to Mars as it now is understood."

As of 2011-07-30, 98 of the 99 Martian meteorites are divided into three rare groups of achondritic (stony) meteorites: shergottites (83), nakhlites (13), and chassignites (2), with the oddball meteorite ALH 84001 usually placed within a specific "OPX group". Consequently, Martian meteorites as a whole are sometimes referred to as the SNC group. They have isotope ratios that are said to be consistent with each other and inconsistent with the Earth. The names derive from the location of where the first meteorite of their type was discovered.

Roughly three-quarters of all Martian meteorites can be classified as Shergottites. They are named after the Shergotty meteorite, which fell at Sherghati, India in 1865. Shergottites are igneous rocks of mafic to ultramafic lithology. The shergottites appear to have crystallised as recently as 180 million years ago, which is a surprisingly young age considering how ancient the majority of the surface of Mars appears to be, and the small size of Mars itself. Because of this, some have advocated the idea that the Shergottites are much older than this. This "Shergottite Age Paradox" remains unsolved and is still an area of active research and debate.>>

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2012/01/17/witnessed-fall-of-tissint-mars-meteorite-stirs-excitement/ wrote:
Witnessed fall of Tissint Mars meteorite stirs excitement
Posted on January 17, 2012 by astrobob

<<A meteorite from Mars is a rare bird indeed. There are only about 60 known. A witnessed fall of a Martian meteorite is rarer still. The last time it happened was on October 3, 1962 in Nigeria when the 40 lb. Zagami meteorite landed about 10 feet away from a farmer who was chasing cows from his field. Fifty years later another piece of Mars came zinging through the sky, this time in Morocco.

At about 2 a.m. local time July 18, 2011 nomads and military personnel south of Tata, Morocco were awakened by sonic booms and a bright light from a large fireball. One eyewitness reported that the meteor turned from yellow to green and split into two pieces. Three months later in October, nomads found fresh, black fusion-crusted stones about 30 miles south of the village of Tissint. French meteorite hunter Luc Labenne was guided to the site of the fall by local meteorite hunters. He gathered up several samples and sent two grams worth for testing to Brigitte Zanda and Violaine Sauter at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. They determined the crust was very fragile and fresh, good indications that it fell recently. Labenne then sent more pieces to an American researcher who confirmed their Martian origin.

The meteorite was officially named Tissint this week by the Meteoritical Society, but you might still see earlier references to its informal names Tata, Tanzrou and Foumzgit on some online sites. Either in the air or when it hit the ground (probably both), the new space rock shattered into many small fragments with weights ranging from about one gram to 987 grams. Few complete stones were found in the approximately 7 kilograms or 15.4 lbs recovered. The interior is pale gray dotted with occasional olivine crystals. As you might expect, the discovery and sale of pieces have been hot topics in both the meteorite collecting community and among scientists eager to study one of the freshest Mars rocks they’ll ever get their hands on.

Tissint is an igneous rock called a shergottite, named after the Shergotty meteorite that fell in India in 1865. Shergottites crystallized from hot magmas on Mars between 150 to 500 million years ago and were later ejected into space by large meteorite impacts. Their most likely sources are the young volcanic regions of Mars like the vast Tharsis Plateau, home to Olympus Mons, the biggest volcano in the solar system.

Most meteorites are 4.5 billion years old and date from the earliest days of the solar system, when asteroids were colliding and coalescing to form the planets. So while shergottites’ ages sound old, they’re very young by planetary standards and could only have formed relatively recently on a volcanically active planet other than Earth. That plus their particular chemical makeup and the trapped gases they contain that match those measured by the Viking and and other Mars landers clinch their Martian connection. Shergottites come in several varieties; ones rich in pretty green olivine like this one are classified as olivine-phyric types.

You might think meteorites from Mars would be red – or god forbid, green – based on the planet’s overall color, but they’re far more drab. The red is iron oxide dust blown by Martian winds across the planet. It coats everything, but the rocks themselves are gray, mostly volcanic rocks.

Dr. Carl Agee, director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, describes glassy melt pockets in Tissint, perfect for holding trapped gases and other Martian morsels. Melt, a sign of heating from impact and shock, will help tell us the story of the meteorite’s past – its catastrophic excavation, long journey through space and fiery delivery to Earth.

Best of all, a freshly-fallen stone has minimal weathering. This is truly pristine material. Whatever researchers find when they drill deep inside the new Tissint meteorite, whether that be signs of water or organic compounds, it’ll be the real deal from Mars, not contamination from Earth’s sticky hands.>>