The meteorite has been known to local populations for many years but it wasn't until 2016 when the meteorite was officially classified as such. This was a huge meteorite - so far 2.8t were recovered.
A highly sculpted complete fragment of the Sericho meteorite. This specimen exhibits the "classic" meteorite look and the fragment is complete, not cut from a larger piece.
The second specimen is an end-cut piece from a larger fragment. It exhibits the typical "fusion crust" from the entry in Earth's atmosphere.
As it turns out from an XRF point of view, much like most other meteorites, Sericho is typical and quite boring - no exotic metals are present - just Iron, Nickel and traces of Cobalt and Chromium.
The plot prominently features the Kα1 and Kβ1 peaks of Iron and smaller peaks of Nickel. Cobalt is in very low concentration (0.8%) and masked but if one looks for it, it can be seen in the irregular shape of the base (on the right side) of the Ni Kα1 photopeak. The Ni Kα1 at 7.48 keV is too close to the 7.65 keV of the Kβ1 of Cobalt just at the edge of the detector resolution. The 6.93 keV Kα1 line of the Co is dominated by the Kβ1 Fe at 7.06 keV and can not be differentiated. Chromium can not be detected at all with my setup due to the trace amounts (0.03%)
8 comments:
I don't know who you are but you should definitely make a youtube channel. As you may have noticed almost no one reads blogs, but your projects are extremely interesting to a significant amateur community and you will attract vastly more views with video than here. Let me know if you make one because I'll be the first to subscribe. I'm Muonium and I have videos about lasers, fusion, superconductivity and a few other things there.
Thank you for the encouragement. Honestly, you are not the first one to suggest this but the purpose of my blog is not to attract views (as you can see I have turned off any ads or means to monetize it) - I just log my experiments and activities and whoever needs this information, a simple Google search will bring him/her here.
Youtube channel just doesn't fit my ideas for presenting the information with easy-to-follow yet detailed description. I can see how the crowd is attracted to a 15-20 minute entertaining videos but this just doesn't fit with the way I see things - maybe I am just old fashioned :-)
Hello Andrey!
I recently found this meteorite, but it is still unexplored. Would you give your opinion? It looks a lot like the Sericho meteorite. Greetings!
https://martinserbezov.com/meteorite/IMG_20240922_152417.jpg
Hello Martin! It is hard to say much from the picture. A cross-section would tell us a lot more. As most meteorites are iron-rich or exclusively made of iron, this could explain the rust color. If this is a surface sample, a microscope should also reveal some pitting from melting. The image is not great but I think I can see something like quartz or calcite matrix near the top of the image with black inclusions, which could indicate it is not a meteorite but iron-rich mineral. Where did you find it?
hello
I found him in a meadow near a forest in Bulgaria, Middle forest (Sredna Gora).
I did a scratch test and it left a red mark.
It also conducts electricity, although it is quite corroded. From 8.66V I measured about 0.2V across it.
https://martinserbezov.com/meteorite/1.jpg
https://martinserbezov.com/meteorite/2.jpg
https://martinserbezov.com/meteorite/3.jpg
https://martinserbezov.com/meteorite/4.jpg
https://martinserbezov.com/meteorite/5.jpg
https://martinserbezov.com/meteorite/6.jpg
https://martinserbezov.com/meteorite/7.jpg
Picture #1 shows some surface feature reminiscent of "sculpting" from the atmosphere entry so it could be a meteorite indeed, but you'll need to examine it with microscope and if destructive testing is an option you can try to slice it and polish the cut to see the internal structure. Another test you could do easily is to find out the density (weight and volume by water displacement) and compare it to iron's density to see if it is a solid iron chunk or it is less dense than that.
Here are the density test results:
Weight 93 g ÷ Volume 25 mL = Density 3.72 g/mL
It is clearly not dense iron, but the strange thing is that Magnetite as well as Hematite have a density greater than the measured values:
Density of Magnetite - 5.175 g/cm³
Density of Hematite - 5.1 g/cm³
Here is the scratch test - http://martinserbezov.com/meteorite/IMG_20241002_120733.jpg
yes. the density is quite low for a meteorite - they are mostly iron
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