Magnetic rocks

[tim2357]

I ran a magnet over a beach and got several ounces of various rocks. Any good tips to try to find out if they are meteorites? Also found a ring so it wasn't a total waste of time..

 

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[Sandman]

I wouldn't know a hot rock from a meteorite, but it could be. Hot rocks have more minerals in them which is why the detector goes off. According to the show Meteorite Men, meteorites they find stick to a magnet. I might have tossed some meteorites away by know keeping up with science.

 

[andrew96]

They are probably just iron rich stones.

 

[Knightwalker]

There is a show on tv called Meteorite Men. IT's on the Science channel. It is on Wed. night. If you can get a chance to watch it. The wife says they take there finds to the Arizona research instatute and have them checked. Do some research on it and contact them. You might be able to send them there and have them checked. Or maybe there is a research instature near you.
HH in 2010
KW

 

[BIG61AL]

A beach you say? I would guess the a most likely find would be a natural iron rock, slag, or some other eath born object. While possible, I don't think a iron meteorite that size could last for long in a high salt condition like a beach.

 

[tim2357]

It was a beach at Cuivre River State Park in Missouri. It is a fresh water lake, so I think the sand may have been possibly shipped in based on the type of shells I found in the sand.

I got the largest magnet I could reasonably afford from http://www.magnet4sale.com/2.0-Length-6.0/
Put it in a plastic Bag and dragged is along the beach behind me as I was metal detecting yesterday.

This website http://www.aerolite.org/found-a-meteorite.htm explains how to do a a streak test on an unglazed tile, which may be helpful to find out which ones are magnetite (dark grey streak) or hematite (reddish or rust-colored streak)

I think the ones I pictured are earth rocks, but I'll see if I can sand one down to see if there is iron in it. I'll have to check the rest tomorrow to see what I can find.

 

[Red_desert]

Once a large part of the desert Southwest, was covered by an ancient sea. The way I understand it...volcanic activity started in places, causing lava to react with the water to form a rock, the surface texture similar to some meteorites you see in pictures. In some volcanic rocks, seashells are embedded along with traces of the ancient sea bottom.

Have you ever heard of black gold nuggets? These mostly are found in the Mohave desert and Salton Sea area of California. But they are volcanic without quartz, coated in a black iron mineral. This lava forced up through water created rocks with crystallised black iron mineral inside (lacking any quartz), a rusty looking brownish red coating on the surface. The black shows through where the coating is thin...giving a meteorite appearance to them.

Yours look rather weathered, but might be the same type of rock. Mine are very heavy, attract a magnet...but if they were meteorites, I'd be rich and wouldn't have to work anymore.

 

[Nefarious]

They look like ocean rounded magnetite rocks to me which would make them very certainly "meteor-wrongs". These are terrestrial rocks.

Unfortunately not all magnetic rocks are from space but generally beaches would be quite bad places to find meteorites anyway because they would not last long in those moist environments. So unless they fell recently they would be gone - but these stones are rounded and so they have been in the ocean for a long time. A recently fallen meteorite would not be rounded.

The big rock pic here is pitted which is also not something you see in meteorites. It is not the same thing as those "thumb pockets" that you get on iron meteorites I think. Also, an iron meteorite would ring likea an nvil when you hit it with a hammer and not chip like a stone.

For dry lake beds in places like Nevada and Arizona for meteor-rights.

 

[Nefarious]

Woops - my last sentence of my post above was messed up.

I meant to say look for REAL meteorites in dry lake beds in really arid regions of the USA - Arizona, Nevada etc...

In those areas they can lie on the ground for tens of thousands of years without decomposing and so your chances of finding a genuine space rock are significantly better. Also, in dry lake beds they are slightly easier to spot.

Here are some good links:

http://www.meteoritesusa.com/how-to-find-meteorites.htm

http://tin.er.usgs.gov/meteor/