Everything points to a meteorite but I dunno??

[Ridethepork]

What do you think should I send it in to be tested or should I take it to the university and have them look at it

 

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[Red-Coat]

I would agree this looks to be a good candidate for testing. If it is a meteorite, it looks like it might be an hexahedrite or possibly an ataxite (somewhat rarer) rather than an octahedrite.

However, could you just clarify what you mean by "everything points to..."

It would need to be very strongly magnetic and test positive for nickel (if you have a testing kit). You don't say where it came from or how you obtained it but, unless it has been cleaned up, the contra-indication might be the lack of any visible rusting.

I have another question. Has someone cut it to obtain that flat surface? If so... who, when and how?

 

[Ridethepork]

What do you think should I send it in to be tested or should I take it to the university and have them look at it

I sanded one side of it to see what it looked like but I don't have the stuff to etch it and a really strong �� barely pulls to it you can't even tell it's magnetic unless you hang the �� from a string it barely pulls to it I found it in altamont California altamont hills I was on a job site and I look down and there is a pretty cool rock and I picked it up that's how I obtained it I don't have anything to test the nickel in it and I meant by all signs point to being a meteorite is all the home tests are done point to it being a meteorite

 

[Red-Coat]

I sanded one side of it to see what it looked like but I don't have the stuff to etch it and a really strong �� barely pulls to it you can't even tell it's magnetic unless you hang the �� from a string it barely pulls to it I found it in altamont California altamont hills I was on a job site and I look down and there is a pretty cool rock and I picked it up that's how I obtained it I don't have anything to test the nickel in it and I meant by all signs point to being a meteorite is all the home tests are done point to it being a meteorite

Sorry, but I would have to disagree I'm afraid. Anything which looks as obviously metallic as that but which only barely attracts a magnet is definitely NOT a meteorite. Metallic meteorites are always strongly magnetic. No ifs or buts. At minimum, a metallic meteorite with no obvious inclusions of anything else is going to be 75% iron. More usually 90% plus. The lack of iron (also evidenced by the lack of rusting) rules it out.

You would also have extreme difficulty sanding an iron meteorite to a flat surface. It has to be something softer. Either man-made or a chunk of something terrestrial with a metallic appearance. You would need more tests to confirm what it might be. Hardness, streak test, flame test as pointers and then maybe chemical analysis by a lab.

Until you stated its magnetic properties (or rather, lack of them) this was probably the most promising candidate for a meteorite (based on visual appearance) on this forum for quite a while.

 

[Ridethepork]

I've read that some meteorites "rare ones" are not that magnetic but I could be worng and when I said I sanded it it was with a power grinder with a sanding disc on it it is a really hard it took a while just to get it flat thank you guys for the fast reply I hope to get it tested one of these days i have a good feeling it is I didn't even know what I had I thought is was just a nother rock I was going to add to my collection my stepson is the one who got me looking into meteorites

 

[tommy67]

A team of researchers claims to have discovered the first alien protein known to date. It has now been found on the Acfer 086 meteorite, which hit Earth in Algeria 30 years ago.

The researchers call the protein hemolithin. They describe their find in a recently published paper like Space.com reports. It mainly consists of the amino acids glycine with iron, oxygen and lithium atoms.

In previous studies, scientists found organic materials, sugar (the futurezone reported) and some other molecules in meteorites. So far, however, no proteins have been found in an extraterrestrial object, as the paper notes.

 

[Red-Coat]

I've read that some meteorites "rare ones" are not that magnetic but I could be wrong…

No you're not wrong. Many meteorites are not very magnetic or not magnetic at all and they're not particularly rare. But the point is that those classes of meteorite don't look like what you're showing. The results of the magnet test need to be judged in relation to the appearance of the suspected meteorite. If a meteorite has a noticeably metallic appearance or contains significant visible metallic veins or flecks it will always be strongly magnetic. In the absence of those visual clues, a meteorite may be non-magnetic, or only weakly so.

 

[Red-Coat]

A team of researchers claims to have discovered the first alien protein known to date. It has now been found on the Acfer 086 meteorite, which hit Earth in Algeria 30 years ago.

The researchers call the protein hemolithin. They describe their find in a recently published paper like Space.com reports. It mainly consists of the amino acids glycine with iron, oxygen and lithium atoms.

In previous studies, scientists found organic materials, sugar (the futurezone reported) and some other molecules in meteorites. So far, however, no proteins have been found in an extraterrestrial object, as the paper notes.

The research paper you’re referring to was submitted to ‘arXiv’ by McGeogh et al. on 22 February this year. The arXiv archive is a free, open-access repository provided by Cornell University for researchers to share their work with the scientific community, but it has no peer review. Submitted papers are only screened by moderators for relevance and generally automatically endorsed if they are deemed appropriate to the intended subject area, but not reviewed with respect to accuracy of content. The study is an extension of published and unpublished results from previous work.

Concerns have been expressed by other researchers (notably the exobiologist and amino acid expert Professor Jeffrey Bada) particularly in relation to the claimed occurrence of the amino acid hydroxyglycine. Quotes: “I am not impressed by this report” and “I am highly suspicious of the results”.

The researchers acknowledge the possibility that what they found might not be a protein at all, although they consider it the most likely explanation and have dubbed it ‘hemolithin’. It’s also possible that it could from a broader class of polymers, of which proteins are only one. Further modelling of the spectral data and other additional work will be needed to confirm the speculation, as well as peer review of the results (including the unpublished ones) and, ideally, replication of the results by another respected institution.

McGeoch (of Harvard University's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology) has said she would be happy to discuss the results… but only after the paper has passed peer review.