From: Sky & Telescope's News Bulletin - Mar 31
ZAGAMI *IS* FROM MARS
On October 3, 1962, inhabitants of the Katsina Province in Nigeria saw a
20-kg meteorite fall to Earth. Later named Zagami, this stone has a
composition so unusual that it's believed to have come from Mars. Now
five geochemists led by Kurt Marti (Univ. of California, San Diego) have
analyzed noble gases trapped within shards of glass from the meteorite.
These glasses were shock-melted when the rock was blasted off the Martian
surface and into interplanetary space, and they preserve critical
information about the Martian atmosphere as it existed hundreds of
millions of years ago. Marti reports that the gas samples from Zagami are
very similar to what two Viking spacecraft found when they landed on Mars
in 1976. Curiously, not all of the 11 recognized Martian meteorites
contain these trapped gases. Marti speculates that the Zagami stone must
have resided on or near the surface, so that it had intimate contact with
the Martian atmosphere before being propelled into space.
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- T o d d E. V a n H o o s e a r -
``'''vanhoose@lalaland.cl.msu.edu - vanhoose@msu.edu - vanhoose@lalaland.cl.msu.edu
(._.) Michigan State University - East Lansing, MI USA
(_) Computer Laboratory - Department of Communication
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"Lottery: a tax on people who are bad at math."
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