Monday 15 April 2013

The Lake House Meteorite

Brian John brings Colin Pillinger's Royal Society lecture on the Lake House Meteorite to my attention.

The lecture is recorded and the slides available.

Some background:
"For as long as anyone could remember, a large rusty bolder sat close to the front door of Lake House, an impressive Elizabethan mansion located in the village of Lake near Salisbury. It was a long held tradition that the rock was a meteorite, but no one could be certain. Then, in the early 1990s, the owners of the house contacted scientists at the Natural History Museum in London, who were able to confirm that the rock really was a meteorite. It was subsequently transferred to a storage facility, where it languished until a few years ago, when Professor Colin Pillinger decided to investigate things further."

The meteorite had a weathering age of 10,000 yrs BP but is thought to have fallen about 30,000 years onto ice or perma-frost. No crater has ever been identified. It has local chalk adhering to it, most of which has washed of in the last century of it guarding the steps of Lake House. It is assumed it was dug from a nearby barrow by a gentleman digger in the nineteenth century.

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