Meteorites

My mate thinks he found a meteorite on Aberdeen Beach yesterday.

I've seen it, it looks like coal but a bit lighter. Quite flat. Matt around the outside but with very shiny sections around the edges. It does have a look of something that may have been moulten at some point. He found it in a big crater in the sand.

Colour sounds right.

Most meteorites are nickel-iron, is this rock magnetic? It should also be very very heavy.

Nah light as a feather. Like coal.

Dunno if it's magnetic, I doubt it because it feels too light to be metal.

Just looked at the picture again. It's not a crater at all, just a deep impression of the object then some sand scattered to one side of it.

Brilliantly, the second picture is of his dog, Molly, digging in the hole.

BIGINLYCRA wrote: Nah light as a feather. Like coal.

Dunno if it's magnetic, I doubt it because it feels too light to be metal.

Sorry, thought you meant lighter in colour than coal.

There ARE rock ones, of course.

Could it be a lump of coal with some fool's gold deposites, that's been weathered to death in the sea?

Quick call to Aberdeen Uni should help.

A quick call to their English department might be in order for me as well.

Then I could learn about avoiding confusion caused by words with two meanings

He's off work today anyway. He's probably in bed with some mysterious space flu.

BIGINLYCRA wrote: He's off work today anyway. He's probably in bed with some mysterious space flu.

Did he put it in a warm place and peer into it a great deal from a short distance?

If so, I would advise you leave town swiftly, as you know, I have some experience in these matters

I'm sure it's something far more earthlyt than space flu.

When I left his house he was opening a bottle of wine.

Cambo is right about the meteorite, it would be VERY dense and heavy... anything lighter would be burnt up in the entering the atmosphere, not to mention all asteriods (meteors) that we know of are of the same consistency as what we assume the Earth's core is made of.

Where exactly was this found? Mountians around in the area? What kind of sand?

Coal isn't usually found in the middle of sand. To make coal requires that there was a forest (or alot of bio material) that was buried very quickly before decomposing occured... bogs and old swamps are usually the cause... which have clay deposits, not sand.

The only way I could see if it were coal is if it were near a river bed and was deposited downstream.

Need more info, or a good pic would work.

Lumps of coal are quite common on UK beaches, partly because of seams that intersect the seabed, but mainly from sunken steamships and coalboats.

Doctor? wrote: Lumps of coal are quite common on UK beaches, partly because of seams that intersect the seabed, but mainly from sunken steamships and coalboats.

Seams (I assume you mean plate boundaries?) wouldn't give coal, you need lots of plant material high in carbon (you need over 50%) to create coal. Sealife has alot of calcium You can get oil from oceans though, but coals and oils aren't always found in the same spot.

Yer last explanation is most likely on the coal boats...