The fourth video I shot during my trip to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show features Mike Farmer of Michael Farmer Meteorites (meteoriteguy.com or meteoritehunter.com). Note: When you click the link to the video, you'll find it below the three-part interview with the Meteorite Men.
At the show, Mike showed me an extensive collection of beautiful specimens. He began by pulling out some spectacular pallasites, the most beautiful of all meteorites due to their olivine inclusions. He had large slices of Fukang, Esquel, Brahin, and Springwater. Mike’s case of pallasites was truly one of the most beautiful things I saw this year at Tucson — and I probably looked at 100,000 rocks!
Mike also displayed some nice iron meteorites, including a huge slice of Nantan from China, nicely etched to show the Widmanstätten pattern. He displayed a gorgeous and very large chunk of Libyan Desert Glass, a tektite that formed from terrestrial sand when an ancient impact fused the sand into glassy masses. He displayed a whopping chunk of the Murchison meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969 and is so scientifically important because it contains amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
Be sure to check out Mike’s web site, which contains a fabulous selection of rocks from space. A tour through it will definitely get your juices going toward collecting a few meteorites of your own.
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