Out of the Sky

"This one is out of print. Out of the Sky: an Introduction to Meteoritics , by H H Nininger, and this one – it isn’t actually mine, it’s the department’s, but I love it – was printed in 1952. The first time meteorites were actually seen as objects that were not from this Earth and worthy of scientific study was in the late 1700s, early 1800s, so we’ve only been doing it for a couple of hundred years. Many of the techniques that were applied to meteorites were the same techniques that were applied to Earth rocks. That’s still the same today. We use the same labs and the same microscopes. But in the 1940s a lot of scientific techniques were developed, mostly because of WWII, like radiochemistry. So this was when people started saying: ‘Let’s have a look at meteorites and see how old they are.’ You can date them with radioactive clocks. And then people said: ‘My goodness, look at these. These are four and a half billion years old. They’re older than rocks we’re finding on Earth.’ Yes. Meteorites pre-date the earth by about 150 million years. That’s the thing. In my day job I can be holding the oldest object known to man in the morning and a piece of Mars in the afternoon. Not many people can say that. But this book by Nininger is brilliant because it was published just at that time when meteoritics was coming up with very interesting results, so this book includes some of the new data that was coming out, using all these very innovative chemical techniques. That’s the science bit. But Nininger was a great guy. He really tried to involve the public in meteorites. He went round various places in the US where there’s lots of farming land and he said to the farmers: ‘If you’re ploughing in your field and you hit a big rock with these characteristics, let me know and I’ll come and have a look at it.’ Well, does it feel heavier than it should do? Is it a big lump of metal that looks out of place? Is a magnet attracted to it? There are certain characteristics that meteorites have that we don’t commonly see in Earth rocks. The stony meteorites are mostly made out of rocky minerals, so they’re similar to earth rocks but they have got metal in them so they will be a bit heavier. That’s what he was saying to farmers. It’s the same way we look for meteorites today. He engaged people and asked people to look out for them. He gave public lectures and set up a museum next to the big crater in Northern Arizona, so not only was he a fantastic scientist but he was a brilliant engager of the public imagination. There are pictures and a lot about the history of meteorites and reports about meteorites that have been seen to fall. When Nininger retired from meteorites he sold his collection, and we bought part of it and the Smithsonian bought the other part, so I actually curate samples that he collected. I feel I have that connection with him even though he died in 1986."