meteorite or lava stone?

[james brown 0]

hey there

today i found a very heavy rock on mount etna sicily. first i thought its a lavabomb. but i havn't seen another rock comparable all over my hiking tour. most lava rocka there are pretty light but mine is very heavy. maybe a liitle lighter than pure iron but not much i assume. of course the most reasonable explanation would be its some type of iron consisting lava stone. but why is there no other stone like this around in the area. so what do you think from my picture. can you exclude its a meteor or do you even know what stone it might be? ty for your help

Edited December 22, 2018 by james brown

[hardtimehermit 201]

Hey James Brown, this is a volcanic rock. The characteristics of a meteorite are not seen here. Do some searching around online and compare your rock with other meteorites. Then look up volcanic rocks and you will find some big differences. If you want to find a meteorite spend a few bucks and buy a real sample for you to study, and keep looking down.

[Bedrock Bob 1,958]

James!

Thank you for posting your rock. It is volcanic. Not a meteorite.

We do not get posts from Mt. Etna often. You may be the first. It is great to see a rock from Mt. Etna!

Sorry it is not a meteorite. It is a type of lava but it is a cool rock.

By the way I am a big fan of James Brown. He is the hardest working man in Rock and Roll!

 

Hooobadegh…..hhhhhaaaaaaaAAAAH…. I FEEL GOOD! 

 

Have a nice Christmas James Brown!

[james brown 0]

haha tyvm - ok it was most likely its volcanic i know but i was very lucky lately so i thought maybe i just find a meteroite like gladstone gander. ok but yes the rock is very special i testet it back in the hotel with a strong magnet and it pretty strongly attracted. airport security made me open the suitcase for it, i bet it must have seen weird on their screen. then 4 security ppl all held the rock and were amazed by the wheight but finally they returned it to me 😀.

 

and a funky xmass to you too

Edited December 24, 2018 by james brown

[Red_desert 89]

Hold on, if I can find my pics. I know of a site in the middle of the Arizona Sonora desert, has identical volcanic rocks. Mine have a rusty color surface but inside are pure volcanic magnetite. Apparently, an eruption took place during times of ancient seas. I found some with a layer of white sand coating the one edge and sea shells embedded in the sand.

[Red_desert 89]

All I've got is this close, rest of pics must be in my other laptop... had to get these from another thread they were posted in. From a photo not up too close, these lava rocks can resemble very large iron meteorites. Mine are dense magnetic iron mineral inside.

[james brown 0]

wow nice. indeed that looks almost the same as mine. do you know what type of lava rock it is. i suspect it is a type of basalt. but i wonder where theres so much gas bubbles in it while other basalt is pretty dense. maybe it was ejected in a bigger eruption.

sry my english is not that good ;)

[Red_desert 89]

Because white sand with small seashells were on only 1 side of some larger rocks... it most likely a water eruption during a time the ancient seas covered much of the land. My lava rocks, at least the smaller ones broken open, were solid magnetite crystals. These attracted a magnet and really set off my Gold-Bug 2. The rusty coating might have resulted from water contact.

[james brown 0]

wow gets even more interesting now i really wonder if magnetite crystals are inside. but i havent tools to cut it. probably would need to go to petrologist at the university of my town. ty i will inform you what was inside ir i break it.

[james brown 0]

i tested the density of my rock with a scale and water- it is about 2.5 gramm per cm3. its pretty heavy for a volcanic rock with bubbles but still orobably much to light for a magnetite. what do you think?

[Bedrock Bob 1,958]

1 hour ago, james brown said:

i tested the density of my rock with a scale and water- it is about 2.5 gramm per cm3. its pretty heavy for a volcanic rock with bubbles but still orobably much to light for a magnetite. what do you think?

Hey James!

I think it is high iron basalt. It is not magnetite nor does it have magnetite crystals inside. It may have magnetite as a constituent in the matrix.  Tiny iron particles distributed within the rock. Not a cluster of magnetite on the inside.

The particles are probably not "magnetite" but other iron minerals. The important thing here is that the iron is ferric (or in some cases ferric/ferrous) and not free ferrous iron like you would find in a meteorite. The iron is mineral form and not metal form. Iron only exists as a mineral on earth, not a free metal. And in meteorites it is free metallic iron.  

You don't need to cut it open to see the inside. Simply file a window in it. Get a carbide mason's block and grind a flat spot. Get deep enough to grind through any surface oxidation. Then polish it up with sandpaper. What you see in the window will be exactly what you will see if you cut it in half.

When you do a specific gravity test you get the average of the whole rock. It may have a dozen different minerals in it lighter than magnetite that affect the number. Even if the core is solid magnetite the outside will reduce the overall specific gravity. So unless your specimen is pure magnetite your specific gravity is always going to be lighter. 

Hope that helps!

 

Edited December 26, 2018 by Bedrock Bob
Get down with your bad self!