Ferrum Silicate appears to be a hoax.

There are comments on the UniverseToday article that say
From Wiki fayalite is Fe₂SiO₄. So is Ferrum Silicate a hoax, or an archaic name for a real mineral?

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

No literature on Ferrum Silicate is to be found anywhere online or in the copy of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry And Physics I checked. But why assume? I am sure this russian scientist would have no problem allowing his samples to be independently analyzed so his hoax can be clarified. Besides, is he really claiming a natural mineral found in rock on Earth can't be made anywhere except in space?

Considering the source was a Russian scientist, he could be using a different name for a familiar element.

It makes little sense for him to "invent" an element.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Fewer.

Sorry--I couldn't resist.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Now that we've got past the first sentence there, I'm curious about the next one. How do we know that the object was no more than 60 meters in size?

That's one of those rules I never got. What's the difference between "less than 200" and "fewer than 200". Don't they mean the same thing?

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

Another favorite quote from the article is
Here's a (rehosted) picture of said crystals


That doesn't look like some kind of strange "printing", I'm pretty sure I have the technology in my garage..hammer and chisel should work.

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

That part is followed by this doozy:
Quite the leap there, isn't it? Here are some rocks, which seem to have chisel marks...I mean "printing" that we can duplicate using a laser "that usually cuts metal into pieces"..it must be an alien GPS!

They can fly all the way through interstellar space and prevent the destruction of planets, but they use rocks for maps? Talk about making the "evidence" fit the event.

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

Maybe the pilot was Fred Flinstone and the navigator was Barney Rubble

Nope. "Less" measures the uncountable. "Fewer" measures the countable.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

and to think that some of us actually thought this thread was underailed..

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

"Being an idiot toward you"? That does not work as a sentence in English. To be an idiot is not an action that takes a direction.

You seem to be confused by the fact that in written and spoken English context can be implicit, as of course it was in the post to which you responded. Trying now to save face by insisting on a clear mis-reading is not advancing things at all here.

Everyone understood that you meant astronomical objects. To pretend that you can remove context from someone's posts and then to poke holes in this perverse reading is pointless, and you certainly don't need to modify your language to take account of such foolishness.

NorthernBoy, there's no reason to pursue that line anymore. Tucson_Tim was not the OP, but I'll go on record here as saying, I myself knew upon reading the OP that they were not referring to astronomical objects, because of the way it was phrased--deliberately to exclude astronomical objects, using just a little simple math. That said, the discussion could have proceded on a more civil level, on both sides.

Any more responses in that vein should be considered a deliberate attempt at self-banning.

So, I'm being reprimanded. I see. Thanks. That's fair.

Everyone in the thread is being reminded that they need to play nice together.

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Then why mention only my name?

No, I was just pointing out that NorthernBoy's "you" referred to you, but you were not the OP. No reprimand.

Earlier in this thread I indicated that EnigmaPower had operated previously under a different name. While there are some technical clues indicating this, EnigmaPower seems sincere that he is not the same person.

Let me be clear that even if he was, there is no overlap, and the previous member is still in good standing, though dormant, so this is not a sock-puppet situation in any case... The important thing is that EnigmaPower does not want to be mistaken socially, or in terms of previous statements and positions, with any previous member.

He/she has asked for an apology from me for my mis-statement, and that seems like a fair request, so: I apologize.

That being said, my original statement along these lines was in defense of the rest of the forum against some accusations that I regard as false that EnigmaPower was making. I'd like a public apology from EnigmaPower for his rudeness and many accusations of unfair treatment which lead us to this place.

Post Edit: After some investigation, we've discovered that a clerical error disguised the fact that the previous user had been banned, so if EnigmaPower HAD been identified as this person, he/she would be banned completely.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Thanks for clearing that up. I also apologize for making my accusations against the entire forum.

I guess a 50% "apology" is better than nothing.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

EGAHD!

My apologies to the forum, if I had known this was going to stir up such a firestorm I would not have even started the thread. I was under the impression that I was bringing a discussion before learned men and women, scientists, people of reason and sound principals of debate. I expect threads in a place like prisonplanet or the daily kos to devolve in to something like this....but here? I am not going to name drop, point blame or even conteplate who "started it" or who went wrong where, it's unimportant to the original topic and would only lend credibility to what amounts to an intellectual bar room brawl over someone elses date. Please, ladies and gentleman, not in my thread....please. Now lets forget everything that has happened so far that is irelevent to the original topic and continue this as if nothing happened.

Now with that out of the way, I first want to take a moment and thank those who have responded and apologize for not getting back to the thread sooner.
I also want to take a moment to state agine that this is not a theory I subscribe to or advocate. In my opinion and the opinion of sound science and reason, it is absolute nonsense and not even good enough for a bad sci-fi movie.
SOmeone had asked how I came to the size of the object. SInce i do not remember the article I linked in the original post, I got my information from a number of stories about the incident over the years, and confirmed it with a few articles before I posted this. One was a recent revising of the original size of 60 meters down to 40 meters. the premise of the article was that the blast may not quite have been of the magnitude originaly believed and that the size of the object may have been smaller. With reguards to the general topic of object size, I was under the impression it was common knowlege and accepted theory among the various astronomical circles, if I am incorrect, than by all means say so. Also, if it is important enough in this case that I get a source for the size, that I will by all means do so and I apologize for not doing so in the original post.
What I was trying to get at with my issue of density, is that it seemed to me that the article claiming the UFO theory was fundamentaly flawed because it made what seemed to be a claim of an object of extremely unlikely desntiy for an object entering the earths atmosphere, even with out understanding the details or the math involved, it seemed to me blatent enough to be obvious to even a layman as myself it was a major flaw in the Russian scientists claim, or atl least the articles account of the scientist's claim.
As to the issue of the mysterious element mentioned. It wasn't anything I rememebr seeing in highschool chemistry, but I guess that may not account for much since that was *mumble mumble* years ago. But the concesnus I am seeing here among you folks is also that it is bunk, so I will at least for now consider it another hole in the theory.
Someone mentioned that aliens must be proven to exist before the claim can be even considered any further. You are correct. But lets remember we are dealing in woo woo land in the very premise of this whole thing to begin with.
Again, I want to thank all those who responded.

The SOmeone was moi, and thanks for following up. I suspect that the size estimates that you are using are based upon the size of the explosion of meteors--which means that if the object were bigger or more massive but the explosion was not created in the same fashion, the relationship between size and mass would not be so straightforward.

Not that I think it gives much credence to the original article, I just thought it had bearing on your question in the OP.

A cubic meter of rock weighs a couple ton, so a(n astronomical) object weighing a billion tons would be less than a kilometer in diameter, right? I haven't read the article you linked in the OP but is that the sort of size that he's talking about?

Sorry I'm late to the party, I was away for vacation.

I've never heard of ferrum. If I had to guess, it is a bad translation of a Russian article by a Macedonian News Agency of either ferrous (iron in a +2 oxidation state) or ferric (iron +3). I suppose it also could be a real word in one of those languages. Or it could be complete nonsense.

I feel comfortable saying that there are multiple ferric and ferrous silicate minerals on Earth, but I'd have to do some work to get a count.

As far as the picture of quartz crystals with holes in them... without knowing more details (how the picture was taken, how the sample was prepared), it is hard to say much of anything about it. But it is quite possible for quartz to have holes in it, I've done it many times and it can happen in natural crystals. And the picture to me doesn't even look like holes, but either thinner, or uncolored sections of crystal.

Certainly, both iron silicate and quartz are very common, both on Earth, and in other bodies, including interplanetary dust particles or in comets.

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I didn't see size in the article I linked, I don't think the CT article mentioned the size they believed it was. I got the size from various articles published on the event, articles from more main stream sources and scientific publications.

there does seem to be alot of confusion reguarding the mentioned compound/element/whatevertyewannacallit....to me it isnother hole in the russian scientists theory. Thanks for the response.

I thought Ferrum was the latin name for Iron ... certainly that was the reason given for Iron's atomic symbol being Fe back in High School.

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Dave

Anyone seen my marbles? Anyone ... ?

Well, so it is (never took latin). Still, in English, iron compounds are not referred to that way, so that reinforces my thought of a bad translation.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

To quote hhEb09'1:

A cubic meter of rock weighs a couple ton, so a(n astronomical) object weighing a billion tons would be less than a kilometer in diameter, right? I haven't read the article you linked in the OP but is that the sort of size that he's talking about?

So if my arithmetic is correct, a rock that is 40 x 40 meters (if the "size" reference is accurate) would be 64,000 tons? At even 7 miles a second that could make quite a serious noise; what if it was traveling 40 miles a second (144,000 mph. I think better in miles than kilometers, and I know everyone here can convert if they want to)? I don't know how to calculate the release of energy from such an impact, but I'm sure it would be intense! And, if Fred and Barney WEREN'T flying the craft, the damage it could have done might have knocked us back to the Stone Age, maybe? Maybe not...

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