A BEGUILING SILICATED IRON FROM AUSTRALIA

Although this Miles meteorite slice looks superficially like a pallasite, it is in fact a silicated iron meteorite, found 300 kilometers west of Brisbane on the eastern cusp of the Australian Outback in ꦇ1992. The large percentage of iron-nickel matrix with small pockets of orange pyroxenes — resembling the drips of a Jackson Pollock painting — give Miles a particularly unique and striking look. One side has also been etched and polished to bring out the Widmanstätten pattern🏅 in the meteorite, a result of slow cooling over millions of years that provided sufficient time for the two iron-nickel alloys present in the meteorite to orient into a crystalline habit.

The Miles meteorite has been important to scientific research on the formation of our solar system's early protoplan♛ets. Researchers from MI🐲T, Oxford, Arizona State, Berkeley, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory studied the magnetic signature of Miles, noting there were numerous directions of magnetic bias in different parts of the meteorite. As such, the researchers proposed that Miles was subjected to a "dynamo-generated magnetic field powered by the parent body’s churning, molten-metal core" — very similar to the mechanism that powers Earth’s magnetic field today.

A gorgeous, rare, and unique Australian meteorite (much like the Henbury and Bencubbin meteorites also offered in this🃏 sale: see Lots 77 and 107), only about 220 pounds (100 kg) of the total 584 pounds (265 kg) of this meteorite were allowed to be exported to the United States by the Australian government, with the rest remaining in its home country.

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