Apparently, the first meteorite from the fireball over Wisconsin has been found: a pair of brothers discovered a small chunk of the bright meteor that burned up over the midwest skies Wednesday night.

It certainly looks like a meteorite (click to embiggen); the outer blackened fusion crust is from passing through the air, and the interior has the gray, grainy structure in common chondrites. The cube is one centimeter in size and is used in photos like this to give scale.

Pretty cool. There may be thousands of such meteorites lying on the ground in Wisconsin right now; the meteoroid itself was probably a meter or so in size and weighted about a ton. Meteorite hunters are already there searching, and I hope that most of the fallen rocks will be sent to researchers for analysis.

Falls like this are very important scientifically. Having a lot of eyewitnesses means the path and therefore the orbit of the rock can be ascertained, and many times such meteoroids are part of a family of such objects; all on related orbits and probably from the same parent body. When we get samples of the meteorites that means we have samples of an asteroid!

So if you live in that area and find something suspicious, take photographs of it where it is, then carefully put it in a baggie or box (use gloves if you can so you minimize contamination) and contact a local University. The vast majority of rocks found this way aren’t meteorites (we call ‘em meteorwrongs, haha) but it’s worth making sure.

Image: Terry Boudreaux, submitted to Rocks From Space by Michael Farmer.

via the Daily Mail Online. Click for larger.

Kind of looks like a Halloween image.  It’s the Icelandic volcano causing all the trouble in Europe (and Iceland obviously) via the Daily Mail online.

The National Air Traffic Service says British airspace will be close at least through 7am tomorrow and likely longer.  Scotland’s airspace will be opening later this evening.

The ash plum seen from the MODIS imager on the Terra Satellite. Click for larger.

The second image was taken by the Terra Satellite yesterday morning. The plume from the volcano can be seen as a darker colored ribbon in the center of the image.

And finally this image from the CBC shows the vertical extent of the ash cloud.  The press release is also saying the WHO is saying Europeans should try to stay inside if ash starts to settle near them.

There are a few good points about the volcano:  it should make for some spectacular sunrises and sunsets, it could make good riddle fodder later this fall and how many times do I get the chance to use a word like “Eyjafjallajokull” ?

Notice I didn’t say pronounce it 

In the April issue of Discover, I take a look at the mind of the athlete. We may think of sports as a matter of muscle, but the brain is vital as well. And in becoming great athletes, people develop unusual brains. This transformation only makes sense–any intense training can change the brain, whether it’s practicing the piano or learning Mandarin. But for some reason, the idea that being a great athlete is, in part, a cerebral exercise still comes as a surprise. In fact, according to this ESPN take on my column, it’s downright disappointing.

[Image: Wikipedia]

The cargo from a Roman ship sunk off the coast of Sardinia more than 2,000 years ago will finally be put to use–it will become a shield for a neutrino detector. In Italy, 120 lead bricks recovered from the shipwreck will soon be melted to make a protective shield for Italy’s new neutrino detector, CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events).

The ancient lead, which is useful because it has lost almost all traces of its natural radioactivity, has been transferred from a museum in Sardinia to the national particle physics laboratory at Gran Sasso. After spending two millennia on the seabed, the lead bricks will now be used in an experiment that will take place beneath 4,500 feet of rock.

Nature News writes:

Once destined to become water pipes, coins or ammunition for Roman soldiers’ slingshots, the metal will instead form part of a cutting-edge experiment to nail down the mass of neutrinos.

From slingshots to particle physics–we humans have come a long way in 2,000 years.

CUORE is due to begin operations next year and will be used to investigate neutrinos, particles that have no electric charge and were long thought to have no mass; recent research has proven that the puzzling particles do have mass, but physicists still haven’t been able to determine how much. Scientists at CUORE hope to finally estimate the neutrinos’ mass by watching as atomic nuclei shed particles through radioactive decay. In order to watch this process, the researchers need to shield their experiment from all external radioactivity.

To create this shield, scientists need lead. But freshly mined lead is slightly radioactive and contains an unstable isotope. This isotope, lead-210, gradually decays into more stable isotopes after it’s extracted from the ground; its concentration halves every 22 years. That’s why physicists are so interested in old lead. As CUORE scientist Ettore Fiorini told Nature:

“It is not unusual for particle physicists to go hunting for low-radioactivity lead,” he says. “Metal extracted from roofs in antique churches or from keels of wrecked ships has often been used in experiments.”

So when the Roman shipwreck was discovered in 1988 and was found to be full of lead ingots, scientists were thrilled–they would have access to lead whose radioactivity had substantially diminished over the centuries, and the quantity would allow them to fashion a shield more than an inch thick.

A deal was worked out with the Italian museum and a proportion of the ingots were acquired to make the shield. Before the ingots are melted down, their inscriptions, which represent the trademarks of the firms that extracted and traded the lead, will be removed and sent back to the museum for preservation.

Still, Donatella Salvi, an archeologist at the Sardinian museum, admits that parting with the ingots has been “painful.” Nature News writes:

The ones given to [Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics] INFN are the worst-preserved, but are still of exceptional historical value. However, she says she is happy with the collaboration, because physicists are performing important analyses on the lead.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Ice Fishing For Neutrinos From the Middle of the Galaxy
DISCOVER: Neutrinos of the Sea
DISCOVER: Opening an Icy Eye on the Neutrino Sky
DISCOVER: The Unbearably Unstoppable Neutrino
80beats: Next Global-Warming Victim: Centuries-Old Shipwrecks

Images: INFN/Cagliari Archeological Superintendence

Here’s a wonderfully disturbing new species of leech that you don’t want to find up your nose. For background, check out my profile of its discoverer, Mark Siddall, in the New York Times.

Lovely tribute in the Times to the Great Bear of Locktown.