Extra Credit Event: UCLA Meteorite Gallery

As this past week's lecture topic, Space + Art, had indeed spark my interest, I decided to visited the Meteorite Gallery as well. First off, I'd like to say that it's the most convenient event I've been to so far, as it is just on UCLA campus, so I would encourage all of my classmates to go and check it out! It's almost zero effort, and super fascinating.


Thermal metamorphism, the heating process on asteroids, moons, and planets, is an example of how nature creates art by itself, even without the help of man-made technology. As shown in the picture, various textures and shapes are created from this process, making each piece unique and interesting. Other processes also form differentiated meteorites, such as when iron meteorites form from chondritic materials by melting then separation of a metal melt. The resulting meteorite looks like a crystal, with various shades of gray spots. Each one that was displayed in the gallery was of different sizes, colors, and shapes. Together, they look as beautiful as sculptures.

Furthermore, I find it fascinating that there are non-mass dependent fractionations of O isotopes that can tell us that certain chondrites formed from different batches of primitive materials. While the specific process isn't fully known, it is interesting, as I had learned about Carbon dating before in my physics class, and this process also utilizes a certain element to trace the origins of a specific item. I find it phenomenal that we can utilize the current knowledge we have about science to study those mysterious objects from outer space. While there is so much more to explore in the galaxies, these pieces that find their way into planet Earth gives us snippets of the outside universe that we strive to learn more about.

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