Complete Slice of L'Aigle

Formerly in the collection of the Natural History Museum (Vienna, Austria).

THE METEORITE THAT ESTABLISHED THE FIELD OF METEORITICS

Although meteorites have been falling to Earth since its formation nearly 4.6 billion years ago (see Lot 31 of Sotheby's History of Science & Technology sale for the award bestowed upon the scientist, Clair Patterson, who determined the age of the Earth) and have been recorded in our history books for thousands of years, the idea that stones or lumps or iron could fall from outer space seemed ludicrous to most. Indeed, even Isaac Newton believed no small celestial bodies could exist beyond the Moon, basing his beliefs on the arguments of Aristotle.

However, in very quick succession, in the last decade of the 18^th century and the first decade of the 19^th century, meteorites went from fairy tale to serious topic of scientific interest, becoming an accepted fact by a large percentage of the educated populace.

First, in 1794, German physicist Ernst Chladni published "On the Origin of the Pallas Iron and Others Similar to it, and on Some Associated Natural Phenomena," in which he noted that fireballs seen in the sky were often followed by iron or other types of stones falling to the ground. In addition, the estimated speed with which these fireballs streaked across the sky seemed faster than anything that gravity alone could produce. Chladni's treatise was not immediately accepted, or even accepted by most scholars, but Chladni was a well-respected scientist, and he laid the foundation for a revolution in thinking about meteorites.

Then, in 1795, the Wold Cottage meteorite fell in a field in East Yorkshire, witnessed by numerous people and heard by people in many surrounding towns and villages. The arrival of the Wold Cottage meteorite sparked investigations that led to international comparison of the stones that kept falling from the sky - many of which looked similar to each other, but unlike any other known terrestrial rocks. In addition, the then common belief that these rocks were the result of volcanic discharge seemed next to impossible in a place like East Yorkshire. Also, the indentations looked more like they'd resulted from the stones breaking away from a larger mass, rather than being caused by the accretion of volcanic debris.

Then, in 1803, L'Aigle fell to Earth, and changed meteoritics forever. Phyiscist and astronomer Jean-Baptiste Biot interviewed dozens upon dozens of people about the shower of over 3,000 meteorites from the sky, and he confirmed that the L'Aigle meteorites looked a lot like those from Barbotan, another French meteorite. What distinguished L'Aigle from Wold Cottage was the sheer amount of evidence gained by a pre-eminent scientist of the day. It was the meteorite that changed, in very rapid order, everything we believed about rocks falling from the sky, and ushered in the birth of meteoritic science.

REFERENCES:

Meteoritical Bulletin Entry for L'Aigle