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Meetings
We will hold 9 meetings
during the 2007/2008 academic year on the following dates:
Tuesday, 11 September, 2007
Tuesday, 2 October, 2007
Tuesday, 13 November, 2007
Tuesday, 4 December, 2007
Tuesday, 5 February, 2008
Tuesday, 4 March, 2008
Tuesday, 1 April, 2008
Tuesday, 6 May, 2008
Tuesday, 3 June, 2008
BMC Meeting: Tuesday, February 5, 7:30 PM
" Collisions big and small: An Imperfect History of the Solar System "
Professor Sarah Stewart
Harvard Department of Earth and Planetary Science
At the February meeting of the Boston Mineral Club we welcome back Professor Sarah Stewart of Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science. Dr. Stewart last visited the BMC four years ago. She discussed Martian Geology, craters, water on Mars, and showed us her new lab.
Professor Stewart’s field of study includes the composition and evolution of planets and small bodies such as asteroids and comets. In her Shock Compression Laboratory, her research group conducts experiments on the dynamic response of rocks and minerals to measure fundamental material properties. She has a cannon in her lab.
She will talk about collisions and the formation of the solar system:
Impact events have shaped our solar system. Early in the solar system, slowly colliding planetesimals merged to grow into planets. At later times, fast collisions led to mutual destruction of minor planets and the formation of debris fields like the asteroid and Kuiper belts. The history of collisions in the solar system is recorded on planetary surfaces and by the debris fields.
I will present new results on the fragmentation of bodies, from cm-size to planets, and the implications for the evolution of the whole solar system. Then, I will focus on the way that collisions have affected the ancient material in the Kuiper belt, which will be visited by spacecraft in 2015.
She adds that “the talk topic is not terribly mineralogical, but you will see that composition matters a lot. I'm happy to give a short lab tour after the talk.”
Professor Stewart received her Ph.D. at Cal-Tech in 2002 in the field of Planetary Sciences, with a minor in Astrophysics. She returned to Harvard in 2003, having earned her B.A. in Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics here in 1995.
Check out Dr. Stewart’s web site at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7eplanets/sstewart/, particularly the laboratory and research areas.
In lieu of our usual honorarium, Dr. Stewart expressed interest in adding to her (new?) mineral collection. Perhaps a few of us could bring in a good New England specimen for her.
The Harvard Mineral Museum should be open starting at 7:00 PM. At 8:00 we will hold a brief business meeting and will try to start the presentation by 8:15. Short lab tour following the talk.
BMC Meeting: Tuesday,
December 4, 2007
Doors open at 7:00, Meeting begins at 8:00
"Auction Preview
and Favorite Mineral Collecting Spots "
BMC Members
In December we have not invited an outside speaker, but instead will look to the membership to make brief presentations on the following topics:
First
Topic - "Here is the terrific specimen I am donating or
consigning to the Auction",
telling its story, or yours. Jim Cahoon has set a good example for us
all with a large amethyst he found this year at Wrentham that he is generously
donating.
The Club’s annual auction and party will be held a week early this year, January 12, 2008 at the same location, the Village Club in Needham. It is time to think about donations and consignments to the auction. Each year an amazing quantity of interesting and diverse material surfaces at the auction, but some of our most generous donors have just about finished clearing out their basements.
This is a general call for donations in January, and a specific call to come to the meeting and talk about your own. Give or consign something good for the benefit of the Club.
Second Topic - "My favorite collecting site (that I am willing to divulge)", with some specimens for show and tell from the site, with a discussion of whether it would be possible to go there as a club if we don’t go already.
Many club members collect on their own or with their friends in addition to club trips. Would you tell the BMC about where you have gone and liked, recently or in the past, with samples of what you found?
This should be a very interesting meeting. There is a lot of specialized knowledge in the group that we don’t often get to share. Please come to present and to listen.
Third Topic – Anything on your mind that you’d like to share with the group.
The Harvard Mineral
Museum should be open starting at 7:00 PM. At 8:00 we will hold a brief
business meeting and plan to start the presentations by 8:15.
BMC Meeting: Tuesday, October 2, 2007, 7:30 PM
"The
Långban Fame - Mining, Mineralogy and Collecting History. "
Jörgen Langhof, Curator of Minerals
Swedish Museum of Natural History
Dr. Erik Jonsson, State Geologist, Geological Survey of Sweden
Our October speakers are visitors from Stockholm, Sweden who are visiting
Carl Francis and the museum at Harvard. Carl suggested and they have kindly
accepted our invitation to speak to the BMC about the world-famous Langban
deposits of central Sweden.
Jörgen Langhof is Curator of Minerals at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and is co-editor of Långban. The Mines, their Minerals, Geology and Explorers, 1999. Dr. Erik Jonsson is State Geologist with the Geological Survey of Sweden. His 2004 doctoral thesis dealt with “Fissure-hosted mineral formation and metallogenesis in the Långban Fe-Mn-(Ba-As-Pb-Sb) deposit, Bergslagen, Sweden.”
From an abstract of the 1999 book:
The Långban dolomite-hosted iron–manganese deposit, situated in central Sweden, is one of the most mineral-rich sites in the world, with about 270 different species. It is the type locality of nearly 70 of these, and for more than 20 species, Långban is the only known locality.
From “Swedish Minerals and Mineral Shows 1995” Mineralogical Record, May 1996 by Cooper, M P:
Langban is one of the world's most remarkable mineral deposits. Quirks of geochemical history had deposited an unusual assemblage of elements at Langban -- iron, manganese, arsenic, antimony, beryllium, lead, etc.-and mixed and matched them with complete disregard for "normal" mineralogy. For a few decades around the turn of the century Langban produced unknown after unknown. But despite the remarkable mineralogy, Langban specimens are relatively unknown in the international collector community,
To complement the presentation club members are encouraged to bring in mineral specimens from their collections from Langban.. For any updated meeting information, check the BMC web site at bostonmineralclub.org.
The Harvard
Mineral Museum should be open starting at 7:00 PM. At 8:00 we will hold
a brief business meeting and plan to start the presentation by 8:15.
PLEASE NOTE: Parking for BMC meetings is no longer in the DEAS lots. Please park instead in the new underground parking garage at 52 Oxford Street. The entrance to this lot is just opposite Everett Street and is the same entrance that we formerly used to park in the old surface lot beside the museum. Please see the map at the bottom of the meetings page.
The BMC meets monthly from September to June, on the first Tuesday, (second Tuesday if a three day holiday, such as Labor Day, precedes the first Tuesday). Other exceptions are noted in the Newsletter.
Meetings are held at 7:30 PM in the Harvard University Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA. If you are standing facing the entrance to the Harvard Museum of Natural History, turn to your right. You will see another door at the top of some steps about 10 to 20 yards away. That is the entrance to the Geological Lecture Hall.
The mineral displays of the Harvard Mineralogical Museum are open to BMC members free of charge between 7:00 and 8:00 PM before each meeting. The BMC also hosts a mid-winter party, with a fund raising auction of mineral specimens and related material.
Evening programs include a short business meeting. The program is usually an educational presentation on a mineralogical topic, supported by projected slides, exhibits, or videos. Speakers may be experts in the Earth Sciences academic community, professional mineralogists or geologists, or veteran collectors from outside or within the BMC. A specimen raffle concludes the evening.
