A geologist from Case Western Reserve University who is researching meteorites in the Antarctic himself is becoming a subject of study.

Ralph Harvey, Case associate professor of geological sciences and director of the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Search for Meteorite Program (ANSMET), will journey to the ends of the Earth in search of extraterrestrial specimens as ANSMET makes its 27th expedition to the Antarctic.

He will be joined by Christopher Cokinos, an assistant professor of English at Utah State University, who will collect not only meteorites alongside the team but also gather information for his new book about the great meteorite hunters of past centuries.

Cokinos said he wants to understand what compels meteorite hunters to brave some of the planet's coldest temperatures to find these rocks that fall from the heavens, and Harvey will be among those hunters whose stories and experiences Cokinos will tell.

"Meteorite hunters are obsessed. Stories about these people are fascinating," Cokinos said.

The author will make the expedition as a non-fiction literary writer through the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Antarctic Visiting Artists Program, which has inspired many new works by visual artists, musicians and writers who have experienced life on the world's coldest frozen desert.

In its 2003-2004 expedition, ANSMET will visit the LaPaz Icefields about 350 km from the South Pole Station. The area was not explored in detail until last year during a reconnaissance mission to evaluate the icefield's potential for meteorite collecting. The field showed promise with the collection of 250 meteorites in two weeks and yielded an unusual specimen.

Case Senior Research Associate Nancy Chabot from the department of geological sciences also will travel on this year's expedition. She was a member of last year's ANSMET team, too, a team that recovered LAP02205, a lunar basalt meteorite hailed by the Johnson Space Center as "unlike any lunar meteorite in our collection." The Johnson Space Center receives and categorizes all meteorites collected by ANSMET to distribute to researchers around the world.

In addition to the personal stories of meteorite collectors, Cokinos expects to include his personal memoirs, folklore and the science of meteorites in his new book.

Along with the NSF grant, Cokinos recently won the Whiting Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation as an emerging talented writer.

Return to the online edition of the 11-20-03 Campus News.