Even though I have worked iron-nickel meteoric material in the forge I know almost nothing about meteors, as I commented earlier, I have never studied this material, I have only used it.
So this is a question, it is not a statement of opinion nor is it an attempt at debate, I simply want somebody who does truly understand the study of iron-nickel meteorites to give me an answer that can be supported with evidence.
I assisted Prof. Jerzy Piaskowski of Poland in his examination of S.E. Asian blade materials, over a period of more than 15 years. Jerzy was a noted historical metallurgist who worked at the Institute of Metallurgy in Krakow. Jerzy passed away in 2013, and he was about 90 when he left this world. His methods of examination were dated, and he did not have the benefit during his working life of the technology that is now available to us for the examination of minerals.
Jerzy's opinion was that it was not possible to identify with any certainty any iron-nickel material that had a meteoric origin after it had been through the process of multiple forge welds and heavy forging. All the minerals that can be found in an iron-nickel meteorite can be found on Earth.
Last year I heard from a friend who is a noted collector of minerals, that scientists in the USA had found a new mineral in an Australian meteorite (Wedderburn meteorite) that had not previously been found in nature on Earth, this mineral is called something like edscoti, it can be found in iron that has been through high temperature processing on Earth, but not in nature.
So even if we now do have a mineral that is unique to some meteorites and is not found in nature on Earth, will that assist in identifying meteoric material after that material has been through multiple forge welds and heavy forging? Personally, I rather think not.
Based upon what little I know about meteoric material, I feel that it would be a total impossibility to determine with certainty that material which has been repeatedly forge welded for up to perhaps ten times, and that has also been heavily forged could with certainty be identified as being of meteoric origin.
It might perhaps be possible to determine with a degree of possibility that a piece of material as described above could be of meteoric origin, but can such a determination be made with certainty?
As stated above, I am not opening a debate here, all I would like to see is an answer that can be supported with evidence from somebody who does truly understand the study of iron-nickel meteorites.
There has been ongoing discussion of this matter over many years in the keris community, and in other areas of study, such as archaeology , and some of the conclusions and opinions put forward have been utterly ridiculous.
It would be very nice to be able to put this matter to one side and either forget about it, or to be able to know that we can state with certainty that a piece of material that has been through extensive high temperature processing here on Earth can indeed be positively identified as being meteoric in origin.
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