Lyrics
We got the deeper insight
Into a meteorite
Its magnetism
And its durability over time
Clara’s been in the fight
To try to see the inside
Of the cloudy zones
Up in the tetrataenite
And yeah, she’s reading it right
And now we’re seeing the light
Inferring the parent body
Of a meteorite
Even a meteorite
That’s kilometers in size
Thanks to Clara Morel’s
PhD insights
MIT, get it right, and tell everybody
The magnetic properties of meteorites, and their parent bodies
And the need to resolve the speculated existence
Of intermediates between chondritic and achondritic
How does a meteorite record a magnetic field?
When it coalesces inside a planetesimal shell
And did it have magnetic resistance when it fell
Into a farmer’s field? Better call Clara Maurel
It’s hard to tell, unless you can measure the function of
The taenite grains, those tiny magnetic compasses
That you see when you wipe a meteorite with acid
And see the elegant Widmanstätten pattern hashes
And then zoom in closer and find the rim and cloudy zone
And the microscopic islands, where Clara is right at home
Measuring the dynamic field to which it got exposed
With the crystalographic transformation each island undergoes
So Benjamin Weiss, time to fill up your wine cup
And raise a toast to the fact that yes, they line up
Only Benjamin would test a new PhD in physics
With the flowery vintage descriptions of wine critics
But Clara’s got that sensitive french wine nose
So she can smell the magnetic field inside a Cloudy Zone
With X-PEEM assessment of directional information
Ruling out the solar nebula with radioactive dating
So we got deeper insight
Into a meteorite
Its magnetism
And its durability over time
Clara’s been in the fight
To try to see the inside
Of the cloudy zones
Up in the tetrataenite
And yeah, she’s reading it right
And now we’re seeing the light
Inferring the parent body
Of a meteorite
Even a meteorite
That’s kilometers in size
Thanks to Clara Maurel’s
PhD insights
So break out the jars of wine to celebrate Clara’s finds
Sometimes they don’t, but sometimes Rock Stars Align
And we can peer inside a microscopic size
And catch a glimpse of paleomagnetic time
And say the core was more than 20% of a spherical
220km radius parent globe
A planetesimal that lasted 80 million years or so
And solidified 160 million years after T-Zero
It’s not a miracle, it’s called scientific inference
It’s called empirical data, experimental measurements
That tell us what it might be, like when we fly free
And take a measurement of the magnetic fields of Psyche
Scientific advances and human knowledge-enhancement
Collaborating with NASA and Linda Elkins-Tanton
On a flyby of Pysche, to try to find
Whether magnetic activity is affected by size
A look ahead to what we can expect is quite nice
How can we tell if the magnetic vectors are aligned?
On a meteorite more than a meter in size
You call Clara, ‘cause she can see the insides
Of the cloudy zones, she’s completely at home in them
Just build a massive magnetometer at the Smithsonian
And compare data points from the millimeter going
Up to many meters in size to infer the asteroids
What’s the verdict, Clara? Only you can spot it
Navajo, Cranbourne, oh my god she’s got it!
Every data point, take it and carefully plot it
And the magnetization is… asymptotic!
Get a bottle of pinot noir and pop it
The cloudy zone formation model scales to bigger objects
Clara took contrast in photoelectron microscopic
And rocked it, that’s a hell of a PhD Project
With incredible prospects for future research
No wonder the panel decided that yup, that PhD’s her’s
They wanted to see deeper into the meteors
And Clara’s one of the best for seeing their deep features
By comparing the magnetic allegiance of sample regions
She can assess details of a protoplanet’s features
And give us insight into the ancient solar system
And the molten cores of planetesimals that we know existed
That’s why there wasn’t a chance in hell
They would say anything other “Hey, Doctor Morel”
It’s obvious they want her as part of their coalitions
Plus they obviously really appreciate her Frenchness
Clara’s so ambitious, she testing a hypothesis
Until it’s irrefutably obvious
So if you find a meteor, don’t stick a magnet onto it
You just erase the signal for her like a floppy disc!
Clara’s got the science, you can’t copy it
Not unless you roll with the paleogeographers
Who follow the magnetometers and the microscopic twists
Like Clara Maurel, and as a consequence…
We got the deeper insight
Into a meteorite
Its magnetism
And its durability over time
Clara’s been in the fight
To try to see the inside
Of the cloudy zones
Up in the tetrataenite
And yeah, she’s reading it right
And now we’re seeing the light
Inferring the parent body
Of a meteorite
Even a meteorite
That’s kilometers in size
Thanks to Clara Maurel’s
PhD insights
And yeah, she’s reading it right
And now we’re seeing the light
Inferring the parent body
Of a meteorite
Even a meteorite
That’s kilometers in size
Thanks to Clara Maurel’s
PhD insights
We got a meteorite.