Apparently the Feb issue of Meteoritics and Planetary Science is about quality, not quantity. Such is meteoritics in general: this subdiscipline doesn’t draw tourists, gawkers, and fanboys, so the serious people can get their work done:
Ninomiya, K. Osawa, T. and >40 others Quantification of bulk elemental composition… 10.1111/maps.14135
Jay, K. H. Smedley, A. R. D. MacArthur, J. L. et al. Overview of the Lost Meteorites of Antarctica field campaign p. 245 10.1111/maps.14114
The Brits have begun trawling the Antarctic expanse for meteorites. In this case, the hypothesis stands that some fraction of the meteorites (irons, and some of the metal-rich stonys) absorb sunlight, warm the surrounding ice, and sink below the surface. This stops at a certain depth, when the sunlight has been filtered down sufficiently by the ice that the meteorite cools again. This implies then that a fraction of meteorites- likely interesting ones- are not picked up (literally, lifted by hand off the ice sheet) by the existing, conventional meteorite expeditions. The Brits then sent a team to Antarctica with metal-detecting ‘trawls’, to test this, and recover more (and rarer) meteorites than other countries’ search parties. Here, the team reports that, while they haven’t reached a yield level (or even statistical significance) with their metal detectors, they have confirmed that one of their ice fields (which were not previously checked by prior expeditions) is, in fact, a DCA (Dense Collecting Area). The human race now has new, high-yielding meteorite collecting areas.
Hmmm, maybe it is about quantity, not quality…