Importance
The quality to be an "observed fall", makes these meteorites relevant for several reasons.
First of all these meteorites can be used to make statistics about the abundance of the different kinds of meteorites that fall on the Earth without any bias from weathering and from easiness of identification. For example iron meteorites last longer to weathering and are easier to identify as "strange" stones: for this reason the ratio of iron meteorites among (approved, non Antarctic) finds (6.7%) is different from the ratio among observed falls (4.4%).
Falls are also fresher (low weathered, well preserved material) and are therefore more interesting to scientists. Historically they were also the most important proof to understand and accept the extraterrestrial origin of meteorites.
Read more about this topic: Meteorite Fall
Famous quotes containing the word importance:
“Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations. For the sensibility it has that arbitrariness and importance which works take on when they are no longer noticeable elements of the environment. In America kitsch is Nature. The Rocky Mountains have resembled fake art for a century.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“Any novel of importance has a purpose. If only the “purpose” be large enough, and not at outs with the passional inspiration.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)