MarsMeteorite
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  Internal Structure of the Frass Meteorite     

I believe that the internal structure of this rock may be similar to many rocks on Mars. Pathfinder has been "looking" at Mars for only a few days now, but I have been looking at this rock for several months. The evidence is mounting that Mars went through an extensive period of volcanic activity. If this rock is 13 million years old and if it came from Mars, then that means that Mars has been volcanically active until just recently in geologic times. Currently scientist think that the activity continued until about 170,000 years ago.  That would represent about 96% of Mars history had volcanic activity.  I am just adjusting the number to 99% or maybe even 100% because I think there is a good chance that the activity still continues today, although very much reduced.

My rock appears to have been formed by lava moving through a bed of sand. In the picture below, you can see the sand in the volcanic structure of the rock. It makes it look very grainy.

The internal structure is clearly shown here. I now know this rock looks like this throughout the entire structure, except the size of the vesicles varies from very small to ones that have openings more than an inch across.

The lower right of the second photomicrograph shows a section of volcanic material without sand attached. The rest of the picture shows sand attached to the inner surfaces of the vesicles. I think this picture is significant for a couple of reasons. First, if this flew through the air, what would be happening to it? Since there are many vesicles all along the outside, air current would tend to draw out the sand that was not attached. Those vesicles near the surface, but not open to the surface would tend to melt the sand with the volcanic material. This would explain why some regions melted with sand in them and some melted without including the sand. Also, those vesicles exposed to the surface and heated, would be sticky and the sand flying everywhere would tend to stick. So each of these different areas is shown in this picture.

 I have included this last photo just to show some of the variation within this rock. The streak is caused by sunlight coming in through my window as I took the picture.  I am sure that you could place a spectrograph at many different places on this rock and get a different reading for each place. There is tremendous diversity within this structure and this picture doesn't do it justice. Also, there appears to be small amounts of melted metals throughout the rock. At one place on the exterior, there is a larger piece that obviously melted more at the time of entry into the atmosphere. The core sample pictures will also show more of the internal structure.