Buck,

How are you this fine Monday morning? Isn't it wonderful to be alive at this point in time and space? It is so wonderful to be able to see so many mysteries of the cosmos being opened up to us on almost a daily basis. I have always thought that I was born too soon, but now I think maybe I was born at the right time, since so much is happening in the field of science all around the world. Imagine, neutrinos have mass.

As to the prospect of me coming to Houston and bringing my rock, I would like to make several comments and tell you my views on the matter. First of all, I have made trips to WTA&M, Texas Tech, and two visits to the University of Arizona to try to get someone to look at my rock. In the last year and a half, I have been able to get someone to actually look through my microscope and view the rock for a total period of about 20 seconds. At Texas Tech when I met Christopher Romanek, he looked through the microscope about 5 seconds and accepted a sample for testing. On the last visit I made to Arizona, when I took the rock, I spent 4 days in Tucson trying to get David to give me some time. When we finally visited, I was given about 45 minutes between his other meetings. He would never look at the rock through my microscope, but Jamie did look for about 15 seconds, which brings the total to 20 seconds. I don't think this is adequate time to understand the points that I am trying to make.

You offered to give me one hour, but I don't think that is enough time. The lady from the magazine spent between 2 and 3 hours with me, just so I could explain things to her and then answer her questions. So one hour is just not enough time to present all the information and then have time to answer questions. Your own question concerning the Ca/Fe chart would require me to be able to present a model of why this has happened and why it is what we should expect. You see, my job as a philosopher is not to state the truth, but rather to present as many options to you as possible in the hopes that all possibilities are contemplated, so the truth is eventually found.

Therefore, I would propose the following schedule: I think I need two hours in the first meeting to go over everything in general and then have time to answer questions. I would like 10 to 20 people at this meeting and would like a very general group who have expertise in many areas of science, not just geology or meteorites. Then I would like to have 3 additional meetings, each about two hours long and each devoted to a specific topic and hands on experience so that I will have time to show these people some of the things that I have seen in the rock. These three categories would involve fusion crust and external rock structure, the nature of the sandy material from within the rock, and a general discussion of life and its ability to evolve on different planets, such as Mars. Each of these three meetings would involve 3-5 people who might be interested in the area in question. These would be very informal and would be mostly hands on the meteorite. For instance, there has been much discussion about the fusion crust and I would like to have the time to explore the fusion crust issue of the rock and come to some kind of agreement, if possible, about the fusion crust of my rock. (In the interest of science, I have decided to name this type of fusion crust, cold fusion crust : -) ). It seems to me that if you are to determine the truth of this rock, then someone needs to spend time resolving each of these issues, and that can only happen by someone actually spending some energy and looking at the rock for a period of time.