Dear Alan,

Thank you for your letter. I have been working changing my home computer network around, and your mail came in on my notebook and I didn't notice it until today. Since you are on vacation, I guess it doesn't matter. I am sending you everything that I have in regards to the age and elemental oxides tests.

In answer to your questions about the ages, I think we can trust these dates. This situation has gone one so long that sometimes I am not too sure of the exact sequence of events. At different times in this process I have had different assumptions as I have gained knowledge and understanding of the rock. So I am not totally sure about the validity of the elemental oxides, but I do believe the age dates are correct, although there is little correlation with the age tests and the elemental oxides tests. The sample labeled gray rock in my graphs is the analysis for the 13 million year old sample. (It is interesting that they gray rock has the least concentration of silicates, even though it is the newest created rock, among samples taken from the Frass rock. That indicates to me that the rock was formed as a side vent on an older volcano. The old material had sat there for a long time without change and then it was re-melted again, by the side vent activity, leaving the chemistry still looking "old.") Of course, even though I know that the material for both tests came from the same rock, the rock is contaminated with the sand, which would skew the elemental oxides test, but probably not the K-Ar test. The rock labeled red rock on the elemental oxides graphs is probably a mixture of the red rock and gray rock and would probably relate closest to the 29ma age, since that sample was taken from a red/gray region near the outside of the rock. Remember the only two dates I think are valid are the 13 and 49, since the 29 is a mixture of the two. So the sample labeled red rock was taken before I knew the difference in the two colors and ages of rock.

I know that the age of 49ma for the red rock is correct, because I spent over a week separating particles into two groups, the red group and the gray group. This was shortly after I learned to discern the two types of rocks, because until then, I had assumed the rock was of a single construction, but I knew that it had "picked up" the sand and its contents when the lava originally flowed. So I spent a week and looked at the rocks carefully and separated them and then sent off the red rocks for the age test. Dick Reesman is a very nice man and has listened to my arguments on the rock and has not been able to offer any better explanation. Plus, I have not talked to him since the 49ma age came back, which I have believed for a long time is the "proof" that this rock is extraterrestrial. Thus he believed my arguments with much less evidence than I now have. He has been very open minded about this whole thing because his career is not on the line. He will be more than willing to talk to you about his methods and tests and his number is on the documents I am sending you. So I never had an elemental oxides test on the red rock because it is so scarce and because the tests that I have been able to get performed at Chemex require a couple grams and this sample is then gone forever. Again, I have had to balance taking enough samples to get someone to look at the rock, against losing forever-important pieces of this unique rock.

As far as argon loss, we don't think any occurred. To try to reconstruct the situation, I first sent Dick a sample taken about a cm below the surface of the rock. We had talked and we were concerned that the melting, as it came through the atmosphere, would cause the rock to lose some Ar and thus show a younger age. Also, the only two dates I knew about were 4.5 ga for some Mars rocks and then something in the 170ma for the "young" Martian meteorites. So I was expecting a date between these two and I had told Dick that I thought the rock would be very old, at least in the hundreds of millions of years. I had spent a lot of time talking to Dick and he knew a little about my circumstances and how I had to save grocery money for over six months to pay for the first age test which are $800 each. So Dick did the Ar part of the test first, which is apparently the cheap part of the test and then he called me. Remember, this would be the sample that later tested 29 ma. When he did the Ar, he found that there could not be enough Ar to be more than a few tens of millions of years old. At that point, we both decided that maybe I hadn't taken the sample deep enough, and that is when I came up with the idea of driving the copper tube into the rock and taking a core sample. I don't want to damage the outside, because I want to do some whole rock studies that would determine if the rock does have an aerodynamic shape, as I have proposed. So I took the sample and all the pieces of the core samples were of the gray rock that seems to make more than 90% of the total rock. I sent in that sample and after waiting for several months, it came back with the age of 13ma.

Many more months passed before I learned to discern the two types of rock by putting them in natural sunlight. For most of the time since I took the first sample from the rock, I had seen many small particles of volcanic material within the sand. I could never tell for sure if these small pieces were already in the sand before the lava flowed, or were they pieces of the rock that had fallen into the sand when I broke the rock taking my sample? When I learned that I could separate the rocks into two groups, I took a one-gram collection of tiny red rocks and sent them in for the age test. At that time I also told him to finish the test on the first sample (mixture) taken. Since I was very careful taking the core sample, I knew that all of the sand and its contents had come from the hole that I had made and I knew that this material had not been exposed to Earthly contamination. So the gray rock and the red rock samples were both taken from within the rock and were not subject to the heating of re-entry or any other problems that might bring question as to their accuracy.

As far as the proportion of K, all of the tests are consistent. You can see from the elemental oxides that the red rock and gray rock are very similar, although, we really need to get new tests done with the probe equipment so that we won't waste so much rock and so that we can get more accurate measurements of the actual chemistry of the rocks. But one thing seems clear. The two rocks are very similar in chemistry, must have been in the same location because of the formation characteristics of the rock, and are separated by 36 million years when nothing happened. If you look at the K values of the red and gray rock, you see that they are very similar. I noticed this and this was the reason I told Dick to finish the first (mixed) sample. I knew that it would work as a control, to some extent, since it was closest to the surface and most likely to be changed when the rock came through the atmosphere, and was a mixture of the two other types of rock.

As far as the chemical analysis, I also did that in a two-part sequence. I have enclosed the documents that they sent me. In the first set of tests, which would be the gray rock and the Sand1 sample, I only had enough material and money to do the major elemental oxides. However, on the second set of tests, I did, not only the major elements, but also the minor elements and the total carbon, total inorganic carbon, surface moisture, and crystalline water. I don't have any experience to judge any of these things, but they did seem important and sooner or later I knew that someone else would eventually look at it. Hopefully, either the test results or I will answer your questions.

Again, thanks for writing, and if I can be of any help to you in any way, don't hesitate to call. By the way, what is this thing you call a vacation?

Your friend