Welcome to the Martian Chronicle

Dedicated to the chronicling of the history of Mars

Via the Frass Meteorite!

.  The Frass Meteorite represents the last 50 million years of the history of the planet Mars. 

NASA has scheduled a meeting on January 22nd of 1999 at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas to make a determination if this rock is a meteorite and if it is from Mars.  I have worked for over two years to bring the Frass Meteorite to the people of the planet Earth.  Things have now come full circle, as the very first people that I contacted in December of 1996 are now the ones who have the responsibility of determining if the Frass rock originated on the surface of Mars.. 

I have been making arguments for a long time that planetary material would be different than the "normal" space debris that represents the majority of falls on our planet.  It was very interesting then, on December 30, 1998 to find the following article written by Alan Treiman and M. Lindstrom.  My records show for certain that the first letter I sent out to 5 or 6 people asking for help with the Frass Meteorite went to Alan.  I believe one of the other letters went to M. Linstrom, but I am not sure of that at this point in space and time.  However, these two did author the following piece that I have taken the liberty to "snatch" and insert my own comments regarding their "hypocrisy" when it comes to accepting new planetary material. 

It is sometimes fun as a philosopher to be able to say, "I told you so."  But I will resist, since the most important item is to obtain the best resources the world has to offer in studying the Frass Meteorite.  Even though these people have waited two years to help me, I believe they are all good people who have been faced with my extraordinary claims.  Throughout this process, I have not asked that anyone believe what I say, only that they search for the truth in my words.  A more complete listing of letters concerning the Frass Meteorite can be found at www.marsrock.org.

Have fun reading this document and be sure to make the links to the actual documents written on the dates indicated. Then push the BACK button on your browser to return to this document.

Your friend,

PIGEONHOLING PLANETARY METEORITES:
THE LESSONS OF MISCLASSIFICATION OF EET87521 AND ALH84001
M.M. Lindstrom ¹, A.H. Treiman² and D.W. Mittlefehldt^3
1SN2 NASA-JSC, ²Lunar and Planetary Institute, ³C23 Lockheed, Houston TX 77058

The last few years have provided two noteworthy examples of misclassifications of achondritic meteorites because the samples were new kinds of meteorites from planetary rather than asteroidal parent bodies. I have been saying the exact same things for two years (Letter to Alan on December 9, 1996 ) trying to get someone to understand that I have found a meteorite that is from a planetary body and thus it is different than those meteorites made from space debris. Basaltic lunar meteorite EET87521 was misclassified as a eucrite [1,2] and SNC (martian) orthopyroxenite ALH84001 was misclassified as a diogenite [3]. (Here a planetary body is one that remained internally active for a significant period of geologic time. The term planetary bodies includes the Moon, while the planets does not.) In classifying meteorites we find what we expect: (letter written to Alan on January 2, 1997 ) we pigeonhole meteorites into known categories most of which were derived from the more common asteroidal meteorites. But the examples of EET87521 and ALH84001 remind us that planets are more complex than asteroids and exhibit a wider variety of rock types. We should expect variety in planetary meteorites and we need to know how to recognize them when we have them. To underscore my point that I have been saying the same thing for two years, please see the arguments contained in a letter that I wrote to Alan on March 7th 1997.

Lunar meteorites were unknown and unexpected in 1982 when ALHA81005 was found in Antarctica. But the comparison of this anorthositic breccia with returned lunar samples left no doubt as to its parent body. As the number of lunar meteorites grew to 7, our knowledge that 17% of the lunar surface was covered by mare basalts should have led us to anticipate a basaltic lunar meteorite. Nonetheless EET87521 was classified as a eucrite because it almost fit in that pigeonhole. Its real parentage was soon discovered by investigators [1,2] and within a year three more basaltic lunar meteorites were identified (two reclassified and one a new meteorite). In 1991, with the lunar highlands and mare well represented by meteorites, the discovery of Calcalong Creek, a KREEP-rich lunar breccia [4], was surprising only as the first non-Antarctic lunar meteorite. Table 1 lists generalized lithologies of meteorite parent bodies and planets. The lithologic types and abundances for Earth and Moon were determined by studies of surface rocks, while those of the asteroids and other planets were inferred from meteorites and remote geology. The current suite of lunar meteorites represents the three most common lithologies on the lunar surface.

The study of martian meteorites has also been hampered by pigeonholing. ALHA77005 was originally classified as a unique achondrite with similarities to several types of achondrites. Research established a petrogenetic link to shergottites and subsequently ALHA77005 (and later LEW88516) was classified as a shergottite, a basalt pigeonhole that does not really fit its ultramafic character (10 % plagioclase). ALH84001 was also pigeonholed, as a diogenite, where it remained little-studied for 8 years before its SNC affinities were revealed [3]. By the mid-1980s SNC achondrites were assumed to be martian meteorites [5, 6] by all but the most diehard skeptics. Should we not have expected a wider variety in basalts and ultramafic rocks from the planet Mars than are seen in the HED meteorite suite from an asteroid? (Letter written to Alan in May of 1997 ) Yet we continued to try to squeeze all martian meteorites into one of the three S-N-C pigeonholes. If we had opened our minds to a wider variety of martian igneous rocks, might we have discovered ALH84001 sooner? If we had opened our minds to the Frass Meteorite sooner, mankind wouldn't have wasted two years in beginning the proper study of this rock. See information presented at www.marsmeteorite.com for evidence I have been presenting the same arguments for years.

Our intent here is to show that our asteroidal perspective is inappropriate for planetary meteorites, not to criticize curators for misclassifications. But if the curator won't even look at the rock, how is he going to pigeonhole the rock. There is another pigeonhole that you forgot to mention. The one of indifference when no one will even put the rock in any pigeon hole because they won't even look at it. The initial descriptions and classifications are deliberately cursory so as not to impinge on detailed research, yet they noted unusual features in both EET87521 and ALH84001 which should have been clues that further study was needed. Table 2 lists some characteristics of basalts (and ultramafic rocks) from various bodies in the solar system. Some are determined in the initial classification, but others should be measured in the first round of scientific analysis. Many of these characteristics have been used before to distinguish planetary from asteroidal meteorites, especially Fe/Mn and oxygen isotopes, but they are tabulated together here for the whole suite of basalts. Even if experience shows that a particular pattern is true, it doesn't mean it is true for all situations. We need more philosophy in the rules of meteorite hunting, because today, the rules of finding meteorites are based solely on empirical evidence. If we only look for rocks that are exactly the same as the ones we have already found, then we are going to miss the interesting ones. At one point about a year ago, I saw The Meteorite Man on TV. He said his goal was to find a meteorite that had living things on it. So I sent him a small piece of the Frass Meteorite and I made sure that it did have life on it and I asked him a question. I asked him how he would know when the moment arrived? He never answered my question and he sent back the sample saying he didn't think it was a meteorite. The rule in science ought to be to take all supportable claims of a meteorite fall as something to be investigated with an open mind. Many other characteristics are also useful. No single characteristic can clearly identify the parent body because the values overlap (Fe/Mn HED=Mars, Earth~Moon; O isotopes: HED=Angrites, Earth=Moon), but two or more characteristics together may be definitive, even without the canonical oxygen isotope analysis. Use of these characteristics should make it possible to identify planetary igneous rocks within the first year of study and prevent the recurrence of the long delay in discovery of ALH84001. I would suggest that we set up a site on the Internet where we accumulate information and try to determine an easy method of determining if particular rocks should be studied or not. It seems to me that we should be able to develop a simple set of rules so that a person could get a complete elemental analysis and plug the values into an Internet based program which would then calculate the likely hood of the rock being terrestrial or not. I would be glad to help with such a project.

Several of the characteristics in Table 2 appear to be dependent on the size of the parent body: oxidation state, volatile content, and ages of volcanism. Rocks made on smaller bodies like Mars, should show this in the density of the materials which make up the rock. There should be some simple test that could determine the gravitational strength of the body that created the rock. The smaller bodies, the Moon and the differentiated asteroids, are volatile-poor and more reduced than the planets which are volatile-rich and oxidized. Duration of volcanism is shorter on smaller bodies. Other correlations with the size of the parent body include the variety and fractionation of igneous rocks [7, 8]. The differences in volatiles, duration, variety and fractionation are reflected in Table 1. Sedimentary rocks are not expected on the Moon and asteroids because they are volatile-depleted and lack an atmosphere, but should be common on the terrestrial planets (except Mercury). Fractionation on the Moon was early and global and led to anorthosites, while igneous processes on Earth were complex and produced granites. Mars is likely to be intermediate between Earth and Moon and Venus to be more Earth-like.

In comparing the current suite of martian meteorites to the expected lithologies, we see that they represent only mafic igneous rocks. We have no felsic rocks, sediments (The problem of getting sediments is the problem of holding them together while they make their transit from planetary body to planetary body. That is why I have proposed the Frass Meteorite is the perfect vessel to transport material from Mars to Earth. See "The Little Space Ship that could" for more information. When the lava flowed on Mars 13 million years ago, it trapped literally thousands of "samples" of the Martian sedimentary material. Of course the difference on Mars is that most Martian sediments have never been compressed under the surface of the planet. Since Mars had less energy initially, it never developed moving tectonic plates and therefore the volcanic systems of Mars became very stable over a very long time, possibly billions of years. ) or impact breccias. Furthermore, they represent only the young volcanic province, and not the older martian highlands. In the Frass Meteorite, I believe that the rock does represent almost every aspect of Mars. The gray portion of the rock is made from some of the very old material that was only reworked by volcanism 13 million years ago. The red rock represents volcanic flows of 50 million years ago of similar material and the sandy material within the rock should represent 100's of millions of years and should include representative samples of the dust that existed at 50 million years ago and at 13 million years ago. The characteristics listed in Table 2 may serve as a starting point in evaluating likely mineralogies and compositions of sediments and felsic igneous rocks, but the values will be modified by fractionation and sedimentary processes. However, we must first find the meteorites before we can identify their parent bodies. That is why we should take seriously people who say they have found a meteorite that wasn't there the day before. Would we recognize martian sediments (the Martian sediments can be easily recognized because many of the particles are very angular, since they have not been worked in water systems as long as Earthly sands are worked. Also, the material is composed of fewer types of particles and much more volcanic type particles.) or felsic rocks as meteorites if we found them in Antarctica? I have been making this point for years. I have read stories of people looking for meteorites in Antarctica picking up rocks they thought were meteorites, but then throwing them down because the fusion crust wasn't what they expected. I would be willing to bet that rocks like the Frass rock are everywhere down there, if you would just let a philosopher write the rules of meteorite hunting, instead of letting meteorite "experts" write the rules. Anyway, I seem to be the only person, who almost 30 years ago was able to recognize that the volcanic nature and red color of my rock probably meant that it came from Mars. I was practicing what you are preaching almost thirty years before you wrote it. Probably not, because they would look too much like Earth rocks. (One last letter I wrote to Alan on June 5th of 1998 ) The case is even worse for recognizing possible Earth or Venus meteorites [9]. As long as we look at all meteorites from an asteroidal rather than planetary perspective, we may be missing some of the most interesting meteorites . Check out the exciting things we have found within the Frass Meteorite at www.marslife.com.

References:

1. Delaney (1989) Nature 342, 889-890.
2. Warren and Kallemeyn (1989) GCA 53, 3323-3330.
3. Mittlefehldt (1994) Meteoritics., in press.
4. Hill et al (1991) Science 352, 614-617.
5. McSween (1985) Rev. Geophys. 23, 391-416.
6. Treiman et al (1986) GCA 50, 1071-1091. [7] BVSP (1981) Basaltic Volcanism on the Terrestrial Planets, Pergamon, 1286 pp.
7. Walker et al (1979) PLPSC 10, 1995-2015.
8. Melosh and Tonks (1993) Meteoritics 28, 398.
9. Keiffer et al, ed (1992) Mars, U.Az, 1498 pp.
10. Barsikov, ed (1992) Venus Geology, Geochemistry and Geophysics, U.Az, 421 pp.
11. Mittlefelhdt & Lindstrom (1990) GCA 54, 3209-3218.
12. Clayton &Mayeda (1983) EPSL 62, 1-6.

After more than a year of getting nowhere, I contacted my congressman and my senators.  They each offered to help me and this help has led to the meeting at the Lunar and Planetary Institute on January 22, 1998

You may examine the evidence at:

www.marsmeteorite.com

www.marslife.com

www.marsrock.org

or view an overview of µmike sites at:

www.micromike.com/overview.html

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