Three new martian items have been found in the Frass meteorite, and are displayed at marslife.  Just click on any image for more views and documentation of the subject.

For those of you who are new to the MartianChronicle, here is a little overview of what's going on. We are currently waiting for a report to be released by Dr. Alan Treiman on the Frass Meteorite. It is hoped that this report will be released some time this month and that the report will indicate that the Frass Meteorite needs further study.

A Short Aside On Evolution in General

After reading the many discussions on evolution, it is apparent to me that most people are confusing the principles of evolution with the mechanisms of evolution. Almost everyone I know believes in the principles of evolution, even though many won't admit it.

The principles of evolution are thus:

Every organism caries information about itself in its genetic material

Every offspring contains the mixing of genetic material from its parents

Any offspring that does not survive to mating, will not pass on its genetic material

To make this matter very personal, if you and your mate have a child and that child dies before having children, your genes will not be passed on. This is just common sense and needs little argument. If one believes in DNA and genetic material, then you logically believe in the principles of evolution. Even the most ardent fundamental Christians seem to believe that their children look like themselves and they expect their children to pass on genetic material to the next generation. This concept represents the principles of evolution.

The mechanisms of evolution are what lead scientist to disagree. What concerns scientists are the details of how God or nature changes organisms through time. Does evolution go in small steps or large steps? What outside forces affect evolution? Darwin suggested natural selection as the mechanism. Others could say that the selection is God based. But in the end, it comes down to some individuals and species living and some individuals and species dying, because of their interaction with an ever changing environment. It seems funny to me that so many fundamental Christians are very interested in natural foods, but not in natural selection. Isn't nature a part of God?

One argument against evolution asks why evolution isn't continuing today. Well it is. Every leaf and every tree and every animal shows its evolutionary path, if one just looks. Every year new viruses evolve to give us a new version of the flu or common cold. Every dog alive today is the result of man's unnatural selection of those qualities he wants to see in his dog and every dog is evolved from the wolf.

The problem comes with evolution because some religions preach that one must take the Bible in a literal fashion or one is not a true believer. Yet Jesus spoke in parables and it escapes me why those same people can believe that Jesus talked in stories, but Genesis isn't a story. The Bible is a book of religion, not history. Many Christians seem to worship the Bible instead of worshiping the love that Jesus preached. I don't recall Jesus ever talking about evolution. After all, all time spent discussing evolution is time that we can't be helping someone else and sharing the love that Jesus taught us, which should be the goal of any religion.

A Comparison of Martian and Terrestrial Evolution

For the moment, let's assume that the debris found within the Frass Meteorite is from Mars. I know this is a big assumption, at this time, yet I think the evidence is strong enough to begin trying to understand what it means. So one of the most interesting questions to me, is how does life differ as it evolves on two different planets? What things are similar and what things are different? What energy sources can life make use of? Is life based on carbon everywhere? Is DNA used by life on other planets? Was life moved from Mars to Earth by earlier meteorite transports? Has the evolution of life on Earth been affected by the transport of Martian material? Or have the two evolutionary mechanisms evolved so differently, that they don't interact easily?

One of the first things to consider, is where does the life get it initial energy. On Earth, this energy basically comes from the sun. The sun shines energy on the planet, and many organisms have developed to directly convert this energy into chemical energy for its own use. We generally call these plants. Then larger organisms eat these and larger organisms eat these and so on. Until recently, science thought that maybe all energy came from the sun. But lately, we have found whole new organisms that get their energy from chemical energy near underwater volcanic vents and some organisms deep within the Earth that have no apparent energy source, other than the rocks around them. So one of the first things to consider when evaluating the evolution of life on Mars, is where did this life get most of its energy?

After seeing our sun as viewed from Mars, I tend to think that the life on Mars was much the reverse of life on Earth. Most of Mars's life's energies came from chemical energies from the volcanic systems, with a smaller percentage coming from sunlight. There just isn't near as much sunlight energy falling on the surface of Mars as falls on the Earth. "Leaves" on Mars would have to be "humungous." I think most of the energy for life on Mars came from the chemical energies of volcanoes, since it appears to me, that the life of Mars evolved around these volcanoes for most of the history of Mars. There is nothing about the Frass Meteorite that suggests any of these conclusions are true, as these are only philosophical observations. But it could very well explain why the Viking life experiments proved so hard to interpret. So I am assuming that the base of the food chain on Mars were bacteria or bacteria-like life forms that clustered around volcanic vents and obtained their energy from these vents. After the base level of the number of these organisms becomes high enough, then these organisms provide food for more complex and larger creatures to evolve.

On Earth, we divide the life of our planet into several categories. At first, we just had plants and animals and then we discovered a whole class of tiny things that don't fall into any category with much consistency. So how do the classifications of Earth hold up when we examine the debris from the Frass Meteorite? Surprisingly, the categories hold up better than one might expect.

I have no way of seeing bacteria or other very small life forms, so my observations are based on the things that I can see. Since we do see macroscopic debris within the Frass Meteorite, we must assume that there was some food base that supported these "large" creatures. It does appear that life on Mars did evolve to both plants and animals. There are clearly pieces of debris that look like the "stalk" of plants, or something that was attached to the surface in some way. These are round and long and seem to be "wood-like" in their nature. Here are several pictures of these types of objects.

In the animal world of our planet, there are two major divergent directions when it comes to the symmetry of the animal. Many primitive animals on Earth have radial symmetry. This means they "radiate" out around a central point. As life became more complex, it developed bilateral symmetry, which is what humans have: two sides that are mirror images of each other. Again, we see both types of creatures, although the specimen that I have for radial symmetry, may yet be a plant type creature. However, it looks very much like many primitive Earth animals. Here are the pictures.

On Earth, we have "soft" creatures that have developed in the water, and we have "hard" creatures that have made a shell and then left the water to live on land. It seems the process of making a shell to hold one's water "inside" is a good practice around the cosmos, since it looks like the creatures of Mars have also learned to make shells to protect themselves. What are these shells made of? Is it the same chemistry as Earth? It looks to me like the creatures of Mars have made more use of silicon than many Earth creatures, but this still remains to be seen.

Soft creatures don't tend to be preserved as easily as something with a shell, so on Earth, finding old "soft" things is much harder than finding old "hard" things. The same is probably true on Mars, although the conditions on Mars at the present time should be very good for preserving the remains of things that once lived there. So I have found no "soft" creatures in the debris, unless you count the glassies that I believe are a Martian glass fungus, which are still living within the Meteorite to this day.

As far as "hard" creatures that are in the animal category, I have found worms, bugs, and spiders. Does this seem reasonable? I think it does. The insects are the most successful species on our planet and it looks like they have done the same on Mars. The only disadvantage to being an insect, is the size of an exoskeleton that the creature can develop. As long as the creatures stay small, and the lack of a global water supply for most of the planet's history would tend to push creatures to stay small, then they have little evolutionary gain in "learning" to be "large" animals "out of the water." So it seems to me, the planet history of Mars would favor "insect" like creatures. All of the creatures found so far have been very tiny and even the bacteria like formations within ALH-84001 seem to be much smaller than similar Earthly organisms. This seems reasonable, since Mars has just never had the energy that Earth has enjoyed and thus "things" probably never got very big on Mars. Mars was probably a planet of miniatures. Tiny little battles among tiny little creatures on an isolated world of isolated volcanoes, is a good description of the evolution of life on Mars.

Another question is the question of the use of carbon as the main mechanism of life. On Earth, all life is carbon based that we know of. It has been proposed that life might evolve around silicon as an alternative. Since there seems to be a lot of silicon hanging around Mars, did the Martian creatures evolve around silicon as the base or did they use carbon, as terrestrial creatures do? The answer, apparently, is that the Martian creatures also use carbon, just as we do. On two of the sand samples, SAND2 and SAND3, I included representative samples of the living thing's debris in the samples. I had these tested for organic and inorganic carbon. The tests came back showing that organic carbon was present. Therefore, I am assuming, at this point, that the creatures of Mars also used carbon as the basic element, and maybe even all life in the cosmos uses carbon as the basic element.

The next question is the question of DNA. DNA, or RNA in some organisms on Earth, provides the "code" that stores the information about how the organism is to develop. Clearly, for any life to become organized, it must have something that at least plays the same role as DNA or RNA. The question is, "do Martian creatures use DNA or something else?" Since I am assuming that Martian creatures use carbon, I think this fact makes it more likely that the Martian creatures also use DNA as the primary method of passing on information to successive generations. I have no way of testing for DNA yet, but it sure would be interesting to see if these creatures do have and use DNA.

On Earth, when populations are separated from each other, they tend to evolve differently, because they are faced with different situations. On Mars, it looks like there may have been some common early evolution, in the form of the early ocean(s). But early in the planet's history, it must have lost the oceans and life was confined to the calderas and pools of the large ancient volcanoes. I suspect these calderas were filled with water and had many volcanic vents "leaking" into them. This would have provided the energy and water necessary for life to evolve over the eons of time. Since large distances separated these volcanoes and the creatures were probably very small, it is entirely possible that Mars acted much like a giant laboratory for life to develop differently at each volcano. If there was little or no interaction between the different volcanoes, the life of each volcano could have become separated from the rest of the planet, and so each volcano might be like a different planet, in some ways. On the other hand, there may be vast underground streams and passageways that allowed life to "move" from system to system. The only way we will ever know is to go there and find out.

And now I must digress and speak of my most un-favorite subject. I have been trying to write this paper for several days, but it is very hard to focus, because of the distractions of money, or lack of money. I have spent years working on this project and I have used every resource that I have accumulated through a lifetime. I saved my grocery money for almost 8 months in order to pay for the first K-Ar age test that I had performed on the Frass Meteorite. I have battled all kinds of closed minds that refuse to even look at what the Frass Meteorite offers. And now I am down to my last $20 dollars and I am trying to figure out which groceries would be best bought with that amount of money. I would much rather be thinking about the evolution of life on Mars.

The amount of money that I have to fight ignorance at NASA has been expended. I am three car payments behind and one behind on my house and all my utilities. I can only keep my web sites up for one or two more months. To this date, Saturday, March 13, 1999, not a single person has contributed a single dollar to help me bring the first living meteorite to the people of the planet Earth. Surely, among six billion people on this planet, some must place value on life from another world. I need for people to support me in my efforts, since I can't sell this miracle rock for money. You can help by purchasing a license agreement for $20 for an individual or $50 for a family. If you purchase a license agreement during the month of March, 99, I will make your membership a lifetime membership. I will do my best to insure that you will be the first to receive all new information related to the Frass rock, Mars, or life on Mars. Or, if you don't want to buy a license, then have me "over" for a little "talk" on the life of Mars. I will bring samples of the Frass rock, and for the month of March, 99, I will give a small piece of the Frass rock, to the group, individual, or institution that pays my speaking fees. Since I am not going to sell any of the rock, and will only give it away piece by piece, this may be your only chance to have a piece of the first living meteorite. What things are important to you and can you help me? See the Special page at TheGravityStore.com for more information.

Your friend,

       Thirteenth letter to Buck,

Mike Moore

From: Mike Moore [SMTP:mike@micromike.com]

Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 1998 10:54 AM

To: 'Buck Sharpton'

Subject:

Buck,

Thank you for your e-mail. That is the nicest letter I have received. The samples were sent yesterday and you should have them today.

As far as a list of specialist, I want to help you in any way that I can. But I want you to understand that the reason I have not taken this project to the news organizations is because I want to do this right. I don't want to hurt anyone or have anyone look bad because of the unique features of my rock. If this rock is what I believe, then it represents a tremendous rallying point for all of NASA and the public. I want this rock to be an ambassador of good will and I don't want to have its first announcements associated with hard feelings or trouble. I'm sorry that I told you about the threat that Kring offered me and I hope that you will not let it go past your own self. I understand why many people in academia have doubted me and the meteorite, but my concerns are for the future, not just the present. I have watched and loved NASA my entire life. The only time I ever skipped school as a child was to watch a manned space flight. So I am on the side of NASA and I especially like the comment you made yesterday to me that one of the jobs of NASA is to stimulate the public and keep them interested. I think my meteorite represents a tremendous opportunity to rally the public to support the exploration of Mars. The one thing we had during the moon shots was a focus and a special unity between NASA and the public. Maybe my rock can rekindle some of those dreams, because if life did evolve on Mars to the point that it made macroscopic life forms, then we need to go there and study it. I have much more to say, but I will wait until the appropriate time.

So to your question of who I have contacted. Here is a partial list:

The first people I contacted were Dr. Joseph Cepeda and Dr. Shultz at West Texas A&M in Canyon, Texas. These were the people who would not look at the rock, who declared it was from the Raton-Clayton field and who would not help me in any way. I don't have an address or e-mail for them because they are nearby and I visited with them in person. Dr. Shultz has recently gone on the radio and declared that they determined my rock was from NM even though they never looked at it and have not done any experiments to prove their hypothesis. Also, recently I have met with Russell Long, the president of WTA&M and I have presented some of my evidence to him. He would not make any promises and will not answer my calls.

Next I took the rock to Texas Tech. This would have been more than a year ago. Dr. Christopher Romanek, one of the principles on the ALH84001 life studies report, was giving a speech on Martian rocks and I met him at Tech and he listened about 20 minutes and did take a sample from me. Dr Hal Karlsson was present from Tech, but he would not even look at the rock. Dr. Romanek promised me a oxygen isotope ratio test by the middle of last summer. The last time I contacted him, he still promised to do the test but he told me that he had not been able to get his machine running yet and that he would do it as soon as he could. That was last fall, I believe. Hal Karlsson can be contacted at 806 742-2011 or 742-3130. Dr Romanek's e-mail address is romanek@srel.edu.

The first sample that I sent out went to Ron Balke at baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov. He has quite a large piece of the rock. He also immediately told me that my rock couldn't be a meteorite and that he would shortly tell me where on Earth it came from. He never has. He turned the rock over to a friend that is a geologist and his report is on my web site as geology report. Even though I have asked more than once, Ron will not give the address of his friend, so I have never talked to the geologist who wrote the report. Some of his information was bad and I have never had a chance to tell him these things, nor to talk with him about his conclusions. If you read the report, you will see that he doesn't make any claims for facts, only opinions. His conclusion that the rock was pulled from a creek bed are just not possible since they don't meet the facts. There were no animal tracks nearby and there was plenty of water at the well so that animals wouldn't need to dig up a rock for water. And besides, there is no dirt on the rock now or then.

Also, early on, I sent several samples to Houston. One was to Michael Zolensky and he did the first test of the chemical composition but he didn't think it was a meteorite so he wasn't interested. Later on, somehow I met Alan Treiman on the internet. He has been very nice to me and said that he would get me any test done that I wanted. Later I met David Kring and found out that these three people are all friends. I thought my troubles were over since these three seemed to represent some of the best of NASA at meteorites. Alan has never seen the rock or samples and has stopped answering my e-mail, as has David and Michael has apparently moved. During the second trip to Arizona, I met Jamie Gleason. He also has been very nice to me and he did look for about 15 seconds at the fusion crust and exclaimed that he could see changes in the rock. But apparently everyone is so afraid of being associated with some kind of fraud that they just don't pursue this. As you know, I have sent Jamie a copy of the new reports that I have sent you and that no one else has yet seen. David can be contacted at kring@lpl.arizona.edu and Jamie can be contacted at jgleason@gamma1.lpl.arizona.edu.

And then there was Robert Haag, the meteorite man. I saw him on TV and he said the greatest experience of his life would come when one day he would pick up a meteorite and find living things from another world in it. My question to him was, "How would you recognize it if you saw it?" I sent him a sample of the rock (one of the samples that David Kring has now) and it had good fusion crust on it and one of the little things that I think might be alive. He sent it back and said he didn't think it was a meteorite either. He can be contacted at PO Box 27527, Tucson, Arizona 85726. His web site is www.meteoriteman.com. I have affectionately started calling him meteorite boy, but that is another story.

And then there is the whole Pathfinder team. I have contacted everyone from Hap McSween on down. I have taped all of the Pathfinder news conferences and I wrote to virtually everyone that spoke at any of them. None of them have answered back, accept Hap McSween. He did send me to the Smithsonian meteorite specialist, Tim McCoy. Tim was able to determine the planet of origin by looking at my web site, a remarkable accomplishment, I think. He concluded that the rock was from Earth. Hap can be contacted at mcsween@utk.edu and Tim can be contacted at MCCOY.TIM@NMNH.SI.EDU.

These are the principle players although there are others I have contacted. I don't know how much help any of these people can be, since none of them have done any testing and none of them believe that this rock is a meteorite. One thing that I have learned in life is that most of us set our own limits. You mentioned yesterday how improbable it was for this rock to get here from Mars. I agree. Every step of the way, it seems that what happened was very improbable. But nature knows nothing of probabilities, only what actually happened. I will agree that this rock is a miracle, but I believe in miracles and if I hadn't believed it was a meteorite and saved the rock, then nobody would ever know. All I am asking is to determine the truth in an open and scientific manner. Science is about tests, not opinions. Unfortunately, when people believe something can't happen, then that is usually the way they perceive it. My mind is open to what can happen and I have spent my life looking at physical systems and trying to understand what happened. If the facts represented by my rock are improbable, then so be it. But it came from somewhere and it has very interesting things within it and I believe there is good evidence that the rock was created on a side vent of a larger volcano, somewhere on Mars. If so, then we will begin to write new chapters in the book of life and where it came from and how prevalent it might actually be in the cosmos. All I ask of you is to keep your mind open and search for the truth, no matter how improbable it might seem.

Again, I want to thank you for your kind response. I will help you in any way that I can, but let us please try to build up the people of NASA who have been mistaken about this rock and not tear them down. If the rock does prove Martian, then my greatest goal will be to help other people understand that miracles do still happen in this world. My intention, is to give a small piece of this rock to each person that has turned me away. This small gesture will, I hope, help bring all mankind together to search the cosmos and to look for the truth wherever it might be. I hope that you play an important role in this process. By the way, since this rock represents a miracle to me, I will never sell any of it to anyone for any reasons. My goal is to license this rock to NASA so that all that want to be a part of it, can be. I also want to make sure that it is studied properly as I have spent over a years thinking of things that need to be done to study the rock properly. When we know for sure that this rock is from Mars, we can discuss those things. If I can be of further help to you, please don't hesitate to contact me. I very much appreciate your interest in this matter.

Your friend,

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael
To: Aaron@micromike.com <Aaron@micromike.com>
Date: Sunday, February 28, 1999 10:13 PM
Subject: meteorite


>Ill give you $10,000,000 cash for your sandy Mars meteorite!
>
>
Thank you, Michael for your kind offer. I have kept the Frass rock all these year because it represented a miracle to me. I have always told those who ask, that it was my most precious physical possession. Others valued gold and money, but an answer to a childhood prayer has always been worth more to me. I have known for some time, that once the essence of my rock was exposed, that many other people would then want the rock, that until now, only I loved. So your offer, whether it be real or not, does represent the material value that society will soon place on this rock.

I have often joked about the value of this rock, saying I was now praying for a gold meteorite to land near me. J NASA is going to spend $500,000,000 to bring back one pound of material from Mars. I have over 20 pounds of "prime Martian real estate," which would make my rock worth over $10,000,000,000 by "NASA" dollars. And how much is the lives of extra terrestrial creatures' worth? We must be entering the "priceless" range by now. In a way, God answered my other prayer, because surely, if it were solid gold, it would not be worth as much as the first extra terrestrial life. So Michael, I can not sell you the meteorite, or I would suffer the curse of those who worship money.

But I will tell you what I can do. What I want most is to be able to speak to people about this important rock. For all speeches given to more than one hundred people, about the Frass Meteorite, during the month of March, I will give a small "piece of the rock" to the group, institution, or individual that pays my speaking fee of $2000 plus expenses. I can not sell the rock, but I can give it away to those who help me bring this important rock to the people of the planet Earth, which is my end goal. I will give you a tiny sample and all you have to do is help me get the word out that life exists elsewhere besides our own planet.

Your friend,

-----Original Message-----
From: Glen
Date: Wednesday, February 24, 1999 1:11 AM
Subject: Nice try


>Mike,
>
>I'd love to see genuine evidence of martian life, but your
>site doesn't provide it. Some of your martian life forms
>(like the spider) look decidedly earthly, the others are
>ambiguous. If you had a real martian rock with real fossil
>life forms:
>
>1. You would not have to beg NASA to be interested, they'd
>be bending over backwards to study the specimen.
>
>2. You would not have to beg for money to promote it; scientists
>would be coming to you.
>
>Do ANY legitimate astronomers, biologists, or astronomers
>support your findings. That should tell you something.
>
>GK
>

Dear Glen,

When I first dug this rock out of my closet over two years ago and prepared to take the first sample from it, I would have agreed completely with you and the two points that you make. But after these two years of trying to get NASA to look at this rock, I have come to view the situation differently. Let me give you a little background and maybe I can explain why things have developed this way.