Summary of Evidence and Beginning of Tour 1
The Frass Meteorite landed on the Frass Ranch in the
winter of '70-'71. I
recovered
the meteorite the next day and spent the next few days looking at the rock to
make sure it was a meteorite. The rock was volcanic, very light in weight,
and melted over the entire exterior. It was stored in my closet
until 1996, when NASA announced they had found the remnants of possible life in
a Martian meteorite they had recovered from Antarctica. At that
point, I began a series of experiments that later led me to believe that the
Frass Meteorite had also come from Mars.
The very structure of the rock
is evidence of its Martian origin. The rock is made much like a
space
shuttle heat tile, in that it has very thin walls with vesicles (holes) between
the walls. This structure was made possible by the low gravity, the thin
atmosphere, and the cold temperatures on the Martian surface. The overall
shape of the meteorite is much like pillow lava on Earth, which forms when lava
flows into ocean water, cooling rapidly and forming a spherical shape with a
crevice where the material parted the main flow. The Frass Meteorite
exhibits similar features, but was probably formed on the surface of Mars, where
the cold temperatures caused rapid cooling resulting in the spherical shape and
the parting plane crevice.
It was the announcement by NASA in 1996 that possible life
had been found inside a Martian meteorite that led me to the series of
experiments described here, including my taking a core
sample. For the first few days after I discovered the meteorite, I had
no idea from whence it
came. But after thinking about the situation
logically, I decided that Mars was a likely place. The meteorite was
clearly volcanic and Mars seemed large enough to have volcanoes. The rock
was clearly red in the sunlight and Mars was known as the red planet. And
finally, Mars was in the right position in the solar system to get rocks to
Earth. It was a small planet, with lower gravity and thinner atmosphere,
and it was located outside Earth's orbit. The sun would insure that most
material dislodged from its surface would pass Earth's orbit on the way in, and
Mars proximity to the asteroid belt would assure that Mars would get pummeled
frequently to dislodge material.
The Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) dating of the Frass Meteorite was accomplished by Dick Reesman of Geochron Labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Three separate samples were tested including a sample of the gray material, a sample of the red material, and a control sample which was a mixture of the other two rocks. The gray material was dated at 12.9 ma (million years old) +/- 0.5 ma. The red material tested 49 ma +/- 1.3ma, while the mixture of the two tested 27.9 ma +/- 0.9. Since the red material was found inside the gray material, the test results seem appropriate and reliable.
A major and minor elemental oxides analysis
was performed on material from the Frass
Meteorite. Two samples had only minor oxides analyzed. One sample
was all gray rock, one sample was a mixture of the red and gray rock, one sample
was just the finest sands minus all apparent volcanic material, and the final
two samples were mixtures of the rock and its contents. These last two
samples were chosen to most clearly represent the Martian surface and were the
samples most clearly "Martian" in their chemical makeup. The meteorite
itself appears to be made by the side-venting (reheating of older, primitive
lava) of an ancient Martian volcano.
A distinct boundary layer
separates the gray and red materials. The red material appears to have
been formed about 50 million years ago and probably was gray when it formed.
After being formed, the material was in the presence of liquid water and the
resultant oxidation caused it to turn red.
Later it
settled to the bottom of some kind of pool or ocean of water.
Once this water evaporated, the rock and sand dried together, with the rock
encased in the sand. 13 million years ago, the same volcano became active
again and lava flowed in the same region. As the lava flowed, it
immediately "stuck" to some of the older (red) lava and sand that remained from
the earlier action. Also, some of the sand and red rocks were "captured"
within the vesicles of the gray rock as it was forming. This action
preserved the sand within the vesicles and as a layer between the two ages of
material.
Within the vesicles of the older red lava, one finds small
deposits of sand. This appears to be the same sand that is later captured
within the gray lava, along with the small pieces of the red lava. 
Although 36 million years passed between the two lava flows, not much seemed to
happen to the sand or the lava. Thus, we apparently see a situation where
materials remained on the surface for over 50 million years and basically
nothing happened to it. Mars is the one place where we know there are very
old volcanoes and where very little has happened in the last 50 million years.
This same sand is seen on the outside of the meteorite as a yellowish fusion
crust.
The Pathfinder mission proved that Mars has
magnetic dust.
If the Frass Meteorite is from Mars
and it has transported some of the surface
of Mars (including dust) to Earth, then the dust contained within the Frass
Meteorite should have magnetic particles. Virgin "dust" material taken
from the insides of the meteorite during the core sampling shows to be magnetic and very similar in color
to the dust collected by the Pathfinder magnet system. In addition, the
Frass Meteorite itself is slightly magnetic.
Any material that comes from space and finds its way to
the surface of our planet must show the effects of heating that are consistent
with a passage through the Earth's atmosphere (fusion
crust). Although the Frass
Meteorite represents a new kind of meteorite (newly made volcanic material from
a planetary body), it clearly shows the effects of being heated and shaped by
high velocity air flow. Vesicle edges have been melted, "fattened," and
elongated in the direction of air flow. It appears the rock had a single
orientation as it "flew" through our atmosphere.
In order to better understand how the fusion crust was created on the Frass Meteorite, I have proposed a simple model. Due to the very thin walls of the meteorite, the greatest heating, and therefore the greatest melting, has occurred on those surfaces closest to the exterior. As one moves into the meteorite, away from the surface, one finds less melting. It appears that the rock never melted more than about 1 centimeter deep, at any location. The "bottom" of the meteorite suffered more melting than did the "top."
A number of the outer vesicles were filled with sand when
the rock was created. As the meteorite came through the Earth's atmosphere
and the external vesicles were heated, many of them acted
as small crucibles,
melting and shaping the sand contained within them into small little pieces of glass.
These glass ingots apparently cooled before the rock hit the ground, since they
are shaped like the vesicle on their bottom sides, yet are flat on their top
sides. The melting of the sand within the vesicles to make glass shows
that the sand was placed within the vesicles first, and then later in the
history of the rock, this sand was melted, only in the outer vesicles.
This is concrete evidence of the rock's heating as it entered Earth's
atmosphere.
It has been my contention that the shape, composition, and
structure of the meteorite allowed it to
make
a fiery transit through Earth's atmosphere with little apparent damage.
The thin walls covered in 90% silicon and separated by small voids (vesicles)
gives it the perfect structure to withstand and
dissipate heat. Heat tiles from the space shuttle can be heated to 1000's
of degrees and almost immediately held in one's hand, without being burned.
Since I was claiming that the meteorite exhibited similar features, I performed
the following heat experiment.
Water has played a significant role in the creation of the
Frass Meteorite and its contents. The presence or absence of water tells
us a great deal about the "life" of this meteorite. Several
water experiments were performed to
determine the status of water during the different phases of the rock's
creation. It is clear that the older red rocks have been in the presence
of liquid water on the surface of Mars within the last 50 million years.
It is equally clear that the gray rocks have not been in the presence of liquid
water in the 13 million years of its existence.
It appears that the Frass Meteorite
was made from the side
venting on an ancient Martian
volcano. The chemistry of the rocks, shows
that it was probably originally laid down from a very old major lava flow that
remained unheated for a very long time. Then, about 50 million years ago,
the surface lava was remelted by side-venting lava flows, allowing the chemistry
to remain "old," even though the rock had just been created. This lava lay
on the side of the volcano and was later in the presence of liquid water on the
surface. At around 13 million years ago, the same side vent became active
again and the lava flowed. Particles from the older rock, sand, and other
debris were captured with this flow and later transported to Earth, most likely
by the result of the impact of a large asteroid onto the surface of Mars.
If the Frass Meteorite came from Mars, shouldn't it look
like other rocks from Mars? A number of meteorites on Earth are said to
have come from Mars, but the Viking and Pathfinder missions
have both given us
close up views of the rocks on the surface of Mars, by which we might make a
comparison. If we look closely, in
every view of the surface of Mars, we see rounded rocks, many with a parting
plane and many with one or more red streaks, much like the Frass Meteorite.
As we look at the rocks of Mars, it is uncanny how closely the Frass Meteorite
resembles the very rocks we have seen on the surface of Mars.
When I first began investigating the origins of the Frass
Meteorite, I tried to gain the help of the University of Arizona. After
some amount of squabbling over the rock, I was finally told that no study of the
rock would begin until I could prove that the rock didn't come from Earth.
I proceeded to study all of the local volcanoes within
about 300 miles of the landing
site. I discovered that no
volcanoes were active at 49 or 13 million years
ago. In addition, no volcanoes were active within the United States during
the early '70's when the rock landed, eliminating the possibility that the rock
was a volcanic bomb from some terrestrial volcano. Additional examination
of the chemistry showed that the rock was not related to any volcanic system
within 300 miles of the landing site.
The meteorite was discovered on the Frass Ranch in the
winter of '70-'71. My great aunt and I were feeding cattle that winter and
had been visiting every pasture to bring "cake" to the cattle
and to make sure
they had plenty of water. There are no rocks on the Frass Ranch, since it
is made up almost entirely of sand hills and quickly eroding intermittent
creeks. When we turned north in the North Meadow the morning of the rocks
discovery, we both saw the rock from more than half a mile away. The red
rock stood out like a sore thumb, in the short yellow grass of winter. We
retrieved the rock, not knowing at the time the great significance it would one
day reveal.
I have provided a little picture gallery of the meteorite and some of its contents. The rock is clearly melted over its entire surface. Even the sandy material is melted to the outer surface in those spots where the sand was on the outside of the rock.
◄Tour Back / Home Tour Forward►