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Mars cubes - worth their weight in gold

As one of the List's frustrated (some would say "exiled"!) martians, I have to
say that I think the Mars cubes are a wonderful idea, and I think they will be
tremendously inspiring for all the lucky kids who get to see and hold them. 

Over here in the north of the UK (currently enjoying typical summer weather of
howling wind, icy rain and "high" temperatures of 19 degrees C!! SO glad to be
back after 2 weeks in sunny Rhode Island... NOT!!!!!) I take my meteorites
into schools, and love seeing the kids' smiles when they hold my piece of
Canyon Diablo or Sikhote Alin... but it's true, tell them that what they're
holding are bits of rock from the planet Mars and their faces just light up...
I try and build the suspense up by telling them during the Mars section of my
Solar System Guide talk that I have some bits of Mars rock "over there, in my
box",  and keep an eye on the ones whose eyes go wide, usually there are a
good dozen or so in a class of 35 , and then, when they actually hold in their
hand my bits of Zagami (also in a cube, but in my case a round mineral
specimen box well sealed up with tape inside a square mineral specimen box!)
and look at the Mars Pathfinder pic I set out on the table beside me, I can
see all sorts of thoughts flashing through their eyes... maybe they're there,
on Mars, in their future, an exploring astronaut (I had one v. enthusiastic
little girl who held the box up to her eye, smiled warmly, and said to me
"Tell you what, when I go to Mars I'll bring you back some bigger bits than
this...") or imagining martians, I'm not sure sometimes, all I know is that
when they hold those bits of rock they're taken somewhere else for a little
while. So well done Darryl.

Today I've been reading postings about the Greenland Meteorite, all the
speculation about its extrasolar origin, and yes, that's exciting, *very*
exciting, but we're still talking about dust here. For me, nothing will ever
replace the thrill of the first time I held those tiny bits of Zagami in my
hand, because they come from a meteorite that came from a place we can
actually **see**, a place where we can go, a place where we WILL go,
eventually. My head spins just thinking about it. 

Look at the 3D Mars Pathfinder pics in the latest Nat. Geographic, and then,
if you own some, take another look at your Mars meteorite specimens,
fragments, or dust, whatever you have, and tell me - look me in the eye and
tell me - that you don't feel a shiver run up your spine. In twenty years time
- maybe sooner, if the Space Station folds, or The Powers That Be realise that
Mars Direct actually makes sense!! - people will be walking on Mars, we'll see
them on our widesecreen digital TVs, white snowmen bounding across a caramel-
and rust-coloured landscape, and all of us who owns a piece of Mars rock will
be able to sit there and Be There with them. 

Of course the downside is that when they come back, with boxes stuffed full of
specimens, our SNCs will be worth less, (but maybe we'll all have even rarer
Greenland Cubes by then..?!)... or will they? Even after ten manned Mars
missions, even after there's a fully-fledged research base up there and Ron
announces the return of the 1000th Mars rock to Earth, SNC meteorites will
still, I'm sure, have a special appeal, simply because of how they got here -
blasted  off Mars!! As a collector, which would fill you with more wonder, a
rock picked up off the surface of Mars by a gloved hand, and dropped into a
crate, or a rock that was literally smashed out of the planet and fell to
Earth after millennia of drifting through space..? Yeah, me too... :-)

Mars meteorites have, and always will have, a special appeal, I know because
I've seen the effect they have upon people at first hand. One night last
March, when my astronomical society was gathered on a school field at the far
end of town, trying to show a hundred people comet Hale-Bopp through fist-
sized gaps in thick cloud, I came face to face with what I call the Mars
Effect. The weather had been lousy even before sunset, but I knew we had to
try - there was so much demand to see the comet - so I decided to take along a
few meteorites as an insurance policy, knowing I'd have to fill in the time
until we either saw the comet or called the evening off altogether. So I
packed my Celebrity Stones - Canyon D, Sikhote A, Allende (when I still had
it! Sob!) and, of course, Zagami dust. Sure enough, with the crowd assembled
the cloud refused to part, gaps here and there tantalising us with glimpses of
the stars above and beyond, so I broke out the meteorites, and people were
very interested to see and hold them, especially when my trusty old creased
and crumpled pic of Meteor Crater was held up and illuminated by a Maglite. 

Then my Mars dust came out, I announced what it was, and as Doubting Thomas's
spoke up I went through the whole spiel of how we know its from Mars
because... blah... blah... blah...  anyway, the little box was shown around,
held up to torches, shaken, examined more closely than a stain on a cocktail
dress, and (almost) everyone was impressed - and then, in one of those
wonderful, magical, "Yessss!!!" moments, a gap in the cloud appeared above the
school and Mars shone through, a painting of a garnet on a black canvas framed
by cotton wool, and "ooh" and "aah"s filled the air. Suddenly it was much more
real - there, in front of their eyes, Mars had turned into a real world, a
solid world, a place of rock, rather than just a name or a word. I could see
it in their eyes: they knew that they had held in their own hands little
pieces of There... 

We got to see the comet, eventually, and a beautiful sight it was too, its
tail cutting through the stars of Perseus... but I noticed many people
glancing back towards Mars during the evening... :-)

So, and I know I've said this before, amidst all the talk of money and value,
and worth - scientific and financial - we need to remember that meteorites can
be inspiring too, and every one of us who owns a meteorite collection, however
big or small, has a kind of responsibility to share it with people who are
interested in them, but can't afford their own, especially kids. I'm sure most
of the big names on the List already welcome kids into their homes or wherever
they keep their hordes, so I'm probably preaching to a lot of converted out
there, and they'll be all too well aware of how excited and thrilled kids are
to see and hold real meteorites. 

But if anyone out there who is in a position to do this hasn't done so, then I
urge you to give it a go. Offer to go into your local school, or write to the
school and invite the Head or Principal to let a class visit you. You don't
need to be a wonderful speaker, or have an expensive layout display, you just
have to want to make a difference. 

And letting a child hold your meteorites will make a difference, believe me.
At the very least they'll be impressed and excited for a moment, before
turning their thoughts back to football or baseball, girls or boys... On the
other hand you might just ignite a spark inside them, and they they might just
go home feeling "different"... they'll want to know more, and in years to come
might go on to collect or find their own meteorites.

So, if anyone has any criticisms about Mars cubes or the value of Mars rocks
then they should put themselves in the shoes - and mind - of one of the kids
who'll get to hold them. We all got into this because of a desire to hold and
own a piece of another world, because we were excited by it... and today, with
meteorite prices climbing out of the range of kids' pocket money or
allowances, I applaud loudly and will cheer to the skies anyone and everyone
who does anything to pass on that excitement to kids, because there's no way
of knowing what those kids will do in the future... maybe, just maybe, when
they're your age, they'll be bouncing across Ares Vallis in an EVA suit with a
Smithsonian Institute patch on their arm, a member of the Sojourner Retrieval
mission, and they'll be the one to find the first Terran meteorite on Mars... 

And, you know, if you look really, really closely at p29 of the aforementioned
National Geographic, you'll see that "Flat Top" looks an awful lot like the
Hoba Meteorite... !

Finally, it's been a Good Week here, a week when the Good Guys won - i.e. the
stolen meteorite being recovered. Let's not slip back into rounds of personal
attacks again, eh? 

Stuart A

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