High Tech / Low Tech

If you want to skip my crazy rambling and get right to the point, click here.

The Tribal Chief turned to the leader of the European visitors. Through the interpreter, he said "You have brought us wonderful gifts. I want to honor you with a gift as well."

Removing his necklace, he said "Years ago, a fiery stone fell from the sky. My father found the place the stone fell. It was still hot and had broken in pieces. He brought them home and showed them to the elders.

"They could see the deep red color in the pieces, and they told my father that the stone fell from the red star that shines steady in the night."

The chief then gave the necklace to the visiting leader. The Europeans joked among themselves about this 'piece of Mars', but the leader had the good grace to accept the gift.

The necklace stayed in the man's family for generations as an heirloom until one of his descendants had the stone analyzed just out of curiosity. He was stunned to find it was a martian meteorite, and worth tens of thousands of dollars!

The above fiction is far-fetched, of course. - Or is it?

In the 1980s a meteorite was found in Antarctica. When it was analyzed, the researchers realized the mineral content was the same as Mars. Theorists ran calculations and concluded that Mars' gravity was small enough that a large meteor collision could blast martian rocks into space to become meteors themselves. It would be inevitable that some of these would reach Earth as meteorites. (With the Moon being closer with even less gravity, even more lunar meteorites would reach Earth.)

Since this discovery, a small industry has developed, collecting and selling martian and lunar meteorite fragments (since most meteorites are found by individuals, not universities or museums).

There are actual web pages that track individual meteorites, such as NWA 4483 (Northwest Africa 4483), or DAG 735 (Dar al Gani 735).

You, as an individual, can legally buy a piece of Mars! Our high-tech, sophisticated, space-exploring way of life has made this possible, right?

Umm, not exactly. You see, while you can go to NASA's visitor center and see rocks the Apollo missions brought back from the Moon, we've never brought back anything from Mars! Not one speck of martian dust has been brought to Earth by man. The martian rocks NASA has analyzed were analyzed on the martian surface by our landing vehicles. The only things they sent back to Earth were radio signals.

The only pieces of Mars you'll find here on Earth fell naturally from the sky. The fictional story I opened with is actually possible. Anyone could touch a piece of Mars without ever leaving the ground.

Many of you actually saw a tiny piece of Mars at the Overhill April 2011 Gathering and never even knew it! I plan to bring it again in September. (If anyone asks me about it, I'll know someone actually read this whole page.)

So - the point of all this:

I have said before that much of the thrust of Western Civilization is to isolate us from Nature. This isolation is just an illusion. The very metal in our cars, or concrete in our buildings is still part of the Natural World that Creator gave us.

There is no "crude matter". Some of the dust beneath our feet came from the Moon and Mars, for goodness sakes. That pebble you pick up and toss away may have been blasted from the Moon.

All of it, every last bit, was made by Creator. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." There are lessons to be learned everywhere around us.

The lessons from the Natural World are purer and less complicated, but you can learn about Creator or you fellow creatures from your car's fuel injectors, or your Droid cell phone!