A Geologist Asks for Rocks, Gets Thousands

July 14, 2009 — -- Geologist Phil Christensen had traveled 14 hours to Iceland just to collect a few rocks that had formed in the volcanic caldrons of that island nation when he noticed a school "literally across the street" from the rocks he was picking up.

It was, he said in a telephone interview, one of those "ah ha" moments that come so rarely, even in the life of a scientist.

"I thought, I could have just called and asked those kids in the school to send me some rocks," he recalled. "I could almost see a light bulb going off in my head."

Not long after picking up his Icelandic rocks that formed in conditions thought to be similar to how many rocks are formed on Mars, Christensen was on temporary duty at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., serving as principal investigator for mineral-detecting spectrometers on NASA's two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

As a major player in NASA's Mars missions, he routinely took part in televised press conferences, so one day he casually mentioned that it would be nice if kids would send him some rocks.

The request shot around the world on NASA's television network, prompting a collective groan from his 50 employees at his home base, Arizona State University in Tempe.

"They didn't know anything about this," he recalled. "So here I am on this press conference saying, 'hey, send us your rocks.' Everybody in the room (at ASU) yelled, 'no, don't say that Phil, don't you understand the power of the Internet?'"

Too late.

"Three days later, we got our first rock," Christensen said. "The next day it was three. The next day it was eight, and the next day it was 17. Within about two weeks we were getting 150 rocks a day."

Christensen, who was luckily still in Pasadena, escaped the wrath of the guys who deliver mail to the offices at ASU. They lugged in four or five tubs of rocks a day, sometimes weighing up to 300 pounds.

By the time Christensen retuned to Tempe, he couldn't get into his office. Crates of rocks were stacked so high that "I literally couldn't get in," he said.