The Millbillillie eucrite belongs to one of the rarest meteorite types. It is part of the HED group, which also includes howardites and diogenites. Eucrites are achondrites, meaning "not chondrites," so they are lacking in chondrules—the small, spherical, pre-solar grains that give the common chondrites their name. Millbillillie meteorites are volcanic rock from other worlds, and are comprised largely of silicate minerals. They are light in weight—similar in feel to terrestrial pumice—and are among those extremely uncommon meteorites which contain no iron, and show no attraction to a magnet. As such, they are less dense than the majority of meteorites and even a modest specimen of 6 or 7 grams can still be enjoyed and studied without magnification.

So, after seventeen months of work Meteorite Men is finally a reality.

During my childhood years in London Monty Python's Flying Circus was the most controversial and talked-about show on television. My father wryly encouraged me to stay up until 9:25 pm and watch each new weekly BBC episode. It aired on a school night, which worried my mom and, anyway, she found the racy and provocative content entirely inappropriate for a young lad. My mom was a brilliant woman, and that was one of the few times I remember her being clearly in error. I remain a Python fan to this day and recently, as a most thoughtful gift, received the entire collected episodes in a DVD boxed set.

Unlike many of my colleagues, I really enjoy doing media interviews, especially when I have the pleasure of working with a particularly thoughtful, bright and inventive journalist. A few weeks ago, I received a call from Eleanor Perry-Smith, a writer at Northwestern University in Illinois. She was working on a the premiere issue of a hip new science magazine named SciQ. With a tag line like "Feed Your Head" how could I possibly resist participating?

It was back in 1998 that I made my first journey to the Tucson gem and mineral shows. I was living just outside of New York City at the time, and although I had already fallen in love with Arizona as a ten year-old boy, and had traveled extensively across my favorite state in the Union, I'd never actually been to Tucson — the seat of Pima County and a small, eclectic, eccentric, charming city in the Sonoran Desert.