[This article originally appeared in print as "Touching the Untouchable."]
There is something special about touch. It is the truth teller that proves the other senses: A bench bearing a “wet paint” sign is not truly wet until we have tapped it with a probing finger. Conversely, an air of unreality hangs over anything we cannot touch. A scientist studying the geology of distant planets and long-ago times, then, seems condemned to live in a perpetual bubble of abstraction.
A conversation with Carl Agee quickly sets me straight. His title is director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico, but he might be better described as a man who touches the untouchable.
Agee daily re-creates conditions deep inside Earth, explores geologic events from billions of years ago and probes the chemical secrets of other planets. Recently, he made headlines with his study of a triangular, 11-ounce rock nicknamed Black Beauty.
