PhD Candidate Spends Six Years Studying One Rock, Still Not Sure What It Is

Doctoral candidate Elena Thin Section has spent six years and over 4,000 hours studying a single hand-specimen-sized rock collected from a road cut in central Vermont, and her dissertation committee has informed her that she is 'no closer to a definitive identification than when she started.' 'It might be a meta-greywacke,' Thin Section said, rotating the specimen under her office lamp for what she estimated was the ten thousandth time. 'Or it could be a low-grade phyllite. There's an argument for very fine-grained hornfels. I've been going back and forth for three years.' The specimen, catalogued as VT-RC-2019-001, has been subjected to more analytical techniques than most rocks encounter in a research career. Thin Section has performed petrographic microscopy, X-ray fluorescence, electron microprobe analysis, Raman spectroscopy, and cathodoluminescence imaging, generating over 2,000 pages of data. 'Every technique narrows it down to three possibilities,' she said. 'But each technique suggests different three possibilities. The Venn diagram of all my results has no center.' Her dissertation advisor, Dr. Patricia Matrix, expressed cautious support. 'Elena's work is the most comprehensive characterization of an ambiguous rock I have ever supervised,' Dr. Matrix said. 'The problem is that the rock appears to genuinely defy classification. It sits at the intersection of three protolith interpretations and two metamorphic grades. It is, in a very real sense, multiple rocks.' Thin Section's defense is scheduled for next month. She plans to present her findings as 'a case study in the limitations of lithological classification systems,' an approach her committee has described as 'creative framing of an impossible situation.' 'I love this rock,' Thin Section said. 'But I also hate this rock. It has consumed six years of my life and refused to tell me what it is. If it were a person, I would stop speaking to it.'