This would belong in a section named 'Out of this world', imo:
Proof of Life in Three Martian Rocks May Come This Year
NASA says advanced instruments will allow it to definitively prove whether three Martian meteorites contain evidence of life.
Monoliths may not have transformed Jupiter into a star and made Europa a new Earth, but the late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke might still be pleased, wherever he is, with NASA's prediction for 2010. Spaceflight Now reports that this year should prove whether fossilized life truly exists in three Martian meteorites, one way or the other.
Scientists have been reexamining the controversial Allen Hills meteorite since it sparked reaction from both NASA and the White House in 1996. But now better instruments have turned up possible Martian fossils inside two more meteorites, including a chunk of space rock that has sat inside the British Museum of Natural History in London for almost 100 years.
The scientific teams are "very, very close to proving there is or has been life [on Mars]," said David McKay, chief of astrobiology at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a Spaceflight Now interview.
Such life would have likely come from a planet-wide underground network of microorganisms that first emerged 3.6 billion years ago on Mars, scientists say. That development would have paralleled the simple life forms emerging on Earth at around the same time.
New tools for the investigation include a nifty Ion Microprobe that can fire streams of ions onto micro-fossil samples. The ions transform the sample into plasma that can be analyzed via spectrometer for each chemical or mineral part.
If positive confirmation comes, it could dramatically shift NASA's focus from "follow the water" to "search for evidence of life" on Mars and elsewhere. The U.S. space agency's upcoming Mars Science Laboratory rover may get a new landing spot and additional instruments tailored for the hunt. Positive proof of Martian life could also push NASA to seriously investigate Jupiter's moon of Europa and other locations for life.
People on Earth have already begun wrapping their heads around the possibility of extraterrestrial life. It looks like we might not have to travel all the way to Avatar's Pandora after all.
I know one guy who will be very upset to learn that life is not unique to earth.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
It sounds like it is a pice of rock from Mars that fell to the Earth.
But how can that happen?
Blasted off Mars by one of those impacts we keep talking about.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
So Mars gets hit hard enough to send rocks into space?
And these rocks are big enough to get through our atmosphere and are able to hit land and then be examined?
An impact like that would have to leave one heck of a scar on the surface of Mars.
Do we have any evidence of hits of that magnitude?
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Wow!
I will read this more closely.
But these things leap out at me on the first scan.
“How do we know they are pieces from Mars?
The detective work that eventually connected a small group of strange achondritic meteorites to a fairly well known planet is a remarkable philosophical achievement. “
When a supposed scientific discovery is called by a proponent of it a “philosophical” thing I have my doubts about it.
It sounds like it may be a case of finding what you were looking for.
“Perhaps the most remarkable finding is that the rocks at the landing sites are quite different from the Martian meteorites.”
This would appear to be evidence to the contrary of the given name.
It is to his credit that he includes it, but it has to be taken into account.
I don’t know if the landing sites were picked to prove or disprove the “Martian Meteorite” idea, but the difference found needs to be explained.
Either way, those Mars Rover machines have to be one of the greatest engineering achievements of human history.