FLASH: New Scientific Paper on POSSIBLE Fossils in Martian Meteorite

reply to post by Aleister


looks strange , im almost expecting to sea an icebreaker chugging along

those microtunnels look familiar , but from a larger perspective

funBox

JimOberg
Here's the story we just broke at NBC:

Tiny Blobs and Tunnels in Meteorite Revive Debate Over Life on Mars
www.nbcnews.com...

I wonder if this will be overshadowed by the NASA Kepler press conference tomorrow?..... Some wild rumors around it at the moment. (due to the involvement of someone from the SETI Institute).

My theory is that they have confirmed one of the "Earth Analogs" planet candidates.

See my thread in the Space Exploration forum...

reply to post by JadeStar


Why would SETI be in attendance at an exoplanet announcement? Do they have a program which collects radio signals at the same time that Kepler was collecting the visual data? That sounds too scienc-fictiony to be true, though, so I expect that the answer is no. Why would they come by, speculatingly.

Aleister
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Why would SETI be in attendance at an exoplanet announcement? Do they have a program which collects radio signals at the same time that Kepler was collecting the visual data?

Yes.... And you can help with it.



Here is the link to SETILive.org - the SETI program to search the Kepler planets for signals.

That sounds too scienc-fictiony to be true, though, so I expect that the answer is no. Why would they come by, speculatingly.

Well as I said in the other thread, the SETI Institute has many areas of research. Everything from looking for detectable technology via radio, lasers, IR etc to looking in extreme places on earth for life (extremophiles) to dolphin communication. Exoplanet research is also done by people at the SETI Institute so I wouldn't jump the gun and say this has anything to do with the search for intelligent extraterrestrials.

But I do think it would make sense to have someone from SETI on hand if they found a twin to our Earth. Having him plus Sara Seager from MIT (who is -the- leading authority on exoplanet atmospheres) makes sense if they confirmed the existence of a habitable twin to our planet since many questions will be about the next steps we can take to study it more closely.

Both SETI and Sara Seager have advocated instruments which will let us study these planets in greater detail to the point where we can make maps of them.

I'm the last one for this and to make this demand/request, (because my particular relation with Mr. Jim Oberg), but this thread really deserves the ATS first page...

reply to post by JadeStar

Thanks, I didn't realize that Kepler and SETI were working so closely. So having a SETI representative at the teleconference, my heart says it could be a confirmation of a signal from the very planet they will be talking about, but my head says that's far fetched....well, we'll find out in a few hours. I'll be listening in, and look forward to the comments and questions here after the teleconference. The announcement can't be world shaking, as it would likely be televised, but something interesting this way comes.

So we have two major stories - the meteorite analysis and the Kepler teleconference, converging at the same time. A non-embarrassment of riches. To have nice threads on both of them (and I might have confused the threads when posting, bouncing between the latest news on both of them) keeps me checking in on ATS every few minutes when I'm computering.

fingers and toes will be crossed on this!

Looked further into the new paper on the meteorite Yamato 000593. It's reported there that meandering, yet generally parallel, tunnel-like structures like this have been seen before. They appeared in Earth rocks that were embedded with microbes. Below find a link to another media article based on this paper.
www.space.com...

reply to post by Ross 54


A quote from your source. The difference between the findings about this meteorite and the one in the late 1990s is that they are looking at two different things, so the science community has to find a different argument to discredit this one:

The new study comes 18 years after researchers announced that they had found evidence of possible Martian lifeforms in a different meteorite from the Red Planet, known as Allan Hills 84001 (ALH 84001). Much of the scientific community was unswayed, however, saying ALH 84001's "nanofossils" could be abiotic in origin.

The new Astrobiology paper is already meeting with similar scrutiny and skepticism, as its authors undoubtedly knew it would.

The investigators of the Allan Hills meteorite made a good initial case for their findings and have since then refuted their critics objections admirably. One serious problem with the fossilized microbe bodies they thought they saw under the electron microscope was their size. Some objected that these were simply too small to even contain the needed genetic material, not to mention the other parts a microbe would need.
It appears that the spherical bodies in the Yamato meteorite, which are suspected of being microbes, are substantially larger. If this is correct, it may be the most telling and original point in favor of fossils from a martian meteorite.

The Yamato and Nakhla meteorites were compared and found to have the same structures suggestive of bacterial erosion, even though the latter was quickly recovered after it fell. This seems to minimize the issue of Earthly contamination.

In addition, a control meteorite (LEW 87051) was examined. Like Yamato, it is from Antarctica, and was exposed to the same conditions there. Due to the oxygen isotopes it contained, it was determined to not be from Mars. It lacked the tunnel structures seen in the other two meteorites.
www.mnn.com...

The evidence is still extremely circumstantial (and very tiny). It would be nice if they could dig into these supposed bacteria chew holes and produce some identifiable remnant of an actual bacteria. Otherwise, there's always going to be the chance that the holes were produced by some other as yet unknown process.

As with anything else, when it comes to alien life, you either prove it exists, or you don't. The answer to the question cannot be expressed as a probability. Alien life can't 50 percent or 80 percent or even 99.9999 percent exist.

Blue Shift
The evidence is still extremely circumstantial (and very tiny). It would be nice if they could dig into these supposed bacteria chew holes and produce some identifiable remnant of an actual bacteria. Otherwise, there's always going to be the chance that the holes were produced by some other as yet unknown process.

As with anything else, when it comes to alien life, you either prove it exists, or you don't. The answer to the question cannot be expressed as a probability. Alien life can't 50 percent or 80 percent or even 99.9999 percent exist.

Except for mathematics, science does not deal in proofs, but in probabilities. The best hypothesis is the one considered to be the most probable, at a particular time. Given new data, this can change.
True, life either existed on ancient Mars, and perhaps still does, or it didn't/doesn't. Probability comes into it when we speak about the likelihood that a particular answer to this question is correct.

MysterX
reply to post by LeviWardrobe

 

it could hint at a common or shared origin, or it could also mean that life of a very similar structure is pretty much everywhere where the conditions are similar...which has very exciting possibilities for a Europa mission.

Shuster and Weiss also point out that the lack of heating of the nakhlites and ALH 84001 when they were blasted off Mars indicates how easily undamaged materials can be lifted off Mars and sent to Earth. The inner planets might not be biologically isolated from each other. Life on Mars (if there is life on Mars) might be related to life on Earth. We may all be one big, solar system family.

www.psrd.hawaii.edu...

reply to post by MysterX


Nobody KNEW. Suspecting something is not knowing. And it's becaues of OTHER peoples hard work, not my own or yours. Science requires a lot to be convinced about something. Science doesn't have hte luxury to speculate, it has to do the hard work.

And we still don't KNOW. it's a long road.

This is one of the latest which caught my attention and yet has been around for a while:
www.washingtonpost.com - NASA team cites new evidence that meteorites from Mars contain ancient fossils...
ares.jsc.nasa.gov - David S. McKay, Chief Scientist for Astrobiology...
science.nbcnews.co m - NASA scientist David McKay, famous for Martian 'nanofossils,' dies at 77...

.........
Most notably, he was the lead author on the 1996 paper in Science on the ALH84001 Martian meteorite that was found in Antarctica. McKay and his colleagues argued that the rock contained evidence for life on Mars.
..........

reply to post by jonnywhite


When I hit your first link I got a Unauthorized notice asking for my user name and password. Can you summarize what you are suggesting we look at, and maybe bring over a quote? Thanks.

reply to post by Aleister


Doesn't happen for me and I don't have an account with hte washgionton post.

It's easy to find info. Just google David McKay.

jonnywhite
reply to post by Aleister

 

Doesn't happen for me and I don't have an account with hte washgionton post.

It's easy to find info. Just google David McKay.

edit on 1-3-2014 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)

Maybe my browser. Thanks, and when you posted the titles I recognized some of the data. Still, it's nice to see pertinent quotes when something is linked, as lots of us don't always click on links (I've been burned by them more than once, so it's not you, it's me).

Scientific American is heard from, on the subject of the Yamato meteorite, and the fossils suspected of being inside it. The point is emphasized that the minute tunnels are not characteristic of water penetration into stone, which is the other reasonable explanation for them. It is also stressed that the tunnels do closely resemble those made by bacteria eating through rocks for nourishment.
blogs.scientificamerican.com...

Ross 54
Scientific American is heard from, on the subject of the Yamato meteorite, and the fossils suspected of being inside it. The point is emphasized that the minute tunnels are not characteristic of water penetration into stone, which is the other reasonable explanation for them. It is also stressed that the tunnels do closely resemble those made by bacteria eating through rocks for nourishment.
blogs.scientificamerican.com...

From your source, and the entire article is a pretty good, although short, assessment by Scientific American:

These tubule and microtubule-like structures emanating from a mineral vein strongly resemble structures in material taken from places like the side of Mauna Loa and oceanic crust on Earth. Previous analyses of these Earthly samples have attributed the features to so-called ‘autolithotrophic’ organisms – microbes that eat raw inorganic material, seeking out elements like iron or manganese in particular to drive their metabolism.