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I thought you might be talking about the idea of Galactic Habitable Zones (which deals with characteristics of our solar system as well.) But it sounds more like you might be thinking of the Rare Earth Hypothesis which focuses more on the planet and the solar system they reside in. While there is a good deal of consideration given to glaciation, it focuses more on it's possible impact on evolution. It's a wonderfully interesting book, if you haven't read it. It also gives an equation based on the Drake equation.

Interesting!
I went hunting the web to back up my armchair theory - that the Yucatan impact CAUSED the India lava flows directly (think bullet thru a ripe tomato)..
India is currently about opposite the Yucatan, but I'm not sure where the two sites were located 65 million years ago (How much continental drift?). BUT on the way to try to track down some semblance of support for my pet theory I found this article about a very large potential impact crater right beside India that hasn't yet made the impact database (it's not been decided either way):

But Chatterjee believes the geologic activity in India is best explained by a massive meteorite impact. For further proof, he points to alkaline igneous rock spires that are encased in the Deccan Traps. These spires are rich in iridium, but the Deccan lava did not contain iridium. How else, he asks, could the spires have formed if not by a nearby meteorite impact?

        In addition, Chatterjee says there is an underwater mountain as high as Mount Everest within the Shiva crater. He says this structure has been dated to be 65 million years old, and he thinks it could be the central peak that is often seen within large impact craters.

              Finally, Chatterjee says the crater contains shocked quartz, a key sign of impact. And because the K-T clay boundary layer in India is one meter thick - the thickest in the world - Chatterjee thinks a meteorite impact must have been close by.

Astrobiology Magazine - http://www.astrobio.net/news/print.php?sid=1281

There is also mention of another impact crater in the Ukraine that is also 65 million years old.

So it sounds like we had more than 1 big meteor event, potentially cooking the atmosphere instantly, the shock waves might have instantly caused massive cracks in the earth's crust, and/or the kinetic energy absorbed from these could possibly warm up the earth's core enough to cause massive lava flows, the resulting gasses and or dust released in all these events would have yanked the temperature up and down, in short, the Dinosaurs had it from many interrelated sources effectively at the "same time" give or take a half a million years.

When you look at a cross section of the planet and see how thin the crust is, (http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100 /interior.html) it's like an eggshell protecting us from hot liquid rock. Lucky for us the outside radiates heat away fast enough to keep the crust from melting..(!?)

My question is, say the crust is 50 kilometers (30 miles) thick (on average?) http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/interior/
How much thinner will it get if we raise the temperature of the atmosphere by 1 degree C?
Good thing rock is a decent insulator!

The other baffling thing is why we need to use greenhouse gasses to heat our homes when we are living on a ball of molten rock with a wafer thin coating on it? Is geothermal heat really too expensive to compete?

There, feeling safer now?

You are correct that oxygen is a big part of the debate about the Miller-Urey experiment. The evidence that there was oxygen from day 1 of the Earth isn't totally solid, though. There is evidence for several different early atmospheres. Wikipedia has a pretty good article about where the scientific debate stands today. The answer isn't perfectly clear either. When oxygen existed on Earth and how it got there is still an active scientific debate. That does not support creationism, it merely gives us more interesting questions to answer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experimen t

and also:
http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modloa d&name=News&file=article&sid=1676

a huge asteriod hitting earth

due to some natural/un-natural process, a virus/bacteria gets created which splits water to its elemental components.

Here or here, a very nice article on the project, "Margaret Turnbull and Jill Tarter have a new list, called HabCat: A Catalog of Nearby Habitable Stellar Systems." (2003) Interview included.

Interesting that starting with the Hipparcos catalog of 120,000 stars and skipping all with major problems for life ("cataclysmic, eruptive, pulsating, rotating, or X-ray stars", low metal content systems, rotating too fast or too much UV or bad size or composition), left 1 star in 6 still potential life bearers.

Wiki on HabCat and Turnbull. The Turnbull page has a link to a PDF, which is a very interesting scientific paper about how the list of habitable stars was made.

Wiki article on the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which uses Turnbull's list of 5000 candidates within a 100 light year radius. List of Top 100 candidates. Note 18 Scorpii at 46 light years is number 62 in the list, and 37 Geminorum is not listed.

The highest ranked 2 candidates in that list are just 4 ly away from Earth, at Rigil Kentaurus, and then Tau Ceti at 12 ly. There is one at 3 ly and some others at 19, 20, 24 ly too.

Allen Telescope Array

Turnbull's top 10 list includes 51 Pegasus, where in 1995 Swiss astronomers spotted the first planet outside our solar system, a Jupiter-like giant.

Others include 18 Sco in the Scorpio constellation, which is very similar to our own sun; epsilon Indi A, a star one-tenth as bright as the sun; and alpha Centauri B, part of the closest solar system to our own.

D^amn it, Doesn't anybody have any bombs left? http://www.newpath4.com/millenialdawnpowerandlight secure21.htm .
Isn't there someone out there who can fly a plane?
http://tinyurl.com/7aaca .
Someone who isn't afraid of the Weather?
http://www.newpath4.com/WorldwideClimateEngineMsg. htm .

Hhmmm. Looks like the Wizard, Woody of Oz is real. For more information check my Comment under the main article > http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1798.html .

And trust the old weatherman before you trust the fresh guy out of college who is just learning the ropes eh? The "old dude" who has invented two new types of fusion -non nuclear fusion- that can power a home without combustible fuels... and no pollution by-products whatsoever. Hhmmm.

Gee, that sounds like the answer we've been waiting for.
End of global warming,
end of escalating healthcare costs from pollution asthma, pollution emphysema, pollution chronic lung diseases,
pollution made dead zones in the ocean and ozone layer,
pollution DNA damage that is now proving to be trans-generational in the womb...
weather aberrations from global warming such as hurricanes & tornadoes...
crude oil peaking out before it kills us all...
hybrid electric cars that electrocute the rescue people at an accident...

rising mental illness rates from lowered oxygen content in our atmosphere because OUR ENGINES USE IT BETTER THAN OUR LUNGS leaving the rest of us brain damaged to one degree or another from oxygen deprivation esp in our cities.

http://www.somethingawful.com/ does understand brain damage. Hhmmm. If I lessen the brain damage you all might lose 3/4 of your website traffic. Maybe you'll have to turn into real writers. Maybe you can use a reducing ray and be the brains in these new hopping bots of the Planet Mars. That would make a great story. You could call them something awful hopping bots (SAHB's). No need to send any royalties or thank-you fees; glad I could help you out in your moment of need.

Someone has finished the Manhattan Energy Project?
Saved lots of government-funded grant? >
money by not throwing rebel hordes of people at the problem? >
> http://www.newpath4.com/01manhattanproject20056789 fromnewpath410302005.htm .

For those of you in a big hurry, no time to check the referenced Comments, I'll save you the trouble. An electronic waterwheel that uses a stream of metal balls to turn a bi-directional dual generator, striking the paddle wheel fins in a continuous cycle. The remaining 40% of Mankind that doesn't have electricity is about to get a big boost.

The Millenial Dawn vaporgenerator can power a paired generator (or 2, or 3) that focuses force upward, overcoming Gravity. Our astronauts -accompanied by a select team of somethingawful writers recently laid off- can be vacationing on Earth's Moon by 2008 & Mars by 2010 once the News Media stops ignoring my new fusion engines.

You can all be sipping margueritas at a comfy Microsoft PC control station while the hordes of little hopping slavebots do the exploring, Courtesy of Internet Al (Gore) without whom I wouldn't be able

In terms of the hardware... " NASA scientists have begun to computerize human, silent reading using nerve signals in the throat that control speech." Subvocal speech reading systems offer the added bonus of now having to listen to the mundane trivia being broadcast from the cubicle next to yours.

The NAIC website has a smidgen more info on it -- namely that there were four other research projects funded as well.

There's a PDF on this project that may contain more info, but my copy of Acrobat (6.0) declines to render the entire thing (or the PDF is junk, dunno which).

There's also an article on Astrobio.net that gives little more detail than the CU link... but it does have links to other sources that may be informative. Really though, this concept seems to be in such an infancy stage that "simple" questions like "so how do you turn it?" haven't been answered yet (in fact, in this NASA link how to keep the two craft in alignment is listed as a "main technological hurdle").

So can they? There is a lot in this Interview with Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Vatican astronomer. I think Catholicism is more than ready to explain all this away, and if one billion plus people believe what they've dished out for 2,000 years, then I think those people are likely to believe almost anything, anything at all the Vatican tells them to.

Aside from religion, a place most people will turn when faced with news of life "in the heavens," there is the fact of how the human intellect operates. Our prejudice with regard to extraterrestrial life is considerable, and our crippling penchant for prejudice is not something we are likely to overcome soon.

After so much popular preparation for the possibility of extraterrestrial life, I would not expect humanity to shift its current comprehension much in any direction, regardless of the extraterrestrial life we encounter. We are just barely conscious in daily life as it is, relying on routines and recognition. We've already made up our minds how we'll react if we find microbes -- barely -- and if we find intelligent competition -- with deep fear and self destructive tendencies guided by a belief that They must be out to destroy us (but that we'll miraculously "win" in a Hollywood ending).

I wonder if the environment on Titan would have the ability to support life on a different atomic scale. Ammonia seems to be a promising candidate on Titan.

I love this stuff!

Why, I remember when Canadian satellites used to be suitcase-sized! Soon they'll be cell phone sized. (Luckily, in space no one can hear your ring-tone.)

Hey editors, Google is your friend!

Mimas, of course.

already taken! Mind you, they call it Mimas nowadays.

Wait... you're claiming that a ship that handles all sorts of volatiles can't *combust* *hydrogen*? There was strong evidence in original galactica that the ship had fusion power, for YHVH's sake. They're dealing with dangerous 'tylium' and 'solium'... it's silly to think that they can't handle having a hydrogen torch inside a tank with cool walls.

that's just a theory

That is not a theory. The spectral signature of ice is all over the bloody place.

there's so little solid matter

Yeah... most ice is gasseous at near the background temperature. Suuuure ;) We know what's in the Oort cloud - when they get close to us, we call them "comets". Inwards from there, you get kupier belt objects, like Pluto and Quaoar. Inward still, you get ice on almost every moon in the outer solar system, some made almost entirely of ice.

The Kupier Belt is believed to be composed of rocky bodies

Saturn's moon Phoebe is the most studied kupier belt object thusfar, and it's mostly ice. The Kupier belt is bodies made of rock *and* ice, mostly ice. Heck, Uranus and Neptune are known as *ice giants*, because they have accumulated so much ice-laden material from the kupier belt that they have large icy cores. The icy worlds Pluto and Quaoar probably have the next best Kupier belt data.

Oh, and Saturn's rings are mostly ice. A good chunk of their moon's masses are ice - Enceladus being some of the most pure ice in the solar system. Ice is the dominant surface material in Saturn's moons, and once of the most dominant in Jupiter's moons

Please... get serious here.

NASA is lobbying to be able to put up more prize money and I think putting out small amounts like this is simply to help them get support for the bigger amounts.

Over on Astobio.net they have an article where Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about the positive return prize money has yielded in real advancements. Seems pretty obvious how good they are for progress so this should help NASA's arguement that they should be able to put up more money. Another poster said they are limited right now to 250,000.

The Atacama desert is thought to be similar to Mars; instruments similar to those used on the 1970s Viking missions have previously failed to detect life there.

Although the wording is pretty odd, if you follow the link, you'll see that they're talking about a failure to detect life in the Atacama desert, not on Mars.

they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.' It is all based on methane signatures and not direct observation.

I for one welcome or new Martian methane overlords.

I think we should explore Mars for what it is and not what the NASA PR hounds want it to be. If we go with the expectation of NOT finding life we do not jeopardize public interest (and funding) for future missions, because we are going there to find out what's there. There are bound to be some interesting surprises in store for us. If we DO find life it's the icing on the cake.

Mars could never had had much water. There are large swaths of Olivine on the surface of Mars which readily decays in water. There still may have been sufficient water on Mars at one time for life to have evolved or to be infected by a lifebearing meteorite blasted off the surface of the Earth. I would wager that if we DO find life on Mars it closely related to Earthly life. The only question then would be who contaminated who and how long ago did it happen?

Here from low altitude below the haze, just released by ESA

I can't find the numbers on Astrobiology Magazinea,/a>'s site (I swear content disappears from there), but the numbers work out that the impact might not destroy living organisms. Yes, Earth has a deeper gravity well, but there may have been severe-enough impacts at the right angle to launch Earth material on trajectories that would eventually lead to Mars.

I have to say that I think you are wrong about the faster, cheaper, better philosophy being horribly wrong. It may not have been executed exceedingly well, but it did have some huge payoffs. If it weren't for faster cheaper better (smarter?) We probably would have only had one other Mars probe since the viking missions. Instead, we have a couple of orbiters and 3 mobile landers. The cost of these together has not even come close to the cost of one viking style probe. The philosophy behind faster, cheaper, smarter allowed for failures, the idea was you would spend 3 billion on a series of probes (instead of one), you can do them every two years (instead of every 10) and if you lose one you don't lose everything. I think that contrary to what you suggest the faster cheaper better philosophy has contributed a great deal to our understanding of Mars and not set us back 5 years. like this

I'm thinking that the heatshield impact should have dug a pretty nice divot out of the ground, which might make a pretty good opportunity for examining deep layers of soil on the edge of a large impact crater.

Possible to find all sorts if interesting things in there... almost as good as the crater itself. (presuming that the rover can get out on the other side, that is.)

A little article with two boffins talking abour terraforming mars.

They harp on about oxygen levels. I started to wonder - what gas other than nitrogen would be good to compose the other 80% (assuming we reach earth density - could we have a 1/5 less atomosphere than was 99% 02?

So I think (although mars contains nitrogen - composition) the matter is how to make nitrogen and oxygen and enough co2.

Nitrogen in the air is vital for plant life also, so I think a valid nitrogen cycle, water cycle and healthy o2/co2 ratios would need to be established.

Would they find thier own levels, or will it be *bloody* hard to establish a balanced eco system?

Any other thoughts on mars ecosynthesis?

I think mazda was doing a lot of funding for a commercial application of this phenomenon. But its only storage, not generation. I think there is some law that says a chemical reaction doesn't have nearly the potential of a nuclear reaction, but still I think you have a good point, most chemical reactions are nowhere near maximum efficiency. We aught to be able to store 5 years worth of cell phone talk time in a single cell phone battery, once you get down to the raw electrons.

I think there is plenty of energy coming out of our own planet. Geothermal energy will probably become the most plentiful source of energy. Same thing as fusion or fission reactors except its just buried a few miles under the surface.

Check this link out: LINK It talks about quantum teleportation as a means to power spacecraft and other devices. Forget batteries altogether, just use wireless power.

I ran across this novel form of propulsion the other day that looks promising if it pans out.

The idea is to entangle two cesium atoms, then send one up into space. Back on earth, excite the one that remains and the one in space will do the same. In theory that could be used as an ion drive while keeping the bulk of your engine back on the ground.

I got to the article page and saw a glossary in the left column-bar and thought, "hrm, this must be the words this dog knows." Then I saw "carbohydrate" when I clicked "C". My bad.

The car also plays a key roll

Exactly. Remember playing with you first RC car? It got stuck on all sorts of things and flipped over and got stuck upside down.

Then they came up with those dual track-driven machines that didn't even have servos, just cheap DC motors. Not only did they do all steering via the "tank-treads", but by designing the body to fit between the belt/track/treads, the designers ensured the machine could be flipped completely over without getting stuck. Not to mention that it navigate terrain much more treacherous than a wheeled RC car.

Actually, many vehicles that navigate extreme terrain or that are required to have extreme durability or strength use tracks.

This reminds me that our hilariously 6-wheeled mars rover can't even navigate a loose 25 degree slope.. heh.. even jeeps can do that!

From the pictures in the link it doesn't look that difficult to get a rover into - I think the main problem is traction when trying to get it out.

According to NASA they're aluminium wheels and their main purpose looks like it was to absorb the shock and go over rocks than get the traction required to climb back out of a crater.

I'd imagine they have quite a bit of weight behind them too...

The article has an artist's impression of Muses-C doing its thing. Takes me back to the old books I used to read that were full of airbrush pictures - artist's impressions of futuristic space missions. There's something inspiring about that style that computer graphics have never been able to replicate.

Did you miss /. this? Read what a Vatican astronomer has to say about that.

the Catholic church set back science for another1000 years

Without the Catholic Church, there would be no science today.

First, who was more interested in preserving the knowledge of the past, the Catholic Church or the barbarians who ruled Europe during the Middle Ages? Obviously, it was the Church. Without the Church, there wouldn't have been much writing at all in Europe. The first encyclopedia was compiled by St. Isidore of Seville. So if the loss of the Library of Alexandria set back science, the absence of the Catholic Church would have done the same thing.

Second, the whole philosophical basis of science derives from Catholic theology. Here's a quote from an article linked to in a recent Slashdot story:

"[T]o be a scientist you have to have two fundamental assumptions, so fundamental you don't even think about it. You assume that the universe makes sense, that there really is an objective reality; there really is a logic to this; it's not just chaos; there really are laws to be found. We're so used to that assumption, you don't realize it. A lot of cultures don't have that.

"And the other assumption you have to make is that it's worth doing. If your idea, if your religion is to meditate and rise above the physical universe, this corrupting physical universe, you might say, you're not going to be a scientist, you're not going to be interested in Mars. So it's a religious statement to say the physical universe is worth devoting my life to. [...]

"By religious I mean that it is based on certain fundamental assumptions you have about how the universe works and what your place in the universe is. And ultimately, that's a religious assumption. Whether it's my religion or somebody else's religion, lots of people with lots of religions are looking at science. I'm not saying it's only one religion that has that assumption. But I'm saying that there are religions that don't. There are brilliant cultures throughout history who have had fabulous mathematics and glorious ethical systems - and no science."

And lots of the early science was done by Catholic priests and monks. Another quote from the same article:

"The whole scientific enterprise really does coincide well with Christian theology. The whole idea that the universe is worth studying is a Christian idea. The whole mechanism for studying the physical universe comes straight out of the whole logic of the scholastic age. Who was the first geologist? Albert the Great, who was a monk. Who was the first Chemist? Roger Bacon, who was a monk. Who was the first guy to come up with spectroscopy? Angelo Secchi, who was a priest. Who was the guy who invented genetics? Gregor Mendel, who was a monk. Who was the guy who came up with the Big Bang theory? Georges Lemaître, who was a priest. There is this long tradition; most scientists before the 19th century were clerics."

Spectrometry. We've looked at all of the local objects fairly carefully and haven't seen signs of chemicals related to organic life as we know it. For example, Earth's atmosphere is full of highly reactive oxygen (aka fire, rust, krebs cycle, etc) and should not be abundant unless something is constantly producing it.

If memory serves, the atmosphere of Titan is not so different from that of the Earth a few billion years ago, before life began. So if there's life there, either it's inconceivably unlike us or it hasn't gone much up the ladder.

1. Science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) and comic books are popular,
2. SF/F fans think about other worlds
3. you can't think about two worlds at once,
4. internet interactions retreat from the real world
5. retreating from the real world is bad
6. on the internet you never have to argue with people who disagree with you
7. if you feel you can't change the world you read fantasy so
8. SF/F keeps us from exploring our world and should be less popular.

Where to start? Addressing these in no particular order...

• 5: Then books in general are bad: there's just nothing worse than someone sitting around thinking.
• 5: And as the essay point out, many common activities keep people from reality (or make you talk for hours about trivia or statistics): TV, baseball games, video games, golf, martha stewart trials. These are quantiatively different from fandom how?
• 6: Huh? I suppose if you only IM with a few people and have an interlocked set of livejournal users, perhaps. But otherwise anyone with a blog with comments, or anyone on usenet is exposed to more arguments and opposing viewpoints than ever. You can keep atheists out of your physical church: its much harder to keep them out of Talk.religion.mychurch.
• 3: Not only can you think about two worlds at once, you have to if you want to understand your own time and milieu. Understanding implies the ability to step outside of it- examine it from the outside. Knowing history and traveling to other countries is critical, of course. But if your goal is understanding humanity overall you need a bigger mental space to step back in: science (evolution, anthropology) and SF/F provide this space.
• 1: Yes, SF/F movies are big- 23 out of 25 of the top grossing movies are SF/F. But modern written science fiction isn't the same as modern SF/F movies: most SF movies are 30 years behind written SF
• 7: Much popular written SF/F analyzes or confronts our society. For example, I'd done a quick analysis of Hugo award finalists for last year (what SF/F fans consider to be the best of the year). Few of the stories were standard fantasy: most were about how humans might deal with the inevitable changes coming to our society in the short and long terms.
• 2 & 4 & 8: those who "inhabit imaginary worlds" are often the ones inspired to start new science and technologies, explore our world and local neighborhood, and get us to confront upcoming problems
• 2 & 5: What conventions does he go to? The science fiction conventions I go to are filled with lectures about cutting edge science, technology, health and physiology... they're also filled with scientists [physical, bio and social]. Many fans are scientists, many SF writers are scientists, many scientists were inspired by SF to go into their careers.
• 2 & 6 & 7: Again, I think he's not at the same conventions: anyone who has seen the debates about Trotskyite libertarian cyberpunks vs. K.S.Robinson style socialism vs. LeGuin's anthro-SF isn't going to think that SF cons are a mutual agreement-fest. (Eric Raymond vs. Charlie Stross: now *that* was fun)

I especially like the perhaps aptly named but technically uninformitive designation of "sun sensors" on the picture.

This image beautifully illustrates the multilayered approach the team devised to fend off the excess heat while the spacecraft is near Mercury

Are we looking a the same picture?

This is not an informative image.

It could just as well be Fruit Fucker Prime with a tarp over it.

Impressive technology. Abysmal photography.

Here is the actual announcemnt

From the article:

In April and May of this year, two naked-eye comets, C/2001 Q4 and C/2002 T7, will grace the twilight skies. To spot the cosmic balls of dust and ice look to the west at dusk or dawn.

Look to the west at dusk *or* dawn? Yeah right. Probably got shortened by an overzealous editor from the correct "to the west at dusk or the east at dawn". Amazingly inept editing for an astrobiology site. The linked article has more (and correct) information.

Thats pretty cool, but a little further down the page I found this...

Orions Belt Viewed From Mars

Thats pretty cool! I used celestia some while ago to find out what orion looked like from Mars and this shows just how accurate that program is.

nick ...

Or it's an overexposed pic of the Earth.

http://astrobio.net/news/print.php?sid=835

CLICKY HERE

Sallah: Please, what does it always mean, this... this "Junior"?
Professor Henry Jones: That's his name. [points to himself] Henry Jones... [points to Indy] ...Junior.
Indiana Jones: I like "Indiana."
Professor Henry Jones: We named the *dog* Indiana.
Marcus Brody: May we go home now, please?
Sallah: The dog?! You are named after the dog?!
Indiana Jones: I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog.

Martian wind + Giant-ass soccer ball filled with scientific instruments + astronaut posing for picture = First action scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark



Yeah, the quote is from Last Crusade, but it seems relavant...

Sallah: Please, what does it always mean, this... this "Junior"?
Professor Henry Jones: That's his name. [points to himself] Henry Jones... [points to Indy] ...Junior.
Indiana Jones: I like "Indiana."
Professor Henry Jones: We named the *dog* Indiana.
Marcus Brody: May we go home now, please?
Sallah: The dog?! You are named after the dog?!
Indiana Jones: I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog.

Martian wind + Giant-ass soccer ball filled with scientific instruments + astronaut posing for picture = First action scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark



Yeah, the quote is from Last Crusade, but it seems relavant...

On most of the pictures that have been released of saturn, it looks like the picture has been flip-flopped horizontally (the left-side is on the right and right-side is on the left). At least to me that is.
When viewed from above, planets orbit counter-clockwise. Cassini's tragectory also follows the planets counter-clockwise orbits.When Cassini approaches Saturn, it will be coming in from behind the planet, it is trying to catch up to it. This means the Sun will be on the left side of the picture, and the dark side of the planet will be on the right.

There are only two reasons that I can think of to explain why the sun in these pictures is coming from the right side.
1) Cassini is actually in front of Saturn.
2) The image is flipped to make the image more asthetically pleasing. Maybe the rings look better this way.

-thenumberone

Some of the spherules are `budding' like it can be seen here, so perhaps the spherules grown in some kind of a seed and deposits process. But perhaps they could just melt or something into one piece. Perhaps some hints about their origin could come from meausuring a set of the spherules and this way finding their size distribution.

ticker.js

a. The species jumping is a regular event. It is simply that sometimes the results are relatively benign. Lately however, that is not the case.

b. alien pathogen being able to attack our biochemistry are extremely low to non-existant only if we assume that the attack would be the same as those of Earth origin. As experience with the extremophile microbes indicates, we do not know what is possible or we wouldn't be continually surprised by where we find microbes. Yes, we can explain something after it is discovered but our grasp of biochemistry could only be said to be complete if we could predict.

c. a minor risk compared to the implications of the find! echoes the party line in the early years of the nuclear industry. Considering the preceding point, it is scientific arrogance in the extreme. Plus, how significant would the revelation of a common galactic ancestor be? The Creationists would yell, "Of course!". For the rest of us, neat but where's the value added?

Conclusion: we haven't got a clue what we will find and we are taking a huge risk. But that is human nature. The hope is that we will contaminate Mars and not the other way around.

They have searchlight image of sorts on the parachute now. The sun casted a shadow of the parachute from about 4000 feet altitude before landing.

First surface images at Meridiani are also here

For those of you who didn't remember, Slashdot posted links to the first images released from Spirit.

As you can see, this image is not optimized for viewing as the rest of the images have been because NASA was in a hurry to get the first images out to the public.

This is a "Bill Nye" project.