Possible Evidence of Martian Bacteria

half-seas-over writes "NASA issued a very interesting press release today. It highlights a recent study that compared tiny magnetite crystals in the Allan Hill meteorite to similar magnetite crystals that are created here on Earth by bacteria (who use the magnetite as a compass). The study (abstract available here (PDF) from this site) uses fairly strict criteria to determine that 25% of the magnetite content of the meteorite was created by ancient (>3.9Gyr ago) martian bacteria... either that or there is some strange natural process that makes very pure, isolated magnetite crystals that we haven't imagined or seen on Earth which is present on Mars. We'll have to wait and see what happens next, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' -Carl Sagan."

Comments

Translation in normal human language:

[Krapangor]

The NASA has much troubles with funding cuts. But they want take humans to Mars in some years, which is very expensive. So they want to create a decent hype for this project to make acquiring money much easier.
An important tool is to create intresting but ominous scientific claims which a only be verified by going to Mars.
There is still to problem with the "robots only" league, but I expect further onimous arguments in this direction.

But on the other hand, what's useful for science can't be wrong, right ? At least it's not such a brainless waste of money like the dotcom hype.