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Mars Rock Supports Cross-Seeding Theory
914 writes "Mars rover Opportunity has found a rock (nicknamed 'Bounce') that "provides conclusive evidence not only of Martian meteorites on Earth, but also of the possibility of cross-seeding." Not only that, but according to the UPI article: 'The discovery of Bounce raises the distinct possibility that life arising from a common source could have existed for a time on both worlds.'"
Which was first, Mars or Earth??
And of course if life existed on Mars, this gives the whole SETI thing alot more significance. Next we need to find the ancient alien spacecraft that crashed on Mars and started life there!
I'm not usually much of one for news of outer space, but this particular research I find really interesting. Of course it would be interesting to know if life on Earth evolved from organisms in a Meteorite, or simultaneously evolved and was just cross-pollinated.
The conspiracy theorists and UFO nuts have held beliefs in life starting from anywhere from a single-celled organism on a meteorite, to outright terraforming for a long time.
As for life on Mars... I watched a really good documentary about the moon the other day, which basically explained that without the moon -- a single moon -- to help stabilize our planet, we probably wouldn't have ever been here. It will be interesting to see if life evolved on Mars, perhaps conditions were favourable in the past. Apparently since it has multiple small moons, it wobbles on its axis, which makes the climate really unstable over very long periods of times. Or, that was the gist of it.
This sort of thing is exciting again, since they're got more than just grainy pics giving the illusion of human faces in Cydonia. =)
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Well, how possible this is depends on, among other things, your interpretion of ALH84001.
And we know that organisms can survive in open space: the found some still-viable critters on one of the Ranger spacecraft when an Apollo mission brought some bits back from the Moon.
It was Apollo 12 that brought back bits of one of the Surveyor soft-landers. They brought back a piece of insulation, and when they examined it back on earth they found either a spore or a bacterium deep in the middle. So, it wasn't exactly exposed to all the conditions of space, except for the heat, cold and hard radiation.
And of course, there's also the bacterium that withstands high doses of radiation, Deinococcus radiodurans. NASA's been looking at it, apparently:
"Meet Conan the Bacterium"
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Yes, did you read the article?
"Controllers considered Bounce an odd find because it did not resemble any of the other rocks in the crater's vicinity -- nor did it resemble anything seen before on Mars, they said.
Rather more than that. Bounce's chemical composition exactly matches that of a meteorite that hit the ground in Shergotty, India, on Aug. 25, 1865.
Called the Shergotty meteorite -- and the source name for a class of meteorites called shergottites -- its chemical composition is a "matching fingerprint" to Bounce, said David Grinspoon, professor of planetary science at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
The resemblance helps confirm something meteorite specialists and planetary scientists have suspected for more than two decades but until now have been unable to prove: Micro-bubbles of gas trapped in dozens of meteorites found on Earth -- including Shergotty -- match the recipe of Martian atmosphere so closely that they must have originated on Mars.
"There is a striking similarity in spectra," said Christian Schroeder, a rover science-team collaborator from the University of Mainz in Germany, which supplied both Mars rovers with Moessbauer spectrometers -- exceedingly sensitive instruments for identifying chemical compositions."
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Great. I keep hoping that we'll find definitive proof of abiogenesis occuring sponteaneously on another planet, and now look what the gods of chaos have given us: a huge, obvous excuse to give to the creationists. I'm sure we'll see this one crop up on the 700 Club if-and-when they ever find 100%-sure-fire-can't argue-with-that proof that life existed on Mars.
"But God planted the seeds of life in Eden, and he did smith the earth with a big rock, and it did spew forth flotsam into the universe, and it was good."
Grrr.
The high proportion of pyroxene means Bounce not only is unlike any other rock studied by Opportunity or Spirit, but also is unlike the volcanic deposits mapped extensively around Mars...
Personally, I'm inclined to think that this means that Bounce probably did not originate on Mars. It sounds like Bounce is not like any other rock on Mars.
"Some of us think (Bounce) could have been ejected from this crater," Rogers said.
Craters are formed when meteorites smash into planets/moons/etc. To get a crater, you need something that came from another part of the solar system, if not another part of the galaxy. If Bounce came from this crater, as they hypothesize it did, then Bounce may or may not have come from another part of the galaxy, so this theory is starting to fit together well...
On a slightly related note, it should be much easier to find a meteorite on Mars than on Earth - Mars' atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's, so objects are less likely to burn up upon entry into the atmosphere. This explains why Mars has many more craters on it that Earth does. Also, I've read in several places (including a mention in the above quote) that many of the rocks on Mars are quite similar to each other. Thus, any different rocks will stand out rather a lot. This makes meteorite hunting fairly simple. Consequently, it would not surprise me at all if the rovers managed to find a meteorite on Mars.
I do not profess to be at all knowledgeable about Mars geology, but any fool can see that the author of the article knows even less. Not only did they dumb the finding down for laypeople, they have even added some inconsistencies:
Bounce's chemical composition exactly matches that of a meteorite that hit the ground in Shergotty, India, on Aug. 25, 1865.
A less-distinctively named shergottite, EETA79001, found in Antarctica in 1979, has a composition even closer to Bounce's.
I for one am disappointed by the lack of information in the article. Give me a real scientific article with real scientific facts, and hopefully we can then come to real, scientific conclusions. Until then, many different interpretations of this article are equally valid.
"Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adams
Okay, that sure says a lot.
Could it have been a planet located at the position where the current asteroid belt is? Something hit it, blew it up, rocks fell everywhere and so on.
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