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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!
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Instead of saying that the rock came from mars and ended up on earth, why not just take it that similar meteors to the one that landed on mars also landed on Mars. Afterall, the 'bounce' rock is reportedly unlike other Martian rocks. Am I missing the point? I blog from naija
Analysis: 'Bounce' rock's cosmic portent
By Phil Berardelli
United Press International
Published 4/16/2004 6:07 PM
WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- Opportunity's phenomenal luck continues.
Not only did NASA's rover land smack-dab in the middle of a neatly excavated and navigable crater on Mars, where it promptly uncovered persuasive evidence that water once flowed across the red planet, and not only has it been performing nearly flawlessly since it touched down on Jan. 24. Now, it also, essentially, has stubbed its toe on a rock whose discovery portends cosmic implications.
A few days ago, on its slow roll across the Martian terrain at its landing site at Meridiani Planum, an iron-oxide-rich area near the planet's equator, Opportunity's controllers noticed an odd-looking, football-shaped rock lying in the red dust. They named the rock "Bounce," because the lander most likely hit it as it bounced along the surface, cushioned by its airbags, before coming to rest inside the little crater called Eagle.
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.
So they ordered Opportunity to train its formidable instruments on the rock, including the tool NASA engineers affectionately called the "RAT," for rock abrasion tool, which grinds away surface impurities to expose the undisturbed, primordial composition below.
The results stunned the NASA team.
The main ingredient in Bounce is a volcanic mineral called pyroxene, said rover science team member Deanne Rogers, of Arizona State University in Tempe. 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 by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, Rogers said.
Bounce is a unique rock, and it has been sitting at Opportunity's feet.
"We think we have a rock similar to something found on Earth," said Benton Clark of Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, a science-team member for the missions of both Opportunity and its twin, Spirit.
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.
A less-distinctively named shergottite, EETA79001, found in Antarctica in 1979, has a composition even closer to Bounce's.
As a result, NASA scientists are convinced Shergotty, EETA79001 and Bounce -- and maybe a couple dozen other Martian rocks that found their way to Earth -- were ejected from Mars by the impact of a large asteroid or comet.
The instruments aboard another orbiter, Mars Odyssey, suggest Bounce may have originated at an impact crater about 16 miles wide that lies about 31 miles southwest of Opportunity. The orbiter's images show some of the rocks thrown outward by the impact that formed the crater flew as far as the distance to the rover.
"Some of us think (Bounce) could have been ejected from this crater," Roge
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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There isn't any kind of evidence there ever was life on Mars, yet this article raises the speculation that life from Mars survived a high temp impact, ejection through the harsh radiation and temperatures of space and "cross-polinated" earth?
This is not supported by any facts and is pure speculation. It doesn't even qualify as junk science.
The authors should wait until we get some data back from Mars confirming that life was even present there before publishing these kind of claims.
So basically what they are saying is that a lot of meteorites have a (very) similar composition. Some end up on earth, some on mars - and yet others are probably still Out There looking for a reasonably sized planet-like entity to smash into.
Given that the article first states that Shergotty and Bounce match like a fingerprint, only to go on saying they found a better match somewhere else leads me to think more in the lines of the rocks being "extremely close" rather than "identical".
It is also probably likely that a meteorite on its way to either planet could shed rock and ice from its tail on the one before crashing into the other, thereby elimiting any "direct" contact between earth and mars.
Still waiting for the martians to make contact...
Penhead
I heard physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies give a talk on this subject just yesterday ;)
Davies proposes that the lower gravity of Mars makes it more likely for Martian rocks to reach earth, than vice versa, though transit both ways is statistically viable.
He also suggests that the faster cooling rate of the Mars crust, the lack of a global ocean, and some of the largest volcanoes in the solar system made Mars a more favorable place for microbial life to form.
http://aca.mq.edu.au/Research/research2003.html
Does conclusive evidence of a possibility make it true?
It's worth pointing out that the quote about "conclusive evidence" mentioned in the abstract does not come from any of the NASA scientists. The full quote reads, "So far, no one has broached the bigger implication: Bounce provides conclusive evidence not only of Martian meteorites on Earth, but also of the possibility of cross-seeding." and comes from the article author himself, a UPI science and technology editor and is pure speculation. I would expect the NASA scientists to be considerably more cautious and not be making claims of conclusive evidence right off the bat.
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Nobody tell the KKK or they'll start showing up at NASA press conferences to protest. Those guys have way too much time on their hands.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
... Martians in science fiction are so darned humanoid.
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... the rover experiments were indeed faked on earth. What more evidence do you want? ;)
Bush will probably *cough* promise *cough* that in a month.
Hell, those WMD gotta be somewhere ?!
God had a relationship with Mars -WHILE- dating Mother Earth? BLASPHEMY!
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diegoT
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.
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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