"Space rock re-opens Mars debate"

[heliox]

From the BBC:<br /><br />http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4688938.stm<br /><br />Maybe out of place with some of the fat fetched nonsense on here but its certainly interesting for those more scientifically minded:<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><br />A carbon-rich substance found filling tiny cracks within a Martian meteorite could boost the idea that life once existed on the Red Planet.<br /><br />The material resembles that found in fractures, or "veins", apparently etched by microbes in volcanic glass from the Earth's ocean floor.<br /><br />Details will be presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, next month. <br /><br /><br /> Initial measurements support the idea that the "carbonaceous material" is not contamination, the scientists say.<br /><br />But the evidence so far is unlikely to convince the sceptics. <br /><br /><br />The latest data comes from examination of a piece of the famous Nakhla meteorite which came down in Egypt, in 1911, breaking up into many fragments.<br /><br />London's Natural History Museum, which holds several intact chunks of the meteorite, agreed for Nasa researchers to break one open, providing fresh samples.<br /><br />"It gives people a degree of confidence this had never been exposed to the museum environment," said co-author Colin Pillinger of the UK's Open University.<br /><br />"I think it's too early to say how [the carbonaceous material] got there... the important thing is that people are always arguing with fallen meteorites that this is something that got in there after it fell to Earth.<br /><br />"I think we can dismiss that. There's no way a solid piece of carbon got inside a meteorite."<br /><br />Analysis of the interior revealed channels and pores filled with a complex mixture of carbon compounds. Some of this forms a dark, branching - or dendritic - material when seen under the microscope. <br /><</safety_wrapper></p></blockquote>

 

[telfrow]

The same thread was started yesterday in SS & A here. The pdf files you noted were added this morning. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>