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Defunking ALH84001
Regarding ALH84001
I'd like nothing better than for ALH84001's evidence for early life on
Mars 3.8 billion years ago to stand up to further scrutiny from our
community.
Here's a summary of a brief news article from today's Honolulu
Advertiser (Jan TenBruggencate) stating that researchers w/ Dr. Keil's
department here in Honolulu have concluded that there is no evidence of
Martian life in ALH84001. Edward Scott's research doesn't rule out life
on Mars, only that what he's seen of this meteorite under EM doesn't
prove life existed. He believes that the carbonates are mineralogic.
His scenario, per the news article and presented for the lay public, is
that:
It started as a chunk of rock hardened from magma deep within Mars.
Another meteorite impacted Mars about 4 billion years ago, with shock
waves reaching the rock that would become ALH84001. The pressure and
sudden heat fractured the rock. The carbonates, with their lower
melting point, liquefied, injected into the fractres, and flash-hardened
again by the cold unmelted rock.
A second meteorite, perhaps 3 billion years later, impacted Mars and
ijected ALH84001 into space, accounting for the 15 million years cosmic
rays data.
The meteorite lands in Antarctica in a glacier belt and remains in polar
deep freeze until emerging in the blue ice field thousands of years
later.
These same researchers have an article in the recent Meteoritics and
Planetary Science on asteroid impacts and how unlikely a mechanism
impacts were to the generation of heat metamorphosis on asteroids.
J. Murakami
References: