[meteorite-list] absence of evidence is not...
From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Jan 12 19:47:53 2005 Message-ID: <t0hbu09d2gum3h49f53cm300ulbp2eant2_at_4ax.com> http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/1282716.html The most comprehensive study of the famous Mars meteorite has concluded it contains no evidence that life once existed on Mars. The study was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, NASA and the British Royal Society to settle the controversial claims made four years ago that the Martian meteorite, ALH84001, harbored evidence of life on the red planet. The findings are contained in a report titled "Magnetite morphology and life on Mars," which is scheduled to be published today (Nov. 19, 2001) in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. The eight researchers who participated in the study claim that earlier findings were seriously flawed. In the previous study, NASA-sponsored scientists concluded there were fossilized structures that could have been created only by living organisms. Today's report is particularly critical of the analysis of transmission electron microscope images. These revealed lines of bright objects that were assumed to be magnetite crystals like those found in terrestrial bacteria. Authors of the current report say that when they compared the crystals from the meteorite to crystals from three strains of earthly bacteria, none matched. "Although the similarities are intriguing, we believe that they do not provide evidence that the crystals are Martian," the team concluded. The work was conducted at Arizona State University in Tempe by Peter R. Buseck, Rafal E. Dunin-Borkowski, Bertrand Devouard, Richard B. Frankel, Martha R. McCartney, Paul A. Midgley, Mihaly Posfai, and Matthew Weyland. Received on Wed 12 Jan 2005 07:45:47 PM PST |
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