[meteorite-list] Life on Mars Theory Put To Test

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:54:48 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <200710242154.OAA12695_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_islands/7056686.stm

Life from Mars theory put to test
BBC
October 23, 2007

A rock quarried on Orkney was blasted into space to find out if
meteorites could carry primitive life from one planet to another.

One theory being tested is whether life could have arrived on Earth from
Mars.

University of Aberdeen experts had the rock attached to an unmanned
Russian craft and found life would probably only survive in a large
meteorite.

Further details about the experiment will be revealed at the Highland
Science Festival on 3 November.

A slab quarried from Cruaday, Sandwick, was sent to Vienna to be
specially sculpted into the right shape.

Transformed into the size of bowler hat, it was then attached to the
side of the European Space Agency's Foton M3 mission, which launched
from Kazakhstan last month.

Professor John Parnell, chair in geology and petroleum geology at
Aberdeen, studied what effect the heat of re-entry from space had on the
rock, along with Dr Stephen Bowden.

Orcadian rock was selected because it was organic-rich and extremely hard.

Would vaporize

Prof Parnell said primitive life could not survive a meteorite of small
size because of the heat, but believed it could survive inside the
centre of a larger one measuring tens of centimetres.

However, he said any bigger and the meteorite would hit the ground so
hard that it would vaporize.

The Highland Science Festival runs until 17 November at venues in
Inverness-shire, Dingwall and Applecross.

One event will focus on Loch Ness, while another will centre around a
film made by photographer Raymond Besant about the fulmar seabird, with
scenes featuring the seabird from St Kilda and Orkney, as well as the
Netherlands and Aberdeenshire.
Received on Wed 24 Oct 2007 05:54:48 PM PDT