ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2009) — Using more advanced analytical instruments now available, a Johnson Space Center research team has reexamined the 1996 finding that a meteorite contains strong evidence that life may have existed on ancient Mars.
The new research focused on investigating alternate proposals for the creation of materials thought to be signs of ancient life found in the meteorite. The new study argues that ancient life remains the most plausible explanation for the materials and structures found in the meteorite.
In 1996, a group of scientists led by David McKay, Everett Gibson and Kathie Thomas-Keprta of NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston published an article in Science announcing the discovery of biogenic evidence in the ALH84001 meteorite. A newly published paper revisits that original hypothesis with new analyses. The paper, "Origin of Magnetite Nanocrystals in Martian Meteorite ALH84001," by Thomas-Keprta and coauthors Simon Clemett, McKay, Gibson and Susan Wentworth, all scientists in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate at JSC, is in the November issue of the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta of The Geochemical Society and The Meteoritical Society. …
In this new study, the JSC research team reassessed the leading alternative non-biologic hypothesis that heating or shock decomposition produced the magnetites. The authors argue that their new results do not support the heating hypothesis for the formation of the magnetites. They conclude that the biogenic explanation is a more viable hypothesis for the origin of the magnetites.
"In this study, we interpret our results to suggest that the in situ inorganic hypotheses are inconsistent with the data, and thus infer that the biogenic hypothesis is still a viable explanation," said lead author Thomas-Keprta, senior scientist for Barrios Technology at JSC.
"We believe that the biogenic hypothesis is stronger now than when we first proposed it 13 years ago," said Gibson, NASA senior scientist. …
New study adds to finding of ancient life signs in Mars meteorite
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment