Re: Wee Beasties on Mars

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 09:34 AM 8/7/96 -0700, Mike Duvos wrote:
>> schryver@radiks.net:
>
>> > NBC News at Sunrise has just announced the discovery of alien life on the 
>> > planet Mars.  The lifeform that became extinct more than 2 billion years
>> > ago was found as a fossil in a meteor that originated from mars and landed
>> > on earth.  The fossil found was a primitive germ life form.
>
>NASA is holding a news conference today to discuss the find.  I must 
>admit I am curious as to how they determined the meteor's origin.  
>Most material in the solar system is similar in composition.  

I've only seen a few vague news items on TV about this.  I believe they said 
that gases in pores in the rock matched the constituents of the Martian 
atmosphere.  

Also, they said that the rock was a bit less than the size of a football, 
and was found in Antarctica.  It's fairly "clean" there, at least from the 
standpoint of organic contamination.  Also, while I've heard nothing of its 
exact physical location, if it is in the middle of a large ice sheet that 
pretty much excludes terrestrial origin, because there is a limit to how far 
a volcano on Earth can blow a rock.  In any case, the kind of rocks 
typically ejected from volcanoes are well known.

Once it's agreed to be from "out there," the question is where.  If it had 
been possible to bring back rock from the landers that have analyzed Mars, a 
direct comparison would have been possible.  (of course, if that had been 
possible, we'd have heard about it already...)    The moon is excludable, 
since it has no atmosphere and apparently never had one.  (as well as the 
fact that we have samples of the moon to compare.)  Venus is highly 
unlikely, because it has such a thick atmosphere that material would 
probably not escape were a meteor to hit.  Mercury is even more unlikely, 
because it would probably take way too much energy to raise the 
sun-gravitational potential of a fragment of Mercury to that of the earth.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are basically liquified gases, so there 
would be no rocky material to eject.  Jupiter's moons are a different issue.

Anyway, I've got to get back to reviewing some episodes of "My Favorite 
Martian", just in case...


 

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com