Posted on 01/28/2004 10:31:43 AM PST by dead
History may record that a dog named Tamarind helped confirm there was once life on Mars.
While five space probes - including two robot rovers - explore the red planet, a Sydney scientist's pet dingo-kelpie cross may have found the evidence so many have been seeking.
When NASA announced in 1996 that a meteorite recovered from Antarctica appeared to contain fossils of ancient Martian bacteria, there were sceptics.
The rock, blasted off Mars 16 million years ago, fell to Earth 13,000 years ago. Inside it were chemical structures that looked like the work of organisms. But the sceptics argued that one of the structures could form only at very high temperatures - far too hot for life.
Now two Australians, Tony Taylor, from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation at Lucas Heights, and Queensland University's Professor John Barry, say they have found an identical structure in dozens of different bacteria thriving in the ooze around Queensland's Moreton Bay.
To find them, Dr Taylor took along his dog, Tamarind. "She's my research assistant," he said, explaining he had taught her to sniff out sediments where the right bacteria lived. "The stuff smells like sewage."
After Tamarind was set loose, "she veered off the road, into the bush and five minutes later came back covered in mud".
When Dr Taylor examined 82 bacteria from the spot the dog found, as well as two other nearby sites, one of them a golf course, he discovered they contained 11 characteristics also found in the alleged Mars fossils, including the structure other scientists claimed could only form under scorching heat.
"That is an extraordinary match," he said, adding that the Mars fossils were now "far more convincing than T-rex skeletons".
"Our research shows that the structures found in the NASA meteorite were more than likely made by bacteria present on Mars four billion years ago, before life even started on Earth."
A biophysicist with the nuclear research centre, Dr Taylor said the problematic structure, resembling "cartilage around tiny backbone discs and vertebra", had never been studied in fine detail in earthly bacteria because electron microscopes had insufficient resolution.
The tiny specimens shook under the powerful electron beams. "People have been blowing their specimens apart." But he found a way, with the help of ultraviolet light, to steady the organisms.
He initially looked at Moreton Bay because he suspected the bacteria he was hunting would prefer the region's iron-rich alluvial sediments, resembling the iron-rich surface of Mars. But the bacteria are probably found "almost everywhere" on Earth. Since the Mars rock that fell over Antarctica may be up to 4.5 billion years old - older than life on Earth - our world may have been seeded with life transported aboard meteorites from the red planet.
Dr Taylor forecast that while the sceptics would not give up, "they will go quiet".
But Malcom Walter, director of Macquarie University's Centre for Astrobiology, remained a sceptic yesterday. "That's putting it mildly," he said, warning that just because something looked like life did not mean it was once alive.
"It would be very interesting if they have seen these structures [in bacteria], but it would be far from convincing," said Professor Walter, who conceded that he had not yet read the scientists' full report.
He said everything seen in the Martian meteorites could still be explained "naturally, without biological intervention".
The scientists' findings, crediting Tamarind's work, will be published today in the Journal of Microscopy.
Great, the planet may have been seeded by some intergalactic vacationer emptying out the sewerage from an RV. BTW, where is Randy Quaid?
Moreton Bay, huh? I'd expect there *would* be bacteria in the soil where an old penal colony once stood.
To find them, Dr Taylor took along his dog, Tamarind. "She's my research assistant," he said, explaining he had taught her to sniff out sediments where the right bacteria lived. "The stuff smells like sewage."
Right... he had to "teach" the dog to sniff out sewage. Training the dog not to roll in it seems a bigger task.
...Tamarind was set loose, "she veered off the road, into the bush and five minutes later came back covered in mud".
See?!
If I were you I'd stay away from cross dogs. They might hurt you.
If I were you I'd stay away from cross dogs. They might hurt you.
Hardy harr harr, exit stage left '|:p)
Well that clinches it. We are all really Martians, and not Earthlings.
I believe they do.
Astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle has a good book on this subject titled, The Intelligent Universe.
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