Life On Mars..?

[Le Monsieur]

On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, Keith A Henderson wrote:
> And each planet has a very, very, very characteristic fingerprint of the
> composition of 'trace' elements (unusual things like Rhenium, Thallium, Osmium,
> Iridium most likely).....so characteristic that it is absolutely impossible to
> get it wrong.  I can't remember exactly how they knew what that planetary
> signature was beforehand (it was something pretty ingenious), but once they
> were able to pin down what Mars' signature is, identifying meteorites on Earth
> as originating from Mars is cake now.
I would guess they figured it out from a combination of data from the
Viking(s?) and from radiospectroscopy info from a) the orbital sections
of the Vikings (did they have any instruments besides a big-arse
transmitter?) and/or b) from Earth satellites such as Hubble.

> Obviously, it's really easy to spot one sitting in a zillion square
> miles of ice (well it's easy to spot just about anything, and sometimes
> even things that aren't there :) ),
Anybody remember "The Thing"? :)

> I don't know about the bacteria issue...there is certainly some
> bacteria/life in Antarctica, although buried in the ice there's
> probably very little.  But I wouldn't count this out as a contamination
> problem.
Then again, Antarctica was most likely not frozen a few million years
ago, as 1) the world was a bit warmer and 2) Antarctica was not, um,
antarctic.  Of course, one could also assume that these meteorites buried
in the ice must have actually landed in pre-existing ice.  Otherwise
they'd be buried under the ice and the land underneath that, in which
case the scientists probably wouldn't have found them in the first place.
:)

Anyway, Keith, thank you for alleviating much of my skepticism.

Damon Capehart        | "I think we should eliminate semicolons from the
aka Le Monsieur       |  English language; nobody uses them anymore
dcapehar at utdallas.edu |  anyway." - one of Dilbert's anonymous coworkers