Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorites as hosts for seeds of life
>Ah yes - Hollywood; ever the source of wit. Half of it, anyway. > ...and vacuum is a gift that keeps on giving. It doesn't just give us >a lack of air - it boils water, leaving dessicated wreckage where cells >used to be. Hardly comparable with a scuba diver's environment. Right, sweat "boils" right here on earth if you want to put it that way, and lips get chapped if you don't remember the chapstick, so what. The original post discusses halite crystals found in meteorites and produced in evaporative environments. These crystals are naturally bottled water/ice in space. They appear to be quite effective natural space capsules (especially if a hardened spores were inside, like those found in the New Mexican Caverns). Further, halite crystals have been shown to hitchhike protected on meteorites like Zag, among others. The pressure comparison I make is fine and relevant when discussing the integrity of the crystals. A vacuum isn't much of a hurdle pressurewise given these capsules. If you wish to discuss scuba diving or other obvious situations on how to kill organisms, you've missed the point, have a different point to make, just want to be disagreeable, or some combination of the three. Common halite crystals could be an ideal vector for the interplanetary transport of bacterial spores. The pressures of a vacuum is weak enough that a standard bottle of Evian mineral water, properly twisted shut would have no problem with reasonable headspace(i.e., not filled to the top), to float around space near the Earth's orbit, and be no where near its burst point. That is another example of pressure as was the 10 meter sea depth, to make a point that the stresses caused by vacuum pressures are not always the problem Hollywood makes them to be, and just fine for bottle water in salt capsules. Saludos, Doug __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorites as hosts for seeds of life
> Mark Fr. wrote: >>To borrow from Jim Carrey, "Alrighty then!"...a cautionary >>tale about letting your hopes make a fool of your reason. > > "Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ***." > ...Jim Carrey > Ah yes - Hollywood; ever the source of wit. Half of it, anyway. ...and vacuum is a gift that keeps on giving. It doesn't just give us a lack of air - it boils water, leaving dessicated wreckage where cells used to be. Hardly comparable with a scuba diver's environment. MDF -- Marc Fries Postdoctoral Research Associate Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Laboratory 5251 Broad Branch Rd. NW Washington, DC 20015 PH: 202 478 7970 FAX: 202 478 8901 - I urge you to show your support to American servicemen and servicewomen currently serving in harm's way by donating items they personally request at: http://www.anysoldier.com (This is not an endorsement by the Geophysical Laboratory or the Carnegie Institution.) __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] THE ODDS OF LIFE
Everybody! Probabilities are tricky things. When they're imponderable, they just can not be estimated, except by guess and golly. Doug draws one conclusion from 100 bacteria. Marc draws the opposite. As for the mathematical odds of either one's case, it's like whether you like broccoli or not, imponderable and a matter of individual taste. For example, since all of you are alive, you probably think that the odds of life itself are reasonable. Well. that's a mere prejudice. Oh, tell me about the primordial soup and the inevitability of life... Let's cook up the minimum amount of DNA to a have a self-replicating strand, or about 600 bases. That isn't very much DNA. A very primitive virus might have 170,000 bases. A bacteria has 7,000,000 bases. You yourself have got 6,000,000,000 bases. No, 600 bases is easy, right? In information theory, the meaningfulness of a message is interpreted as the level of probability of the message, or the inverse of the odds that the data was generated randomly. It depends on the number of bits. What are those odds? Say you want to send a simple message: SEE SPOT RUN. Why not generate it randomly using the minimum character set. The odds are: 6.1 times 10 to the 23rd power to one. Get yourself a PC, program it to create sets of 13 random character strings at the rate of 10,000,000 sets per SECOND. Come back in about two billion years and pick up the printout. (Bring help; it's heavy.) Isn't it lucky that the alphabet of DNA is so much simpler? Only 4 characters (the bases), so the odds against the random creation of a 600 basepair string is "only" 4 to the 600th power to one. That's 10 to the 360th power to one. That's 1, followed by... 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 In words, you want it in words? That's ten nonillion nonillion googol googol googol to one... against. Still with me? Don't think about that number up there too much or too hard. It won't get any easier and eventually, your brain will turn to goo. Let's make it easy for Life. OK, the oceans of the early Earth had no more than 10 to the 44th power carbon atoms. Let's say they're ALL in nucleic acids already. I said I'd make it easy. To make it even easier, let's say all those bases are already assembled into ten basepair chunks. Let them react with each other at the rate of 100 reactions per second. Instant life, right? Wrong. It would take 10 to the 309th power years for it to happen. The universe won't last that long. Wait! The universe could already be that old; the wait it over; it's finally happened. Wrong. The universe is datable and young. What's wrong here? OK, OK, let's say EVERY star in EVERY galaxy in the ENTIRE universe has an Earth-like planet with oceans of organic nucleic acid sludge, all working overtime to churn out Life. That's 4 times 10 to the 42th power planets. Does it help? No. Not a bit. Well, a little. It still takes 2.5 times 10 to the 266th power years to produce Life. Forget it about it. Life is IMPOSSIBLE. It can't exist. There is NO life. All of you out there, the ones who think you are alive, you're delusional. You're a figment of your own imaginations. Why am I even talking to you? Go see a therapist. You have a problem. From this, some people conclude that our little insignificant planet contains the ONLY life anywhere in the universe. We're it. We're all there is. It's a fluke, never to be repeated. The universe is a desolate wasteland of dead rocks, frozen gases, exploding stars, and inorganic worlds: a collection of 100,000 billion billion chunks of dead matter and wonderful US. Panspermia, life elsewhere that is delivered to the Earth, just moves the problem further away but doesn't help the odds much, as we saw above. If we're all there is, I feel uneasy about it. Honestly, I don't want the responsibility. If we humans are all the intelligent Life there is, the universe is in deep trouble. If we divvy up the responsibility for the universe among six billion people, then I'm responsible for roughly 10 to the 34th power planets! Sheesh! I don't even have a pet... But, if that's true, life should never have happened at all, not on Earth, not anywhere. The odds are really against it. 10 to the 312th power to one against it happening in the first billion years on Earth. The notion that we're the only life in the universe is even more unlikely, in a purely human sense, than the idea that we're not. The only thing panspermia has going for it is that it is possible
[meteorite-list] Oriented meteorite
Hi List, I am looking for any oriented meteorite, except irons. Please get back to me off list! Thanks Bob Evans __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] dag 749
Hi list.I am looking for a piece of DAG 749,CO3.About 10 to 30 grams.Slice,fragment,endcut,individual.It does not matter.Please get back to me offlist.Thanks! steve Steve R.Arnold, Chicago, IL, 60120 Illinois Meteorites,Ltd! website url http://stormbringer60120.tripod.com __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Ad - 68 Excellent Auctions Ending - New Stuff!
Dear List, I have over 68 auctions ending this afternoon, most still at a bargain price. I have been adding seven or eight new items a week so you may want to take a look. Ebay dealers are starting to set fixed prices because there is not enough material coming in to replenish stocks due to the Oman situation and only a trickle coming out of NWA. Most of my items are started out at just 99 cents but fear I will have to do the same as other dealers soon. The amount of material coming out of the deserts has been disappointing, to say the least, so far this year. Not a single new Martian meteorite has been reported this year. For once, we are almost caught up with classifications and will continue to release new items until our stockpile is completely classified. The backlogs have been nearly eliminated in all but a few classification laboratories. To see this week's material click on this link: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZraremeteorites Thank you for looking and if you are bidding, good luck. Kind Regards, Adam Hupe The Hupe Collection Team LunarRock IMCA 2185 [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorites as hosts for seeds of life
Melt Through the Ice to Find Life Jul 19, 2005 - Scientists can tell us what our climate on Earth was like in past by examining ice cores taken from glaciers. Tiny bubbles of air are trapped in the ice and maintain a historical record of ancient atmospheres. The effects of life make their mark in these ice samples as well. What if you examined the icecaps on Mars, or the layers of ice on Europa? NASA is considering a proposal for a small spacecraft that would land on Mars or Europa and melt its way throught the ice, collecting data as it descended, searching for clues about the presence of life. Full Story Related Stories Discuss this Story - Original Message - From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 2:23 PM Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteorites as hosts for seeds of life Mark Fr. wrote: To borrow from Jim Carrey, "Alrighty then!"...a cautionary tale about letting your hopes make a fool of your reason. "Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ***." ...Jim Carrey Definitely no further comments (I already promised), let me add another interesting topic for discussion: _Halosimplex carlsbadense_ " variation 250 million years old" dated to the age of the "Great Dying", the worst documented extention in the Fossil record "P/T Boundary". Surviving the breakup of Pangea and riding the plates of continental drift over 10,000 kilometers? Chicxulub?, a minor event at the K/T Boundary when they were already 185 million years old... This is an interesting organism. Google it for what is out there. It is not a living fossil. It was revived. Viable spores were extracted 5-10 years ago from inside the similar sorts of halite crystals found in certain meteorites we all know and love. The probability of contamination was claimed to be less than 1 in a billion using the latest and greatest protocols developed by NASA. Now, only 5% of the samples, collected in the Permian salt deposits in the drill samples from the New Mexico caverns 600 meters below actually contained viable spores in their suspended, basically dead state. Although the news isn't hot off the press, they, in fact, were viable and live once again today, according to their discoverer, long after going "extinct". The genomes of these extremophiles and characteristics and requirements are being/have been studied, and they turn out to be somewhat different, though related to certain modern _Bacillus_, if my short term memory serves. 250 million years is a long time, and we've seen since then exquisite "bottled water" meteorites being marketed shamelessly. Probability of transfer of these organisms from a world like Mars that dies during a quarter of a billion years afterwards? Would a small fraction survive near absolute zero temperatures if frozen gently? Is there anything magic about 250 million years, or could it well have been 500 million? I don't know, they probably don't have souls or other higher order complexities to worry about and are basically remarkable resilient bubbles formed into spores, but maybe Sterling or Mark knows the answer. Where life may be found and how it survives is one of the most difficult questions space scientists are wrestling to the limits. We can be pretty confident, though, that wherever water once was, and drys, halite crystals are hard to avoid. A vacuum is only -14.7 pounds/in^2. Could a bacterium survive in a 'halite crystal' from Mars to Earth? Yes. Exploding bodies and so forth may happen in the movies, but much greater pressures are routinely experienced by ocean divers right here on Earth. All that is required for recovery is a gentle equilibration so they don't get the bends. The pressure under just 10 meters of water is an additional 14.7 psi, the same differential between the earth and space. Sure vacuum has its challenges, but a normal person sucking a lollypop can probably get at least half way there (7 pounds per square inch). Disclaimer: I do not "want" to believe in Panspermia. It is just a theory, like all the rest of the scientific ideas on origins and proliferation of life. Best wishes, Doug __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list menubutton.gif Description: GIF image __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorites as hosts for seeds of life
can't help but think that when it comes to "life", we should appropriate Pascal's third wager, and always bet on it. in whatever form, wherever we look, life, like faith, manages. - Original Message - From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 2:23 PM Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteorites as hosts for seeds of life Mark Fr. wrote: To borrow from Jim Carrey, "Alrighty then!"...a cautionary tale about letting your hopes make a fool of your reason. "Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ***." ...Jim Carrey Definitely no further comments (I already promised), let me add another interesting topic for discussion: _Halosimplex carlsbadense_ " variation 250 million years old" dated to the age of the "Great Dying", the worst documented extention in the Fossil record "P/T Boundary". Surviving the breakup of Pangea and riding the plates of continental drift over 10,000 kilometers? Chicxulub?, a minor event at the K/T Boundary when they were already 185 million years old... This is an interesting organism. Google it for what is out there. It is not a living fossil. It was revived. Viable spores were extracted 5-10 years ago from inside the similar sorts of halite crystals found in certain meteorites we all know and love. The probability of contamination was claimed to be less than 1 in a billion using the latest and greatest protocols developed by NASA. Now, only 5% of the samples, collected in the Permian salt deposits in the drill samples from the New Mexico caverns 600 meters below actually contained viable spores in their suspended, basically dead state. Although the news isn't hot off the press, they, in fact, were viable and live once again today, according to their discoverer, long after going "extinct". The genomes of these extremophiles and characteristics and requirements are being/have been studied, and they turn out to be somewhat different, though related to certain modern _Bacillus_, if my short term memory serves. 250 million years is a long time, and we've seen since then exquisite "bottled water" meteorites being marketed shamelessly. Probability of transfer of these organisms from a world like Mars that dies during a quarter of a billion years afterwards? Would a small fraction survive near absolute zero temperatures if frozen gently? Is there anything magic about 250 million years, or could it well have been 500 million? I don't know, they probably don't have souls or other higher order complexities to worry about and are basically remarkable resilient bubbles formed into spores, but maybe Sterling or Mark knows the answer. Where life may be found and how it survives is one of the most difficult questions space scientists are wrestling to the limits. We can be pretty confident, though, that wherever water once was, and drys, halite crystals are hard to avoid. A vacuum is only -14.7 pounds/in^2. Could a bacterium survive in a 'halite crystal' from Mars to Earth? Yes. Exploding bodies and so forth may happen in the movies, but much greater pressures are routinely experienced by ocean divers right here on Earth. All that is required for recovery is a gentle equilibration so they don't get the bends. The pressure under just 10 meters of water is an additional 14.7 psi, the same differential between the earth and space. Sure vacuum has its challenges, but a normal person sucking a lollypop can probably get at least half way there (7 pounds per square inch). Disclaimer: I do not "want" to believe in Panspermia. It is just a theory, like all the rest of the scientific ideas on origins and proliferation of life. Best wishes, Doug __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] want social circle
want to buy 10g min. of social circle, ga. for ca$h or can trade 13g sardis, ga for it. i will be gradually switching over to yahoo mail (it has 100 FREE megs of storage). please cc to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Ward's Meteorite Casts
Does anybody have or know of a reference for pictures of the Ward's meteorite casts? I received a cast and a label but I don't think the label matches the cast. Any help would be greatly appricheated. __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Meteorites as hosts for seeds of life
Mark Fr. wrote: >To borrow from Jim Carrey, "Alrighty then!"...a cautionary >tale about letting your hopes make a fool of your reason. "Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ***." ...Jim Carrey Definitely no further comments (I already promised), let me add another interesting topic for discussion: _Halosimplex carlsbadense_ " variation 250 million years old" dated to the age of the "Great Dying", the worst documented extention in the Fossil record "P/T Boundary". Surviving the breakup of Pangea and riding the plates of continental drift over 10,000 kilometers? Chicxulub?, a minor event at the K/T Boundary when they were already 185 million years old... This is an interesting organism. Google it for what is out there. It is not a living fossil. It was revived. Viable spores were extracted 5-10 years ago from inside the similar sorts of halite crystals found in certain meteorites we all know and love. The probability of contamination was claimed to be less than 1 in a billion using the latest and greatest protocols developed by NASA. Now, only 5% of the samples, collected in the Permian salt deposits in the drill samples from the New Mexico caverns 600 meters below actually contained viable spores in their suspended, basically dead state. Although the news isn't hot off the press, they, in fact, were viable and live once again today, according to their discoverer, long after going "extinct". The genomes of these extremophiles and characteristics and requirements are being/have been studied, and they turn out to be somewhat different, though related to certain modern _Bacillus_, if my short term memory serves. 250 million years is a long time, and we've seen since then exquisite "bottled water" meteorites being marketed shamelessly. Probability of transfer of these organisms from a world like Mars that dies during a quarter of a billion years afterwards? Would a small fraction survive near absolute zero temperatures if frozen gently? Is there anything magic about 250 million years, or could it well have been 500 million? I don't know, they probably don't have souls or other higher order complexities to worry about and are basically remarkable resilient bubbles formed into spores, but maybe Sterling or Mark knows the answer. Where life may be found and how it survives is one of the most difficult questions space scientists are wrestling to the limits. We can be pretty confident, though, that wherever water once was, and drys, halite crystals are hard to avoid. A vacuum is only -14.7 pounds/in^2. Could a bacterium survive in a 'halite crystal' from Mars to Earth? Yes. Exploding bodies and so forth may happen in the movies, but much greater pressures are routinely experienced by ocean divers right here on Earth. All that is required for recovery is a gentle equilibration so they don't get the bends. The pressure under just 10 meters of water is an additional 14.7 psi, the same differential between the earth and space. Sure vacuum has its challenges, but a normal person sucking a lollypop can probably get at least half way there (7 pounds per square inch). Disclaimer: I do not "want" to believe in Panspermia. It is just a theory, like all the rest of the scientific ideas on origins and proliferation of life. Best wishes, Doug __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Bizarre Boulders Litter Enceladus' Surface
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn7692--bizarre-boulders-litter-saturn-moons-icy-surface.html Bizarre boulders litter Saturn moon's icy surface Stuart Clark New Scientist 19 July 2005 The Cassini spacecraft has coasted to its closest encounter yet - skimming just 175 kilometres above Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. But astronomers are at a loss to explain its observations. On 14 July, Cassini swooped in for an unprecedented close-up view of the wrinkled moon. Its Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) camera has since returned pictures of a boulder-strewn landscape that is currently beyond explanation. The "boulders" appear to range between 10 and 20 metres in diameter in the highest-resolution images, which can resolve features just 4 m across. "That's a surface texture I have never seen anywhere else in the solar system," says David Rothery, a planetary geologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. Cracks crisscross Enceladus's surface - possibly as a result of the moon being repeatedly squeezed and stretched by the gravity of Saturn and other moons nearby. But Rothery points out the boulders avoid - rather than fill - the cracks. This might indicate that the fracturing took place after the boulders had already formed. Alien landscape John Spencer, a Cassini team member at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, US, agrees that the images are puzzling. "You would expect to see small craters or a smooth, snow-covered landscape at this resolution," he told New Scientist. "This is just strange. In fact, I have a really hard time understanding what I'm seeing." NASA scientists have been locked in discussions since 15 July and are expected to pass judgment on what they think this peculiar surface might be later on Tuesday. But Elizabeth Turtle, a Cassini imaging team member at the University of Arizona in Tucson, US, warns there will be no quick answers. "Trying to figure out what is going on is going to take a lot longer than a weekend of swapped emails," she says. Heat source These images - like those from previous flybys - reveal a surface clawed with fractures and swollen with ridges. It could point to a substantial heat source within the moon, driving the internal convection of ice. And this raises the possibility that Enceladus could possess a sub-surface ocean similar to that on Jupiter's moon Europa. That could be a problem, according to Spencer. Superficially, the two worlds bear a passing resemblance, but Enceladus is six times smaller than Europa. "Enceladus seems too small to have enough internal heat to create a sub-surface ocean," he says. "But, since we don't understand the surface, we might not understand the interior either," he says. Turtle, however, is sceptical of the ocean hypothesis and says "we see no evidence of liquid flows on the surface". Key information in this debate may come from Cassini's Dual Technique Magnetometer. It was fluctuations in Europa's magnetic field that finally convinced scientists that it harboured a subsurface ocean. Perhaps the same will be true of Enceladus. At present, the data is being analysed by scientists at Imperial College in London, UK. Regardless of the outcome, NASA has already decided that Enceladus is worth an even closer look. They have scheduled another grazing flyby of the moon in 2008, when Cassini will skim even closer than ever - to within 100 km of the boulder-strewn surface. __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Mission for Meteorites Descends on Drayton, Canada
http://www.draytonvalleywesternreview.com/story.php?id=173088 Mission for meteorites descends on Drayton Courtney Whalen Drayton Vally Western Review (Canada) July 20, 2005 Was it a bird? Was it a plane? It probably wasn't Superman, but maybe it was a meteorite. Local residents wondering about strange rocks found on their property will get the chance to see if it really is something from space when the prairie meteorite search stops in Drayton Valley. The search, put on by the University of Calgary, is in its sixth year and will be setting up shop in Drayton Valley in the hopes of discovering meteorites that have dropped into unsuspecting fields in the area. The project travels to rural communities throughout the Prairies examining objects brought in by local residents (especially farmers), hoping to find specimens of meteors. This summer the university's meteor man is Tom Weedmark and he will be heading to the Drayton Valley Municipal Library Aug. 5 from 1-5 p.m. He said the point of the project is to get the public's help in locating possible meteorites that the university can then study. Rural prairie communities and especially farmers are one of the main groups he hopes to target because he feels they have the best chance of finding meteorites. "Farmers have big plots of land and they're out there working it all the time," said Weedmark. "They are out there picking up rocks and throwing them off the fields and they know the area too, they know the land they have and know what something odd might look like." He said the open house on Aug. 5 will give people who have discovered something on their land that they think might be a meteorite to bring it in for positive identification. "We'll identify what they have and if we think they have a meteorite we'll take it back to the university and do some tests," he said. "We"ll find out if it is (a meteorite) and what kind it is." Weedmark said if the rock is identified as a meteorite, it will be returned to the person who brought it in, although the university will retain a small portion to examine. He also said those involved in the project can explain what options are available to the owner, whether they wish to sell the meteorite, donate it somewhere or simply keep it. As well as being a discovery mission for the university, Weedmark said anyone with an interest in learning more about meteorites is welcome to come in and talk to him. Meteorites come in three types: stony meteorites, which are the most common, can often look like certain types of regular rocks, but are generally more dense. Iron meteorites are made mostly of iron and nickel and so are usually very heavy for their size, have irregular shapes and a strong attraction for magnets. The rarest form of meteorite is the stony/iron variety, which are either made of greenish-yellow crystals or chunks and veins of metal, basaltic achondrite and glassy material. Anyone who thinks they may have found a meteorite but is unable to attend the Aug. 5 open house can contact Weedmark at 403-852-5613, or professor Alan Hildebrand (who heads up the project) at the University of Calgary at 403-220-2291. __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] AD - NEW L3.8 - Gorgeous, Large Slices
Dear List Members, I would like to announce a new and beautiful L3.8, NWA 2704. I was able to get some nice large slices from this fresh meteorite. You will find these competitively priced under my eBay seller name, naturesvault. Here are the direct links to what is available on eBay (a few specimens have already sold with the "Buy it Now" option): New - NWA 2704 Striking L3.8 Meteorite 31.3g Complete Slice http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6546174274&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1 23.9g Complete Slice http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6546174561&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1 14.8g Part Slice http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6546174894&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1 7.8g Part Slice http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6546175171&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1 To see these and many other excellent deals, click on one of the above links and then click "View seller's other items". That, or go to eBay and search for items by seller, naturesvault. Best regards, Greg Hupe The Hupe Collection naturesvault (eBay) [EMAIL PROTECTED] IMCA 2185 __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Mars life concerns
To borrow from Jim Carrey, "Alrighty then!" We'll go one at a time here... > 1. What you seemed to be emphasizing in your first post was the > probability > that the astronauts contaminated specifically the (apparently virgin) > part of > the camera insulation during there journey back to earth. 1) The camera was not a "virgin" sample. Not even close. See Baalke's posts. > 2. A typical sneeze has, what, 50,000 diverse microbe individuals? A > typical human hand, how many, 100,000,000 diverse individuals (95% under > the > fingernails)? > 3. And now you would expect me to believe using "an iota of horse sense" > that all 100 organisms being identical are the result of a someone > "sneezing on > a lab bench", adding that you are reasonably sure there were other > microbes > there, too that went undetected and blame it on unknown errors and your > view 2,3) Again, the culturing methods used in 1969 were very clumsy. See the following as one of many examples: http://www.genex2.dri.edu/research/microzoo.htm Note especially the comment, "we can cultivate 0.01 -0.1 % of the total organisms from seawater samples". That is very typical for culturing. When you choose a growth medium it will be optimized for a class of microbes. Most other microbes won't grow very well or at all in it. Ergo, you miss the vast majority of microbes in a sample this way. If you use a medium "tuned" for bacilli then you'll miss all the fungi and what-not. All hail the mighty god of horse sense. As a sort-of aside, that's why NASA will never launch another Viking-type life detection instrument again. When you rely on culturing microbes then you automatically cut your chance of detection by 90-95% or more. It also assumes that whatever lives "out there" would actually grow on a Terran growth medium. > of limitations in analysis? You could be right, of course, we'll never > know. > Because in the end you just have a series of assumptions you are making > regarding an analysis done by a technician before you were born, in which > you > impose own pet biases as well. We do know, actually - quite well. See above, and the other posts in this thread outlining the handling of the camera. And these points I raise aren't "pet biases". They are known limitations of the techniques used in the 1960's. Data taken with what are today outdated techniques are not useless, BUT you have to interpret them using what is known about the technique for good and for bad. For example, when Raman discovered the type of spectroscopy that is named after him, his light source was the sun and his detector was his own eyes (both of them, indeed). His discovery is still valid today, but there was no way that he could collect the kind of information that I can get from my brand-new, expensive confocal Raman imager. > 4. You also agreed with my pirated statement from the NASA website > pointing > out the apparent fact that none of the other rocks or camera parts were > contaminated (detected as such), but say this only further proves it was > contamination because it wasn't repeated? That is uncommon horse sense. > My sense > tell me there would have been at least one more "false positive" setting > off > bells and whistles in all those rocks that were handled in a similar > manner by > the astronauts regarding the possibility of contamination. You do realize that your entire argument hinges on that one, singular measurement, yes? Never mind the hundreds or thousands of other measurements that they took that said otherwise... I repeat: good measurements are repeatable measurements. > 5. I don't know why the positive result was specific to exactly one > species > and 50-100 dormant individuals of this species -and only this species- > were > detected and somehow subsequently cultured at the CDC. I do believe it Repeat of argument 2/3. See above for refutation. > The plot thickens > aimlessly... No, it tells a story. A story about a single measurement of a common contaminant on a sample that was not handled in an aseptic fashion. I'm not "revising results" or exaggerating problems with the methodology of the times. If anything, I'm impressed that those folks only came up with a single instance (that I'm aware of) of microbes where they logically shouldn't be found. That says to me that their study was careful and thorough. However, microbes are everywhere, even in NASA's clean rooms: http://ijs.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/53/1/165 This is not an open controversy - it's actually very straightforward instance of laboratory contamination, and a cautionary tale about letting your hopes make a fool of your reason. Cheers, MDF -- Marc Fries Postdoctoral Research Associate Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Laboratory 5251 Broad Branch Rd. NW Washington, DC 20015 PH: 202 478 7970 FAX: 202 478 8901 - I urge you to show your support to American servicemen and servicew
Re: [meteorite-list] Mars life concerns
> > 1. What you seemed to be emphasizing in your first post was the probability > that the astronauts contaminated specifically the (apparently virgin) part > of > the camera insulation during there journey back to earth. To me, the most likely point of contamination occurred when the camera was brought into the Apollo capsule. There would be ingassing into the camera when it was brought in from the vacuum of space. The fact that the camera wasn't in a sealed container for 5 days after that didn't help either. I can't ruled out a laboratory breach as Jaffe noted, either, but I think the more likely cause was the camera being exposed to the air within the Apollo capsule. Ron Baalke __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Mars life concerns
> > 1 to 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376. > > The above number represents the probability of a coin being flipped 100 > times and yielding 100 tails in a row. Maybe I missed a factor of two, but > that > is really not important. (and for 50 times it is still on the order of > Avogadros's number). The point being, the probability of getting 100 > organisms of > all the same species from the zoo that lives in, on and around humans is > much > worse than these odds, due to competition. So maybe double the amount of > digits to the left of the decimal point? Or maybe with some dependence they > improve...that's would be quite an improvement...to "most likely". That's a big number, but totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The scientists took a swab of a foam insulation from the camera, and incubated it for 4 days, and observed growth of S. mitis. What are the odds of getting 100 organisms after 4 days of incubation allowing it to grow and multiply? Ron Baalke __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Mars life concerns
Mark Fr. wrote: >There's also a non-zero probability that gravity will reverse, >time will speed up suddenly, evolution will cease, and that >monkeys will fly out of my butt. Hi Mark, Now that was a vile (bile?) respone! Was it from a John Carrey movie or an original? I'll keep my reply short just responding to the "scientifically" reasonable objections, as your branded horse sense-based arguments strike me as much weaker that you realize. 1. What you seemed to be emphasizing in your first post was the probability that the astronauts contaminated specifically the (apparently virgin) part of the camera insulation during there journey back to earth. 2. A typical sneeze has, what, 50,000 diverse microbe individuals? A typical human hand, how many, 100,000,000 diverse individuals (95% under the fingernails)? 3. And now you would expect me to believe using "an iota of horse sense" that all 100 organisms being identical are the result of a someone "sneezing on a lab bench", adding that you are reasonably sure there were other microbes there, too that went undetected and blame it on unknown errors and your view of limitations in analysis? You could be right, of course, we'll never know. Because in the end you just have a series of assumptions you are making regarding an analysis done by a technician before you were born, in which you impose own pet biases as well. 4. You also agreed with my pirated statement from the NASA website pointing out the apparent fact that none of the other rocks or camera parts were contaminated (detected as such), but say this only further proves it was contamination because it wasn't repeated? That is uncommon horse sense. My sense tell me there would have been at least one more "false positive" setting off bells and whistles in all those rocks that were handled in a similar manner by the astronauts regarding the possibility of contamination. 5. I don't know why the positive result was specific to exactly one species and 50-100 dormant individuals of this species -and only this species- were detected and somehow subsequently cultured at the CDC. I do believe it is a good argument against that random sneeze or astronaut sweat which targetted the inner insulation. And if makes me speculate if that particular organism is particularly hardy as a space traveller, under the selective pressures and circumstances that could have been present. The good news is all is easily testable. It is interesting to note that as Ron mentioned a few NASA employee objections, there is also a view from an analyst within the CDC: That the NASA post flight handling at the Houston lab under Jaffe is the most likely point of contamination, if contamination could have occurred. The plot thickens aimlessly... My problem here is not to acknowledge a possibility of post-contamination. It is the confidence which you have in your exaggerated statements of probability in trying to revise results you feel you know best due to your training. There is a reason this remains an open controversy. Send those contaminated monkeys back where they came from... Se acabó Doug __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Mars life concerns
> > Mark F. wrote: > > >First off, the microbes on the Surveyor camera were most likely > >introduced by the astronauts themselves during handling. > > Mark, Where were you when the damage was supposedly done in Nov. 1969? You > speak quite authoritatively, as if you were sitting there in the > supervisor's > chair watching the analysis being mucked up. Mark's comments were regarding the possible contamination by the astronauts due the camera not being in quarantine. Jaffe, the Surveyor project scientist, was there in 1969, and his comments about the possible contamination breach in the laboratory analysis aftwards on Earth are a matter of public record. > Note: "No other life forms were found in soil samples retrieved by the > Apollo missions or by two Soviet unmanned sampling missions, although amino > acids > - not necessarily of biological origin - were found in soil retrieved by the > Apollo astronauts.)", So: why in the camera, inside what has been described > a > virgin insulation material on its interior??? Were hundreds of pounds of > Moon rocks treated differently from the camera, or do we have a reasonable > control of "sorts"? Surely other rocks and soil would have come back > positive, > or is one of the astronauts playing a dirty joke against all odds? You bring up an excellent point. It turns out the Apollo rock samples were handled differently than the Surveyor 3 camera. The Moon rocks were photographed and then sealed in a plastic bag when they were collected on the lunar surface. The plastic bags were then sealed in a special box container, which wasn't opened until it was returned to Earth - and only then they were opened in a vacuum chamber. The Moon rocks were never directly exposed to the astronauts or the air in the Apollo spacecraft. The Surveyor 3 camera, on the other hand, was simply stored in an unsealed backpack. The backpack was stowed in the Lunar Module, and then later moved into Command Module. This did allow exposure to potential contamination from the astronauts and the air in the Apollo spacecraft for over 5 days. Upon return to Earth, the backpack with the camera was sent by jet to Lunar Receiving Lab in Houston, Texas. There, the camera was finally placed in quarantine by being removed from the backpack and heat sealed into two Teflon bags. Ron Baalke __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] A nice H3
Hello I have put 2 slices of a new H3 chondrite, NWA 2179, take a look to the nice matrix full of chondrules http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6547434413&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6547434485&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1 Matteo M come Meteorite - Matteo Chinellato Via Triestina 126/A - 30030 - TESSERA, VENEZIA, ITALY Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sale Site: http://www.mcomemeteorite.it Collection Site: http://www.mcomemeteorite.info MSN Messanger: spacerocks at hotmail.com EBAY.COM:http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/mcomemeteorite/ ___ Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Mars life concerns
>First off, the microbes on the Surveyor camera were most likely > introduced by the astronauts themselves during handling. The camera > was kept in the Apollo lander and then the command module along with > the astronauts, without any sort of contamination protection, for the > entire trip back to Earth. Between them and the NASA ground staff that > unloaded the Apollo module and what-not, by far the easier answer for > the presence of common human-dwelling microbes is introduction by > contamination rather than extended survival in a radiation-heavy hard > vacuum. Most people don't realize the Surveyor 3 camera was not placed into quarantine until it was returned to Earth. Because of this, contanimation by the astronauts cannot be ruled out. Ron Baalke __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] strange magnetic rock from China
Hi All, few week ago an Italian mineral collector received from China some boxes full of mineral and rock, he found some heavy stone. He gave me one of this strange, very heavy and highly magnetic object. Here's a pictures (172Kb): http://web.tiscali.it/francesco.moser/Mekong.jpg I think this is one of the meteorwrong from Mekong River in "as found condition", any idea??? Thanks Ciao <><><> Francesco Moser http://web.tiscali.it/francesco.moser/ IMCA #1510 www.imca.cc AAT www.astrofilitrentini.it __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Mars life concerns
Howdy
"Unscientific", eh? (--truly vile response deleted---)
No, I wasn't there when the samples were analyzed. Hell, I wasn't
even born yet. Luckily for me that's not a prerequisite for owning a
fully functioning iota of horse sense. None of the other samples, either
from the lunar samples or from the Surveyor, turned up a
positive signal. This is actually evidence that the solitary positive
signal is a fluke; an anomaly; an outlier. A truly believable
measurement would be -=repeatable=-. Where measurements are
concerned, and especially microbial measurements where some level of
contamination is almost a certainty, once is an accident. Twice is a
coincidence. As a rule of thumb, only when you can repeat your
measurement at least three times does it begin to gain respectibility.
Your numbers show some skill in mathematics but utterly fail in logic.
The presence of 100 microbes does not require a coin flip to decide if
each one will exist. The presence of 100 microbes of the same type means
that someone sneezed on the desktop. (See? Logic has a place here.) Even
the presence of the same single type of bacteria is
pointless - the flower of 1960's microbiology measurement technology was
culturing, a notoriously inaccurate and contamination-prone technique.
Even today, in the modern microbiology lab I work in, we routinely turn up
contaminated cultures. Often all it takes is a single contaminating
microbe to ruin a culture plate or liquid culture, and the only real way
around it is to repeat the efforts and discard the flukes, anomalies, and
outliers. Culturing also automatically excludes 90-95% of all the
possible critters that you're trying to detect, so in all likelihood there
were other microbes along with S. mitis, they just went undetected.
There is a non-zero probability that the S. mitis were actually
retrieved from Surveyor. The likelihood is FAR, FAR GREATER, however,
that the microbes were introduced during non-sterile storage in the
confined space of the Apollo spacecraft with three astronauts who had
gone without showering for many days, or during subsequent handling on
Earth. It would be "nonscientific" to ignore these facts in favor of a
pet theory.
That's kinda like panspermia, actually. Sure, there's a non-zero
probability that microbes can survive being severely shocked repeatedly,
frozen, vacuum dessicated, irradiated, and then dropped into an alien
environment and surviving. There's also a non-zero probability that
gravity will reverse, time will speed up suddenly, evolution will cease,
and that monkeys will fly out of my butt.
Done.
MDF
> Mark F. wrote:
>
>>First off, the microbes on the Surveyor camera were most likely
introduced by the astronauts themselves during handling.
>
> Mark, Where were you when the damage was supposedly done in Nov. 1969?
You
> speak quite authoritatively, as if you were sitting there in the
supervisor's
> chair watching the analysis being mucked up. I don't think you were
the
> "unnamed member of Jaffe's staff", though, because you say you are a
post-doctoral student now...It's possible there was a breach, but your
concept of
> probability ("most likely") simply and in your own words I borrowed:
"is
> bunk."
>
> 1 to 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376.
>
> The above number represents the probability of a coin being flipped 100
times and yielding 100 tails in a row. Maybe I missed a factor of two,
but that
> is really not important. (and for 50 times it is still on the order of
Avogadros's number). The point being, the probability of getting 100
organisms of
> all the same species from the zoo that lives in, on and around humans
is
> much
> worse than these odds, due to competition. So maybe double the amount
of
> digits to the left of the decimal point? Or maybe with some dependence
they
> improve...that's would be quite an improvement...to "most likely".
>
> Sure the experiment could have gone wrong, sure there are as many
possibly
> explanations as an active imagination will conjure...and sure I will
embrace
> completely Ron's evidence to the extent it is scientific (unfortunately not
> much of it is, though it is good to know), enough to form a question
mark
> here.
> But your personal bias really is about as invalid as your unscientific
> thoughts on panspermia.
>
> And I still am unclear why the 1998 NASA page, illustrated with cultures
> and
> paraphenalia, I cited outlining the history of the bugs is on the NASA
website with no mention of breaches of sterilization nor subsequent
contamination,
> if this is so obvious to some of you?
>
> Note: "No other life forms were found in soil samples retrieved by the
Apollo missions or by two Soviet unmanned sampling missions, although
amino acids
> - not necessarily of biological origin - were found in soil retrieved by
> the
> Apollo astronauts.)", So: why in the camera, inside what has been
described a
> virgin insulation material on its
Re: [meteorite-list] Mars rover pollution
On Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:25:12 +0100, "mark ford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >There are plenty of microbes on Earth which could survive on Mars, there >may well be some yet undiscovered ones that could thrive on mars for all >we know. Define "survive". I don't personally think that there is a single living thing on or in the Earth that can live, metabolize, and reproduce (my definition of "survive") in a deeply sub-zero, waterless, radiation bathed near vaccuum environment. (And we aren't talking about what it might be like hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface of Mars, because these organisms have no way to get there from the surface). > >I am sure they could have sterilised the rovers once in space if they >had the will, and once the rovers have finished their task on the >surface they could have initiated some kind of auto-sterilise/destruct >sequence using explosives, to prevent internal contamination leaching to >the outside world once the rovers degrade, got to be better than >spraying with ethane and hoping that the odds make it 'unlikley' - >unlikely is not good enough. There is a line where due diligence ends and utter paranoia begins. With a really good telescope, you can ALMOST see that line off in the distance from this position. __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] unlimited budget?
"I am sure they could have sterilised the rovers once in space if they had the will,"[and the money]parenthesis my own. Hi Marc and List, NASA's tight finances don't allow them to pursue every great idea that comes down the pike. The reality is working within strict constraints to maintain a viable program, in the face of micro observation and macro criticism. The late 60's are over. Other priorities prevail. Jerry Flaherty __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
RE: [meteorite-list] Mars rover pollution
Hi, I'd like to chip in here as this is one of my all time major soapbox issues! The point about sterilising the Rovers being 'very difficult' is a fair one, but how the hell can you send a probe to potentially look for signs of life, when it is carrying unknown and possibly yet-undiscovered bacteria There are plenty of microbes on Earth which could survive on Mars, there may well be some yet undiscovered ones that could thrive on mars for all we know. What ever the case, IF we find life on Mars (I don't personally believe we ever will) but we will never be 100% sure that it is not an unknown terrestrial organism released into the Martian atmosphere by human activity, the mars life experiment is already a failure in my book! I am sorry but when I see pictures of technicians arrogantly drinking coffee and not wearing masks when they are constructing such vital scientific probes/rovers It really annoys me, how dare they, we are not talking about a communications satellite, but a pristine vitally important [entire planet]. I don't even drink coffee when I am working on industrial electronics let alone space probes!! The standards of work at JPL/Nasa are clearly in need of an overhaul. I am sure they could have sterilised the rovers once in space if they had the will, and once the rovers have finished their task on the surface they could have initiated some kind of auto-sterilise/destruct sequence using explosives, to prevent internal contamination leaching to the outside world once the rovers degrade, got to be better than spraying with ethane and hoping that the odds make it 'unlikley' - unlikely is not good enough. Still it's too late know. Best Mark Ford __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] sun correction - correction ;-)
Hey Dave, Might be a browser thing! Bernd did say 3100 but the degrees may display differently on some computers?! (I'm not sure to be honest.) http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2005-July/176190.html Cheers, Jeff - Original Message - From: Dave Harris To: metlist Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 4:33 PM Subject: [meteorite-list] sun correction Hi, "The surface temperature is a relatively cool 31000K (i.e. colder than our Sun)." .Hi Bernd,. I think you must mean 3100k - our photospheric temp is 5700k! Finger trouble I know! pedantically yours dave IMCA #0092 Sec.BIMS www.bimsociety.org __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
