Re: Martian microbe

R. Joel Duff (duff@siu.edu)
Wed, 7 Aug 1996 08:24:42 -0500

At 11:03 PM 8/6/96, Glenn Morton you wrote:
>I just saw the Nightline report on the Martian microbes. The report will
>be in Science. Richard Zare stated that he had pictures of cell-like
>objects from the meteor plus hydrocarbons indicative of life. This
>reminds me of a photo in Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickranasighe's book
>_Living Comets_ p. 69. Objects that look very much like Pedomicrobium
>were found in the Murchison meteor.
>
>Amino acids extracted from the Murchison meteor are predominately of the
>left handed form which is the form of amino acid that living systems make.
>See Engel et al, "Carbon Isotope Composition of individual Amino Acids"
>Nature 348 Nov 1, 1990 pp 47-48 and Engel and Nagy, "Enantiomeric
>Composition of Amino Acids in the Murchison Meteorite" Nature 296 Apr. 29,
>1982 p. 838
I'm not sure but I thought I just heard this morning that this other report
of the Murchison Meteorite (it wasn't mentioned by name) has been now
debunked as being a case of contamination - thus the years of study and
scrutiny in the current study.
I think that the emphasis should be put on the word hydrocarbons, not
microbes (or cell-like things) as the popular press is already doing. They
apparently just found residue of what _could_ be squashed cells
(semi-fossilized). It will take a lot more than this for me to even begin
to believe in life elsewhere.
This reminds me of another question I had many years ago but didn't have
anyone around to give me any imput. What do we do about these evidences of
past "river" systems that are seen on the surface. This rock at the very
least does provide more evidence that running water (at least underground)
was once a very "real" event on Mars. This of course was a challenge to my
YEC friends but I haven't thought about these matters as they relate to
other models. On the surface it wouldn't seem to represent much of a
problem to ECs, PCs, or TEs.
I'm off to take a closer look at life on this planet.

Joel Duff
Dpt. Plant Biology
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901-6509