On Wed, 04 Jun 1997 20:08:11 -0500, Lee Spencer wrote:
LS>The probability of life on Mars has taken a serious hit with the
>publication in Nature (387:377 22 May 97) of a letter from Scott et al. of
>Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology of evidence that the
>so-called low temperature carbonates of the so-called Martian rocks were in
>all probability the result of shock melting of monominerals which migrated
>into cracks in the pyroxene and solidified in seconds. Thus they could not
>have contained living microorganisms. But in all probability we will go
>and look anyway....
There is a good article by Yockey in the latest Origins and Design
18:1 where he expects that there will be some traces of earthly life
on Mars due to past asteroid impacts on Earth after life began:
"When at last Mars is explored by humans, some of the meteorites
they find may have come from the impact that caused the extinction
of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. The colliding object must have
been about 10 kilometers in diameter-that would be a rock bigger
than Mount Everest, which is only 8.8 kilometers high. The object
collided at a speed of 11 kilometers per second and developed an
energy of 100 million megatons of TNT. This energy is sufficient to
excavate a transient crater 45 to 60 kilometers deep. After the walls
slumped, the crater would still have been 17 to 20 kilometers deep.
The prime candidate for the site of collision is the buried Chicxulub
crater in the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. 19 The Chicxulub multi-
ring basin is about 180 kilometers in diameter, the result of one of the
largest collisions since the Late Heavy Bombardment during the
formation of Earth and Mars. The astronauts exploring Mars will
have no doubt about what to look for. Borings at the Chicxulub
crater have shown that in addition to the dolomite limestones, the
crater is underlain by anhydrite (CaSO4). The evidence for exchange
of meteorites between Earth and Mars is much stronger than the
evidence for "primitive life on Mars" presented by McKay et al."
(Yockey H.P., "Life on Mars? Did it Come from Earth?", Origins &
Design, Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter 1997, pp14-15) An extract of this
article (without the above quote) can be found at:
http://www.mrccos.com/arn/odesign/od181/mars181sum.htm
This is of course also the view of Hugh Ross:
"...the discovery of life's remains either on or from Mars would not
disturb a literal interpretation of the Bible. For more than a
decade scientists have known that large quantities of Earth-life,
some even with the potential to germinate, are transported to Mars by
the solar wind and meteorites. These transports have been moving
life or life's remains from Earth to Mars for at least the past four
billion years (a time frame that encompasses the 3.6- to
4.0-billion-year age estimate for the Martian meteorite 8). As I've
stated before, we can reasonably expect scientists to find life or
life remains either on Mars or on material from Mars. Such a
discovery would not prove that life spontaneously generates under
natural conditions. Rather, it would testify to how well God
designed life to survive environmental rigors. And, since conditions
on Mars some 3 to 4 billion years ago were more favorable for life
and for the formation and preservation of fossils, we should expect
that the best chance to find life remains will lie in Mars' most
ancient rocks." (Ross H., "Martian Meteorite Shows Signs of Life On
Mars?", August 1996. http://www.reasons.org/reasons/meteor.html)
Ross made the same point in 1995 in his "The Creator and the Cosmos",
pp144-145 and indeed in 1991 in his "The Fingerprint of God", p138.
God bless.
Steve
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