Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, finishing its mission at our Moon, sends a last bit of information from the probe mass spectrometer on board the Indian payload near the south pole, "Carbon, Carbon, I sense Carbon." What could it mean, what could it mean? Could there be, or have been, life on the Moon? What say you?
- LRK -
----------------------------------------
http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_indian-scientists-detect-signs-of-life-on-moon_1322785
Indian scientists detect signs of life on Moon
Bhargavi Kerur / DNA - Saturday, December 12, 2009 1:48 IST
Bangalore: Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) are on the brink of a path-breaking discovery. They may have found signs of life in some form or the other on the Moon.
They believe so because scientific instruments on India's first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, picked up signatures of organic matter on parts of the Moon's surface, Surendra Pal, associate director, Isro Satellite Centre (Isac), said at the international radar symposium here on Friday.
Organic matter consists of organic compounds, which consists of carbon -- the building block of life.
It indicates the formation of life or decay of a once-living matter.
Pal said the signatures were relayed back to the Bylalu deep space network station near Bangalore by the mass spectrometer on board the Indian payload, the moon impact probe (MIP), on November 14, 2008.
The relay of data happened moments before it crashed near the Moon's south pole. The MIP was the first experiment of the Chandrayaan-1 mission, which was launched on October 22, 2008.
snip
----------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1
Some forum discussion about the statement of possible signs of/for life on the Moon.
- LRK -
----------------------------------------
http://www.bautforum.com/space-exploration/98025-indian-scientists-detect-signs-life-moon.html
Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum
----------------------------------------
Did you see the movie, or read the book "The Andromeda Strain"?
I was on an airplane bound for Thailand while reading this "Top Secret" book and reports of slain animals were in the news. :-)
- LRK -
----------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
The Andromeda Strain (1969), by Michael Crichton, is a techno-thriller novel documenting the efforts of a team of scientists investigating a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that rapidly and fatally clots human blood while, in other people, inducing insanity that mostly ended in the insane people committing suicide or murder-suicide. It became a New York Times Bestseller. This novel established Michael Crichton as a best-selling genre author.
snip
----------------------------------------
We have dust from space hitting us all the time, as would the Moon. Then there are meteors with hydrocarbons which may have struck the Moon as well.
- LRK -
----------------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/2008/Origins_of_life_research.html
NASA Identifies Carbon-rich Molecules in Meteors as the 'Origin of Life' 09.24.08
Tons, perhaps tens of tons, of carbon molecules in dust particles and meteorites fall on Earth daily. Meteorites are especially valuable to astronomers because they provide relatively big chunks of carbon molecules that are easily analyzed in the laboratory. In the past few years, researchers have noticed that most meteorite carbon are molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are very stable compounds and are survivors.
PAHs are the most common carbon-rich compound in the universe. They are found in everything from distant galaxies to charbroiled hamburgers and engine soot. When they are first formed, or found in space, their structures resemble pieces of chicken wire, fused six-sided rings. However, when found in meteorites, these aromatic rings are carrying extra hydrogen or oxygen.
Scientists at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. performed laboratory experiments that explain the process by which these meteoritic hydrocarbons attract the extra hydrogen and oxygen. They are very similar to the molecules identified as evidence of alien
microbes in an earlier Science paper (McKay et al 1996).
“Our findings are important because it is the first time anybody explained these carbon-rich molecules found in meteorites. They are similar to the molecules that make-up living things,” said Max Bernstein, a space scientist at NASA Ames.
As it happened, their findings were judged significant enough to be award-winning. Published in Science (1999) by Bernstein and fellow NASA Ames scientists Scott Sanford and Louis Allamandola, their paper won the 2008 H. Julian Allen Award at NASA Ames Research Center.
snip
----------------------------------------
And of course you can talk about rocks that may have come from Mars and might show there had been life there. Makes for much discussion, and helped along with "Follow The Water",
has us with missions to the Red Planet.
- LRK -
----------------------------------------
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/nasa1.html
Meteorite Yields Evidence of Primitive Life on Early Mars
A NASA research team of scientists at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Houston, TX, and at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, has found evidence that strongly suggests primitive life may have existed on Mars more than 3.6 billion years ago.
The NASA-funded team found the first organic molecules thought to be of Martian origin; several mineral features characteristic of biological activity; and possible microscopic fossils of primitive, bacteria-like organisms inside of an ancient Martian rock that fell to Earth as a meteorite. This array of indirect evidence of past life will be reported in the August 16 issue of the journal Science, presenting the investigation to the scientific community at large for further study.
The two-year investigation was co-led by JSC planetary scientists Dr. David McKay, Dr. Everett Gibson and Kathie Thomas-Keprta of Lockheed-Martin, with the major collaboration of a Stanford team headed by Professor of Chemistry Dr. Richard Zare, as well as six other NASA and university research partners.
"There is not any one finding that leads us to believe that this is evidence of past life on Mars. Rather, it is a combination of many things that we have found," McKay said. "They include Stanford's detection of an apparently unique pattern of organic molecules, carbon compounds that are the basis of life. We also found several unusual mineral phases that are known products of primitive microscopic organisms on Earth. Structures that could be microsopic fossils seem to support all of this. The relationship of all of these things in terms of location - within a few hundred thousandths of an inch of one another - is the most compelling evidence."
snip
----------------------------------------
So I guess a question might be, will the present USA administration, find life on the Moon or at least put some there?
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lrkellogg
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lrkellogg
Google Wave: larry.kellogg@googlewave.com
============================================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
============================================
Indian scientists detect signs of life on Moon
Bhargavi Kerur / DNA - Saturday, December 12, 2009 1:48 IST
Bangalore: Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) are on the brink of a path-breaking discovery. They may have found signs of life in some form or the other on the Moon.
They believe so because scientific instruments on India's first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, picked up signatures of organic matter on parts of the Moon's surface, Surendra Pal, associate director, Isro Satellite Centre (Isac), said at the international radar symposium here on Friday.
Organic matter consists of organic compounds, which consists of carbon -- the building block of life.
It indicates the formation of life or decay of a once-living matter.
Pal said the signatures were relayed back to the Bylalu deep space network station near Bangalore by the mass spectrometer on board the Indian payload, the moon impact probe (MIP), on November 14, 2008.
The relay of data happened moments before it crashed near the Moon's south pole. The MIP was the first experiment of the Chandrayaan-1 mission, which was launched on October 22, 2008.
snip
------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Some forum discussion about the statement of possible signs of/for life on the Moon.
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://www.bautforum.com/
Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum
------------------------------
Did you see the movie, or read the book "The Andromeda Strain"?
I was on an airplane bound for Thailand while reading this "Top Secret" book and reports of slain animals were in the news. :-)
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The Andromeda Strain (1969), by Michael Crichton, is a techno-thriller novel documenting the efforts of a team of scientists investigating a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that rapidly and fatally clots human blood while, in other people, inducing insanity that mostly ended in the insane people committing suicide or murder-suicide. It became a New York Times Bestseller. This novel established Michael Crichton as a best-selling genre author.
snip
------------------------------
We have dust from space hitting us all the time, as would the Moon. Then there are meteors with hydrocarbons which may have struck the Moon as well.
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/
NASA Identifies Carbon-rich Molecules in Meteors as the 'Origin of Life' 09.24.08
Tons, perhaps tens of tons, of carbon molecules in dust particles and meteorites fall on Earth daily. Meteorites are especially valuable to astronomers because they provide relatively big chunks of carbon molecules that are easily analyzed in the laboratory. In the past few years, researchers have noticed that most meteorite carbon are molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are very stable compounds and are survivors.
PAHs are the most common carbon-rich compound in the universe. They are found in everything from distant galaxies to charbroiled hamburgers and engine soot. When they are first formed, or found in space, their structures resemble pieces of chicken wire, fused six-sided rings. However, when found in meteorites, these aromatic rings are carrying extra hydrogen or oxygen.
Scientists at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. performed laboratory experiments that explain the process by which these meteoritic hydrocarbons attract the extra hydrogen and oxygen. They are very similar to the molecules identified as evidence of alien
microbes in an earlier Science paper (McKay et al 1996).
“Our findings are important because it is the first time anybody explained these carbon-rich molecules found in meteorites. They are similar to the molecules that make-up living things,” said Max Bernstein, a space scientist at NASA Ames.
As it happened, their findings were judged significant enough to be award-winning. Published in Science (1999) by Bernstein and fellow NASA Ames scientists Scott Sanford and Louis Allamandola, their paper won the 2008 H. Julian Allen Award at NASA Ames Research Center.
snip
------------------------------
And of course you can talk about rocks that may have come from Mars and might show there had been life there. Makes for much discussion, and helped along with "Follow The Water",
has us with missions to the Red Planet.
- LRK -
------------------------------
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/
Meteorite Yields Evidence of Primitive Life on Early Mars
A NASA research team of scientists at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Houston, TX, and at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, has found evidence that strongly suggests primitive life may have existed on Mars more than 3.6 billion years ago.
The NASA-funded team found the first organic molecules thought to be of Martian origin; several mineral features characteristic of biological activity; and possible microscopic fossils of primitive, bacteria-like organisms inside of an ancient Martian rock that fell to Earth as a meteorite. This array of indirect evidence of past life will be reported in the August 16 issue of the journal Science, presenting the investigation to the scientific community at large for further study.
The two-year investigation was co-led by JSC planetary scientists Dr. David McKay, Dr. Everett Gibson and Kathie Thomas-Keprta of Lockheed-Martin, with the major collaboration of a Stanford team headed by Professor of Chemistry Dr. Richard Zare, as well as six other NASA and university research partners.
"There is not any one finding that leads us to believe that this is evidence of past life on Mars. Rather, it is a combination of many things that we have found," McKay said. "They include Stanford's detection of an apparently unique pattern of organic molecules, carbon compounds that are the basis of life. We also found several unusual mineral phases that are known products of primitive microscopic organisms on Earth. Structures that could be microsopic fossils seem to support all of this. The relationship of all of these things in terms of location - within a few hundred thousandths of an inch of one another - is the most compelling evidence."
snip
------------------------------
So I guess a question might be, will the present USA administration, find life on the Moon or at least put some there?
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lrkellogg
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/
Google Wave: larry.kellogg@googlewave.com
==============================
WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
==============================