This might be interesting…
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/nov/HQ_M10-167_Astrobiology.html
NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Participants are:
– Mary Voytek, director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington
– Felisa Wolfe-Simon, NASA astrobiology research fellow, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.
– Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
– Steven Benner, distinguished fellow, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, Fla.
– James Elser, professor, Arizona State University, Tempe
Feel free to speculate wildly. My preferred speculations:
1) An Earth-mass planet in some stars “Goldilocks Zone”
2) A planet has been spectraly analyzed and shown to have free oxygen and/or water vapor in its atmosphere
3) Chlorophyll on the surface of Europa.
UPDATE: Maybe it’s this…
Will Proof of Extraterrestrial Life Be Revealed at a Ramada Inn?
A Michigan man claiming to possess an ice meteorite rich in extraterrestrial organisms will announce in a news conference Tuesday that alien life, at long last, has been found. The announcement will take place at a Ramada Inn in South Haven, Mich.
“I prayed for Jesus to send me an ice meteorite, because I knew it would be quite valuable,” Duane P. Snyder, 65, said of the chunk of ice he found on a South Haven roadway in 2000.
8 Responses to “NASA News on Astrobiology Discovery”
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Another speculation I’ve just read is something like bacteria on Titan:
http://www.slashgear.com/nasa-holding-press-conference-thursday-has-it-found-extraterrestrial-life-30116872/
I just hope it’s something more substantial than the old “we found something that might indicate that signs point to something that could be construed as, could we have more funding now?” routine.
Damned underwhelming way to break the news if it is.
Jim
What happened at the NASA meeting? (I’m sure Duane has found the Hold Grail of astrobiology: God is on his side.)
That was “Holy.” My finger slipped.
> What happened at the NASA meeting?
Errr….
NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2
they found something on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
or one of Mars Rover overroll a Marsbug…
I like the logic of “I found a block of ice on a rood, and it hadn’t been snowing, so it must be a meteorite.”
Everyone around here finds blocks of ice on the road all the time even in fairly warm weather; they fall off the fenders of 18-wheelers that have come in from areas where it _has_ been snowing.
Unless you see it fall from the sky, it’s time to shave the ice with Occam’s razor. Even then the odds are overwhelming that it’s something that fell off of an aircraft’s deicing gear.
Well, whoop-de-doo.
NASA apparently found strange organisms using arsenic in their metabolism…
On Mars?
Nope.
On Titan?
Nope.
…in Yosemite National Park:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3253913/NASA-researchers-find-life-in-poisonous-arsenic-lake-in-USA.html