NASA heeft iets ontdekt: "Discovery For 'the History Books' "

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2012 10:53 schreef WhateverWhatever het volgende:

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2012 11:32 schreef Montagui het volgende:

[..]

"several weeks"?.....zal wel 21-12-2012 worden dan.....

quote:

Op woensdag 21 november 2012 13:29 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Eentje voor de Geschiedenisboeken
Mmmm
Ze hebben al eerder stromend water aangetoond met de kiezels. Logisch zou het dus wat meer moeten zijn. Ik denk dan niet aan leven of fossielen, maar iets anders.
Ik gok op sedimentair gesteente, gesteente dat ontstaan is uit afzettingen gedeponeerd door water en erosie.

quote:

When a NASA official said last week data from an instrument on the Mars Curiosity rover suggested something "for the history books," many people thought an announcement was imminent of the possible discovery of life on the Red Planet -- until the space agency began to seriously backpedal on the story.

It may be a case of once bitten twice shy as NASA has been through this before -- a hotly anticipated and heavily hyped bit of news that only disappoints in the end.

The current excitement began when Curiosity mission lead scientist John Grotzninger started receiving data on his computer from the rover's on-board chemistry lab while in the presence of a reporter from National Public Radio.

The instrument known as Sam, sample analysis at Mars, has been analyzing a Martian soil sample.

"This data is going to be one for the history books. It's looking really good," Grotzinger told NPR.

Grotzinger would not reveal anything more, saying it could be several more weeks while NASA scientists went over the data to make sure it wasn't a glitch or something from earth contaminating the instrument sample.

Still, a lot of people thought "one for the history books" could only mean SAM had found something suggesting evidence of life on Mars at some point.

SAM is in fact designed to look for organic molecules and while organic molecules would be important, it is not the same thing as "life on Mars." NASA quickly began downplaying talk of a major discovery.

"It won't be earthshaking but it will be interesting," said spokesperson Guy Webster of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

NASA's caution is understandable; it has been through this before.

In 2010 researchers led by then NASA astrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon said they had discovered a form of "alien life" right here on Earth, bacteria found in a California lake whose DNA contained arsenic -- highly poisonous -- rather than phosphorus.

Announced with much publicity and fanfare at a NASA news conference, the finding intrigued astrobiologists, who'd previously speculated extraterrestrial life might survive in unexpected and extreme environments if it were based on something other than phosphorus or carbon -- something like arsenic.

But the finding was controversial, and soon other researchers said they were having trouble duplicating the results Wolfe-Simon said she had discovered at California's Mono Lake.

After many studies, the consensus was while the bacterium did in fact grow in the conditions described in the 2010 study, it was not arsenic-based.

While it incorporated arsenic in its DNA, for reasons not yet fully understood, it still needed phosphorus to grow -- very tiny amounts of it, to be sure -- but it was still a phosphorus-based and thus a terrestrial life form.

The studies left astrobiologists disappointed and left NASA with a bit of egg on its face for having made initial "alien life" comments in its run-up to the very public introduction of Wolfe-Simons original research.

It is likely to have reined in speculation about the Mars Curiosity discovery to avoid a repeat of the embarrassment.

NASA now says it will be repeating tests to conclusively confirm its still-secret findings -- whatever they are -- and will not officially release them until December, at the next meeting of the American Geophysical Union, set for Dec. 3-7 in San Francisco.

Not "earthshaking," NASA reminds us -- just "interesting."

quote:

Op donderdag 22 november 2012 21:12 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:

[..]

Heeft Curiosity allang gevonden
Remnants of Ancient Streambed on Mars
[ afbeelding ]
NASA's Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named "Hottah" after Hottah Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories. It may look like a broken sidewalk, but this geological feature on Mars is actually exposed bedrock made up of smaller fragments cemented together, or what geologists call a sedimentary conglomerate. Scientists theorize that the bedrock was disrupted in the past, giving it the titled angle, most likely via impacts from meteorites.

The key evidence for the ancient stream comes from the size and rounded shape of the gravel in and around the bedrock. Hottah has pieces of gravel embedded in it, called clasts, up to a couple inches (few centimeters) in size and located within a matrix of sand-sized material. Some of the clasts are round in shape, leading the science team to conclude they were transported by a vigorous flow of water. The grains are too large to have been moved by wind.

A close-up view of Hottah reveals more details of the outcrop. Broken surfaces of the outcrop have rounded, gravel clasts, such as the one circled in white, which is about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) across. Erosion of the outcrop results in gravel clasts that protrude from the outcrop and ultimately fall onto the ground, creating the gravel pile at left.

This image mosaic was taken by Curiosity's 100-millimeter Mastcam telephoto lens on its 39th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Sept. 14, 2012 PDT/Sept. 15 GMT).

[ afbeelding ]
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4721

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 november 2012 15:51 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:
Life on Mars: NASA says 'hold on a minute!'

^{by Jim Algar
Washington DC (UPI) Nov 25, 2012}


[..]

quote:

Op donderdag 29 november 2012 21:35 schreef µ het volgende:
Frozen Water and Organic Material Discovered on Mercury

http://www.wired.com/wire(...)ed%3A+Top+Stories%29

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 november 2012 21:24 schreef Gatenkaas het volgende:
NASA heeft weer eens geld nodig.

quote:

Op vrijdag 30 november 2012 06:55 schreef µ het volgende:

[..]

dus?

quote:

Op vrijdag 30 november 2012 09:12 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Organisch materiaal.
Dat kan Methaan zijn, of een ander koolwaterstof. De scheiding tussen organische en anorganische chemie is 19e eeuws

quote:

'Geen wereldschokkende ontdekking Curiosity-rover'
Nasa ontkracht de geruchten dat er een 'wereldschokkende' vondst op Mars is gedaan. Eerder maakte Nasa bekend dat Marswagen Curiosity mogelijk een vondst had gedaan die 'in de geschiedenisboeken' zou komen te staan.

'De instrumenten van de rover hebben op dit punt in de missie geen definitief bewijs van organische stoffen op Mars gedetecteerd', schrijft Nasa op de site van het Mars Science Laboratory. 'De geruchten en speculaties over de mogelijk belangrijke ontdekkingen tijdens de missie zijn onjuist.'

Volgende week maandag geeft Nasa in San Francisco een persconferentie over de Marsrobot Curiosity. Die zal gaan over wat de Marswagen afgelopen september op het oppervlak van de Rode Planeet heeft gevonden.

Het Mars Science Laboratory Project onderzoekt nu bijna vier maanden met Curiosity of leven op Mars mogelijk is of tot de mogelijkheden heeft behoord. Curiosity overtreft alle verwachtingen, alle instrumenten en meetsystemen functioneren goed. 'Dit is spectaculair voor zo'n complex systeem, die ook nog eens vanaf de aarde bediend wordt', aldus Nasa. Curiosity ontdekte al dat er ooit water op Mars heeft gestroomd, en Nasa verwacht dat er nog meer opmerkelijke ontdekkingen worden gedaan