Re: Martian meteorite
Glenn Morton (grmorton@psyberlink.net)
Fri, 20 Jun 1997 18:25:33 -0500At 03:15 PM 6/20/97 EST, McCarrick, Allan wrote:
> Two recent articles (6 months or so) in Science have touched on the
>Martian meteorite discussion. The earlier one discussed the mechanisms
>and probabilities of interplanetary transfer. Mars-to-earth transfer had
>a much higher probability than earth-to-Mars for several reasons:
>earth's thicker atmosphere (frictional heating of incoming body and
>ejected material), earth's locally deeper gravitational well due to its
>greater mass (higher energy required, more heating), and the uphill
>gravitational potential from earth to mars.
>
> The second discussion touched on the size of the "fossil microbes".
>Apparently there are known living things of that size range, as well as
>fragments of larger bacteria that have the appearance of those "microbes"
There is a recent article in Nature, which shows that the "fossil life
forms" are nothing more than shock metamorphosed carbonates.
See "Petrological evidence for shock melting of carbonates in the Martian
Meteorite ALH84001" Nature, May 22, 1997, pp 377-379
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm