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Alien-life claims spark monster mud-slinging
ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
UPFRONT
Go get rocks from Mars... BRINGING Martian rocks home is the best way to look for signs of alien life, a panel of planetary scientists has told NASA in its latest Planetary Science Decadal Survey report. The survey, published this week, tries to prioritise missions to study planets and other objects in the solar system, excluding the sun and Earth. The twin rovers NASA landed on Mars in 2004 were designed to analyse rocks and soil and beam back data. But returning the rocks to Earth would allow them to be studied with a much wider range of instruments than a rover could carry, aiding the search for signs of past or present life, the report says. “If we are to advance our fundamental knowledge of whether life has existed elsewhere in the solar
system, we have to bring samples back,” agrees Jack Mustard of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who was not a panel member. With budgets under pressure, the panel advises moving forward only with the first stage of such a project – landing a NASA rover called the Mars Astrobiology ExplorerCacher (MAX-C) to find and collect samples. MAX-C could cost $3.5 billion, though NASA might be able to shave $1 billion off that with the right design tweaks. Later, a second mission could launch the samples into Mars orbit and a third return them to Earth. The report also recommended a mission to Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, which is thought to harbour an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface.
What’s up, doc?
5 doctors had direct experience of an incompetent or poorly performing colleague in the previous three years. Twenty-one per cent of US doctors and 13 per cent of UK doctors admitted not telling patients about their or others’ mistakes for fear of being sued (BMJ Quality & Safety, DOI: 10.1136/bmjqs.2010.048173). Niall Dickson, chief executive of the UK’s General Medical Council is worried by the survey. “Doctors have a clear duty to put patients’ interests first and act to protect them”, including raising concerns about colleagues, he says.
–Try harder to find life–
…with aliens inside
“Structures in the meteorites are virtually the same size and shape as bacteria found on Earth” called Titanospirillum velox. The tubular structures and T. velox both look a bit like tiny macaroni. Hoover also says that the “alien” shapes contain more 4 | NewScientist | 12 March 2011
Mark Bowler/naturepl.com
BLACK-AND-WHITE photos of what looks like dried macaroni sparked a mud-slinging match this week, as scientists lined up to dispute claims that alien life had been discovered in a meteorite. Richard Hoover of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center near Huntsville, Alabama, published a paper in the Journal of Cosmology claiming that several fragments of rare carbonaceous chondrite meteorites contain fossilised bacteria. He used scanning electron microscopy, and claims that fibrous structures in the meteorites are virtually the same size and shape as photosynthetic bacteria found on Earth, particularly a large bacterium
carbon than the meteorite matrix in which they are suspended, suggesting they were once alive. Microbiologist Rosie Redfield at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, is unconvinced. “The first thing you learn when you do electron microscopy is that it’s easy to see anything you are looking for – if you have a good search image, you can find it,” she says. “I think those squiggles are just places in the rock where the minerals happened to arrange themselves in a squiggle shape. Minerals readily grow into fibres.”
MAYBE that second opinion isn’t worth the bother. A quarter of doctors who know that a colleague is underperforming or incompetent do not sound the alarm, a confidential survey reveals. They fear retribution, believe that no action would be taken, or assume that someone else is dealing with the problem. Martin Roland of the University of Cambridge and colleagues confidentially surveyed 3000 US and UK doctors in 2009. The results suggested that almost 1 in
Peru wood charade TO BUY or not to buy? That’s the question US consumers may want to ask themselves as it emerged that illegal exports of endangered hardwoods from Peru hit the shelves in the US. Last week Wikileaks released the text of a cable sent in 2006 by the then US ambassador to Peru. It transpires that the Peruvian government knew that an estimated 70 to 90 per cent of the –Improperly logged?– mahogany Peru exported in 2005
UPFRONT
Go get rocks from Mars... BRINGING Martian rocks home is the best way to look for signs of alien life, a panel of planetary scientists has told NASA in its latest Planetary Science Decadal Survey report. The survey, published this week, tries to prioritise missions to study planets and other objects in the solar system, excluding the sun and Earth. The twin rovers NASA landed on Mars in 2004 were designed to analyse rocks and soil and beam back data. But returning the rocks to Earth would allow them to be studied with a much wider range of instruments than a rover could carry, aiding the search for signs of past or present life, the report says. “If we are to advance our fundamental knowledge of whether life has existed elsewhere in the solar
system, we have to bring samples back,” agrees Jack Mustard of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who was not a panel member. With budgets under pressure, the panel advises moving forward only with the first stage of such a project – landing a NASA rover called the Mars Astrobiology ExplorerCacher (MAX-C) to find and collect samples. MAX-C could cost $3.5 billion, though NASA might be able to shave $1 billion off that with the right design tweaks. Later, a second mission could launch the samples into Mars orbit and a third return them to Earth. The report also recommended a mission to Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, which is thought to harbour an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface.
What’s up, doc?
5 doctors had direct experience of an incompetent or poorly performing colleague in the previous three years. Twenty-one per cent of US doctors and 13 per cent of UK doctors admitted not telling patients about their or others’ mistakes for fear of being sued (BMJ Quality & Safety, DOI: 10.1136/bmjqs.2010.048173). Niall Dickson, chief executive of the UK’s General Medical Council is worried by the survey. “Doctors have a clear duty to put patients’ interests first and act to protect them”, including raising concerns about colleagues, he says.
–Try harder to find life–
…with aliens inside
“Structures in the meteorites are virtually the same size and shape as bacteria found on Earth” called Titanospirillum velox. The tubular structures and T. velox both look a bit like tiny macaroni. Hoover also says that the “alien” shapes contain more 4 | NewScientist | 12 March 2011
Mark Bowler/naturepl.com
BLACK-AND-WHITE photos of what looks like dried macaroni sparked a mud-slinging match this week, as scientists lined up to dispute claims that alien life had been discovered in a meteorite. Richard Hoover of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center near Huntsville, Alabama, published a paper in the Journal of Cosmology claiming that several fragments of rare carbonaceous chondrite meteorites contain fossilised bacteria. He used scanning electron microscopy, and claims that fibrous structures in the meteorites are virtually the same size and shape as photosynthetic bacteria found on Earth, particularly a large bacterium
carbon than the meteorite matrix in which they are suspended, suggesting they were once alive. Microbiologist Rosie Redfield at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, is unconvinced. “The first thing you learn when you do electron microscopy is that it’s easy to see anything you are looking for – if you have a good search image, you can find it,” she says. “I think those squiggles are just places in the rock where the minerals happened to arrange themselves in a squiggle shape. Minerals readily grow into fibres.”
MAYBE that second opinion isn’t worth the bother. A quarter of doctors who know that a colleague is underperforming or incompetent do not sound the alarm, a confidential survey reveals. They fear retribution, believe that no action would be taken, or assume that someone else is dealing with the problem. Martin Roland of the University of Cambridge and colleagues confidentially surveyed 3000 US and UK doctors in 2009. The results suggested that almost 1 in
Peru wood charade TO BUY or not to buy? That’s the question US consumers may want to ask themselves as it emerged that illegal exports of endangered hardwoods from Peru hit the shelves in the US. Last week Wikileaks released the text of a cable sent in 2006 by the then US ambassador to Peru. It transpires that the Peruvian government knew that an estimated 70 to 90 per cent of the –Improperly logged?– mahogany Peru exported in 2005