MARSBUGS:  
The Electronic Exobiology Newsletter
Volume 4, Number 4, 26 February, 1997.

Editors:

David Thomas, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, 83844-3051, USA, thoma457@uidaho.edu or Marsbugs@aol.com.

Julian Hiscox, Microbiology Department, BBRB 17, Room 361, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-2170, USA, Julian_hiscox@micro.microbio.uab.edu.

MARSBUGS is published on a weekly to quarterly basis as warranted by the number of articles and announcements.  Copyright of this compilation exists with the editors, except for specific articles, in which instance copyright exists with the author/authors.  E-mail subscriptions are free, and may be obtained by contacting either of the editors.  Contributions are welcome, and should be submitted to either of the two editors.  Contributions should include a short biographical statement about the author(s) along with the author(s)' correspondence address.  Subscribers are advised to make appropriate inquiries before joining societies, ordering goods etc.  Back issues may be obtained via anonymous FTP at:  ftp.uidaho.edu/pub/mmbb/marsbugs.

The purpose of this newsletter is to provide a channel of information for scientists, educators and other persons interested in exobiology and related fields.  This newsletter is not intended to replace peer-reviewed journals, but to supplement them.  We, the editors, envision MARSBUGS as a medium in which people can informally present ideas for investigation, questions about exobiology, and announcements of upcoming events.  Exobiology is still a relatively young field, and new ideas may come out of the most unexpected places.  Subjects may include,  but are not limited to:  exobiology proper (life on other  planets), the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), ecopoeisis/ terraformation, Earth from space, planetary biology, primordial evolution, space physiology, biological life support  systems, and human habitation of space and other planets.
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INDEX

1)	MARS PATHFINDER MISSION STATUS REPORTS
	JPL releases

2)	MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR FLIGHT STATUS REPORTS
	JPL releases

3)	NASA'S NEW MILLENNIUM PROGRAM SELECTS NEW TEAM MEMBERS
	JPL release

4)	LIFE ON MARS EXISTED FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS -- AND MAY CONTINUE STILL 
	[Extracted from Cornell University webpage.]

5)	USGS SCIENTIST DESCRIBES POSSIBILITIES FOR LIFE ON MARS
	U.S.  Geological Survey release

6)	EXOBIOLOGY INSTRUMENTATION WEBSITE

7)	PLENITUDE OF NEW WORLDS CHALLENGES SKILLS OF PLANETARY MODELERS
	UC Newswire

8)	METEORITE ANALYSIS MAY HELP UNRAVEL MYSTERY CHARACTERISTIC OF LIFE'S MOLECULES
	Forwarded for Arizona State University

9)	POSSIBILITY OF VENUS HARBORING LIFE MAY NOT BE SO FAR-FETCHED, SAYS PROF
	Forwarded from University of Colorado

10)	NATURAL CATASTROPHES DURING BRONZE AGE CIVILISATIONS:  ARCHAEOLOGICAL, GEOLOGICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL PERSPECTIVES
	Conference announcement

11)	IS EARTH'S TEMPERATURE UP OR DOWN OR BOTH?
	[Extracted from NASA/Marshall Space Sciences Lab.]

12)	FPSPACE 97 INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
	3rd Announcement


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MARS PATHFINDER MISSION STATUS REPORTS
JPL releases

31 January 1997

The spacecraft continues to be in excellent health, and is now about 16 million km from Earth.  Key activities completed this week include successful completion of the K=15, R=1/6 convolutional code tests and resolution of the attitude control software glitch detected last week.  Attitude control software has been re-enabled and is currently operating nominally.  In addition, we verified that the noise seen during ASI/MET health checks is due to the Propulsion Drive Electronics.  This noise appears to be radiative in nature, and will not be an issue for surface operations because the PDE is located on the cruise stage.

The Uplink Problem Tiger team has developed a plausible explanation for the majority of the command rejections and the CDU In Lock conditions.  It involves harmonics from the uplink sweep locking up the CDU and pulling it away from the nominal command frequency.  The team is developing a test plan to confirm this hypothesis and is also gathering information about the incidents where the CDU went into lock while we were not tracking.

An Operational Readiness Test (ORT) of the Sol 1-2 sequences was run on Jan 27 and 28.  The sequences used were identical to the last pre-launch surface ORT.  The ORT was successful in that all of the sequences were executed properly by the simulated lander and rover.  However, a number of relatively minor problems were logged during the test.  These problems were reviewed and action has been assigned in all cases for problem resolution.

Nineteen investigators have been selected by NASA Headquarters in response to the Announcement of Opportunity for selection of Mars Pathfinder Participating Scientists and a Facility Instrument Science Team for the Atmospheric Structure Instrument/Meteorology Package.  An "All Hands" Pathfinder Science Team meeting has been set up for Feb.  5-7, 1997 at JPL to begin integrating the new investigators into the Experiment Operations Team.

4 February 1997

The Mars Pathfinder spacecraft is currently 19 million km (11 million miles) from Earth traveling at 30 km/s on its trajectory to Mars.  All spacecraft subsystems continue to operate as expected.

At 5:00 PM PST on February 3, we successfully completed our second Trajectory Correction Maneuver.  This maneuver was designed to correct errors in the first TCM performed on January 9, and move us closer to our final trajectory.  The spacecraft will not be placed on a Mars atmospheric entry trajectory until after TCM-3 (currently scheduled for May 5) because of planetary quarantine requirements.  The TCM-2 design team, led by Flight Engineer Guy Beutelschies, developed a two part approach to perform the maneuver.  In the first part, the spacecraft fired two of its forward facing thrusters continuously for five minutes.  The change in velocity for this "axial" component was about 1.5 m/s.  The second part of the maneuver was a smaller velocity correction of 0.1 m/s performed in the "lateral" mode.  In this mode, the spacecraft pulses all four thrusters on one side of the spacecraft for five seconds.  This pulse causes a small change in the spacecraft velocity in the direction perpendicular to the spacecraft spin axis.  This mode will be used for all future maneuvers, so TCM-2 was a good proof-of-concept test.  Early analysis of tracking data from NASA's Deep Space Network indicates that both components were completed successfully.

Upon completing the maneuver, the spacecraft's spin axis was turned 15 degrees back toward Earth so that we can perform radio navigation more effectively.  The spacecraft is currently pointed about 5 degrees from Earth and 2 degrees from the Sun.  We will remain in this attitude until late March.

The spacecraft will remain in a relatively quiescent mode for the next two to three months.  The flight team is currently working hard to complete planning for Mars entry and surface operations.

7 February 1997

Successfully completed Trajectory Correction Maneuver #2 on February 3.  The purpose of this maneuver was to clean up TCM-1 execution errors and had a magnitude of about 1.6 m/s.  The maneuver consisted of two parts, an axial component of 1.5 m/s and a lateral component of 0.1 m/s.  All spacecraft subsystems performed as expected, and the resulting maneuver execution error was less than 2%.  The spacecraft was turned back to Earth after the maneuver, and will remain in this attitude until late March.

The spacecraft computer reset during an off-track period on Wednesday, February 5.  Analysis of post reset telemetry indicates that it was caused by a divide-by- zero fault in the attitude control flight software (ACS).  The spacecraft responded as expected to this anomaly, and correctly enforced the early cruise boot configuration.  This configuration idles ACS and reduces the uplink and downlink data rates from nominal cruise values.  Several commands were sent on February 6 to increase the data rates and return diagnostic data, but attitude control is still idle.  The spacecraft is in a safe attitude, however, so there is no compelling reason to restart ACS.

An all-hands science team meeting was held on February 5-7.  All existing investigators plus the newly selected ASI/MET FIST scientists and participating scientists were invited.  The purpose of this meeting was to organize the science teams into a set of science operations groups and to review the current baseline plans for surface operations.  A number of useful suggestions were made for modifying the nominal Sol 1-2 plans.

For more information, please visit our website at http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov.
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MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR FLIGHT STATUS REPORTS
JPL releases

Friday, 7 February 1997

Today, the flight team sent a command to Surveyor to activate the Mars Orbiter Camera.  Over the weekend, the camera team will collect temperature data from the instrument in order to determine the best focus setting for a focus check test that will be performed on Tuesday, February 11th.

Earlier in the week, the flight team completed calibration activities on the gyroscopes in the inertial measurement unit.  These gyroscopes are devices that provide critical data to the flight computers regarding Surveyor's pointing orientation in space.  Each one of the three gyroscopes on the spacecraft has a primary and backup data channel.

Over the course of a several day period, the spacecraft team examined data from the backup gyroscope channels in order to understand the slight variations between the in-flight performance and the performance as specified by the manufacturer.  The knowledge of these minor variations were incorporated into Surveyor's flight software.  This activity was performed to improve the spacecraft's ability to maintain a proper orientation in the event that the backup gyroscope channels are used.

Throughout this past week, the Magnetometer science instrument has also been active.  The data collected during the week will provide the Magnetometer team with an opportunity to conduct further calibrations on the instrument.  In addition, the data will provide the team with an opportunity to study the solar wind.  This "wind" is a stream of protons and electrons that are constantly blown out from the Sun at a speed of 100,000 kilometers per second.

After a mission elapsed time of 92 days from launch, Surveyor is 21.51 million kilometers from the Earth, 107.49 million kilometers from Mars, and is moving in an orbit around the Sun with a velocity of 29.31 kilometers per second.  This orbit will intercept Mars on September 12th, 1997.  The spacecraft is currently executing the C4 command sequence, and all systems continue to be in excellent condition.

Friday, 14 February 1997

On Tuesday, the Surveyor spacecraft rotated to a position that pointed the Mars Orbiter Camera at a cluster of stars called the Pleiades.  Over the course of an hour, the camera imaged stars within the cluster.  These images were used by the camera team to determine the focus of the narrow-angle camera following the bakeout period that ended two weeks ago.

During that five-day bakeout period, a 53-Watt heater was used to remove residual moisture from the camera's graphite epoxy structure.  This moisture affects the camera's focus.  Preliminary results from this week's activity indicates that additional bakeout will not be necessary.  Over the next two weeks, the camera will image the Pleiades on four separate opportunities to allow the camera team to make adjustments to the focus settings.

On Wednesday, the spacecraft was commanded to spin in the opposite direction for a period of three hours.  Under normal conditions during the journey to Mars, Surveyor's high-gain antenna is pointed at the Earth, and the spacecraft slowly spins in the clockwise direction as seen from the Earth.  During the three hours, the spacecraft spun in a counter- clockwise direction to allow the spacecraft team to calibrate the gyroscopes.  These devices provide information to Surveyor's flight computers regarding the spacecraft's pointing orientation in space.

Today, the flight team transmitted the C5 sequence to Surveyor.  C5 contains commands that will control the spacecraft for the next four weeks.  The first activities in C5 will start on Monday, February 17th.

After a mission elapsed time of 99 days from launch, Surveyor is 24.30 million kilometers from the Earth, 98.95 million kilometers from Mars, and is moving in an orbit around the Sun with a velocity of 28.78 kilometers per second.  This orbit will intercept Mars on September 12th, 1997.  The spacecraft is currently executing the C4 command sequence, and all systems continue to be in excellent condition.

Status report prepared by:

Office of the Flight Operations Manager
Mars Surveyor Operations Project
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91109
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NASA'S NEW MILLENNIUM PROGRAM SELECTS NEW TEAM MEMBERS
JPL release

Ten new industry and university partners have joined NASA's New Millennium program to test spaceflight technologies never before flown for future space missions.  The new partners will contribute members to be involved in all aspects of the program, from identifying and developing key technologies to analyzing science data returned by each mission.

The goal of the New Millennium program is to lower the costs and risks for future space missions by developing and validating advanced technologies.  In keeping with NASA's philosophy of "faster, better and cheaper," the program will pair NASA with the nation's vast industrial and academic resources.  The new partners, representing all segments of the technology community, were chosen from 50 proposals after a seven-week review process.

"Innovative management techniques and teaming methods are part of the new ways of doing business in implementing the nation's science and technology goals," said Kane Casani, manager of the program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  "It has been very encouraging to see the widespread interest in our program.  We hope that the response to our solicitations to join in this exciting venture continues at this level.

"These new members will join other team members who were chosen a year and half ago," Casani continued, "and who have already been working to develop technologies and roadmaps to provide the performance and capabilities required by future spacecraft."

The six integrated product development teams will cover specific spaceflight technology areas -- autonomy, communications, in-situ instruments and microelectromechanical systems, instrument technologies and architecture, modular and multifunctional systems, and microelectronics.

NASA's vision of science exploration for the 21st century involves frequently launched, more reliable and capable small spacecraft to explore the solar system, observe the Earth and create a "virtual" human presence in the universe.

New Millennium is designed to test advanced technologies, science instruments and operations systems through a series of spaceflight missions launched every 12-18 months, with deep space missions to begin in 1998, and Earth-orbiting missions to start in 1999.

The first two deep space missions are well into their implementation phases.  The first, Deep Space 1 (DS1), will fly by an asteroid, Mars, and a comet and will demonstrate solar electric propulsion, an autonomous operations system and other advanced technologies.  Deep Space 2 (DS2) will transport two microprobes, each weighing 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds), aboard the Mars 1998 lander to analyze soil, search for ice and demonstrate technologies that will enable network science for future missions.  Earth-Orbiting 1 (EO1) consists of an advanced land- imaging instrument to be infused into the future Landsat-type satellites and to return the enhanced science data at reduced cost.

"New team members will integrate their efforts into the existing technology roadmaps to identify and select technologies for the next set of deep space and Earth orbiting validation missions now on the NASA drawing boards," said Bob Metzger, business operations manager for New Millennium.

In identifying appropriate technologies, the teams will also recommend those that will improve the country's technological and industrial infrastructure and strengthen its competitive edge in the global commercial marketplace.

The New Millennium Program is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Offices of Space Science and Mission to Planet Earth, Washington D.C.


INTEGRATED PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEAM NEW MEMBERS

AUTONOMY:

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD Lockheed Martin, Palo Alto, CA

COMMUNICATIONS:

Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD Raytheon Electronic Systems, Tewksbury, MA

IN SITU INSTRUMENTS AND MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS:

Ball Aerospace Systems, Boulder, CO
Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD University of Southern California, Marina Del Rey, CA

INSTRUMENT TECHNOLOGIES & ARCHITECTURES:

Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD Lockheed Martin, Palo Alto, CA
TRW Space & Technology, Redondo Beach, CA

MODULAR AND MULTIFUNCTIONAL SYSTEMS:

Honeybee Robotics, New York, NY

MICROELECTRONICS SYSTEMS:

Honeywell, Inc., Clearwater, FL
Hughes Space and Communications, Los Angeles, CA
Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD Teledyne Electronic Technologies, Los Angeles, CA
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LIFE ON MARS EXISTED FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS -- AND MAY CONTINUE STILL 
[Extracted from Cornell University webpage.]

Life on Mars existed for billions of years -- and may continue still -- Cornell astronomer says Earthly 'deep, hot biosphere' called probable throughout solar system

SEATTLE -- Subsurface life on Mars probably did exist and may still exist for the same reason it exists on Earth -- both these planets and many other planetary bodies in the solar system are made of similar stuff and provide similar conditions, a Cornell University astronomer said today (Feb.  13).

Microbes deep inside the Earth's crust get oxygen from rocks and use it to oxidize hydrocarbons that come streaming up from below, receiving energy by this process.  It now seems probable that life evolved by such processes from the inside out, rather than commencing at the surface, said Thomas Gold, Cornell professor emeritus of astronomy.  The same scenario is likely to be true for Mars and several other planetary bodies, he said.

Gold, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, described this theory at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on Thursday, Feb.  13, at a session on "New Worlds and Old Worlds" in a talk called "Was There and Is There Life on Mars?"

His answer:  Yes, there was and probably still is.  "Microbial subsurface life has existed on Earth for billions of years and still does," Gold said.  "It is very likely that we will find a deep, hot biosphere on Mars, as we have found on Earth, and probably on many other planetary bodies in our solar system."

Gold first proposed his theory in a 1992 paper, "The Deep, Hot Biosphere," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (July 1992).  In it he wrote that the Earth contains internal chemical energy sources in which microbes thrive, using hydrogen, methane and other liquids and gases that percolate up through cracks from the planet's interior, together with oxygen and other components of the local rocks.  He suggested that such microbial life probably would be found in many areas below the surface of the Earth and will exist also on many other bodies, such as the moon, Mars, many asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, Titan (satellite of Saturn) and Triton (satellite of Neptune) and other satellites of the giant planets, and Pluto, the farthest known planet, where similar fluids have come up from below.

Further, he suggested in the 1992 paper that the known meteorites found on the Earth and identified as having come here from Mars should be examined for evidence of such microbial life.  He also suggested that the search for such evidence of life would become a central issue in planetary research.

Last year one of these meteorites was found to contain what many scientists believe is evidence for such life.  Gold considers this evidence to be particularly strong because the meteorite, Meteorite ALH84001, contains solids that are known on the Earth to be residues of such microbial activity.

The key to his theory, he said, is that petroleum has come up from great depth, not from biological sediments generated at or near the surface.  The clearest evidence for that:  helium.

The chemically inert gas, helium, is found to be strongly associated with petroleum all over the Earth, Gold said.  This is true not only for great petroleum deposits, but also in detail in gases that are measured in thousands of locations at shallow depths.  Yet no chemical process exists in which biological sediments would have concentrated this gas.

Helium is generated diffusely by the decay of uranium and thorium in the rocks.  Gold is first to suggest that fluids, such as petroleum, that have washed through great distances in the rocks flush out the small quantities of helium that have accumulated along their way, increasing the helium concentration in such fluids.

"This is the only possible mechanism.  Why else would helium be found together with petroleum?" Gold asks.  "The association of helium with biological matter has not been accounted for in any other way."

If so, this requires that petroleum has come up from great depths, like 100 miles or more, rather than from just the upper four miles or so where there are biological sediments.

"In that case all the biological components that petroleum contains must have been additions it obtained later at the shallower levels from which we extract it," Gold said.  What accounts for this biology? Microbial life, he said.

It was for this reason, Gold said, that he had to suppose that there was a huge amount of microbial life at all these shallower levels.  "At the levels to which we drill, petroleum is a wonderful food for microbes," Gold said.  "They thrive on that.  With this combination we can understand why there is helium in petroleum and at the same time why there are biological molecules in it also."

And if it is true that hydrocarbons are cooked deep inside the Earth and then are mechanically washed up by geologic forces, where microbes then feed on them, then it's just a small step to wonder whether similar processes would not exist on other similar bodies in the solar system, he said.

"The Earth, then, has no particular prerogative to develop microbial life.  Its subsurface is not unique.  We know there are petrochemicals under the surfaces of many other bodies in the solar system, and in fact most other solid bodies have shown evidence of hydrocarbons."

The Martian meteorite ALH84001, which is thought to contain evidence of life, as announced in a paper in the journal Science (Aug.  16, 1996) by David McKay of NASA and others, has other similarities to Earthly subsurface life, Gold said.

"For example, unoxidized sulfur compounds and concentrations of small grains of the iron mineral magnetite, both not common in rocks, are found frequently around oil wells on Earth -- solid refuse left behind by microbial activity," Gold said.  The meteorite ALH84001 has iron sulfide and magnetite, "very suggestive of the processes we see here," he said.

He added that the present or past surface condition on Mars is irrelevant to this problem.  A huge impact was required to eject material from Mars, including the meteorites that have been found in Antarctica.  Most of this ejected material would have come from deep inside the planet, from the crater this impact would have generated.  A small distance down into such a crater, a mile or two, one would find liquid water and hydrocarbons, Gold said.

His 1992 suggestion on how to find evidence of life by spacecraft missions to Mars still holds, he said.  There are areas on Mars where huge landslides have exposed material that once was at a depth of two miles or more, certainly into the depth range of liquid water.  Why not select such locations for a robotic vehicle landing with a sample return capability?  Gold asked.  Now as a result of the meteorite investigation, NASA is planning to send probes on Mars missions to look for further evidence of life.

Said Gold:  "As long as you think that life is possible only on planetary surfaces, the Earth is uniquely suitable.  But when you talk about life deep below, the Earth is not unique at all.  The deep, chemically supplied life may be common, not only in the solid bodies of the solar system, but throughout the universe."
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USGS SCIENTIST DESCRIBES POSSIBILITIES FOR LIFE ON MARS
U.S. Geological Survey release

"There is mounting evidence that Mars is a water-rich planet that may have experienced warmer climates, and therefore, life, in the past,"according to Michael Carr, an astrogeologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

"Furthermore," said Dr. Carr, "early terrestrial life may have evolved in hydrothermal environments resembling those in Yellowstone Park and along mid-ocean ridges and such environments were likely common on early Mars."

Carr presented his assessment of the possibilities of life on Mars at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Seattle, on Thursday, Feb.  13.

Carr said that both Earth and Mars experienced an early era of heavy meteorite bombardment that ended 3.8 billion years ago.  Evidence for life is found in 3.8 billion year old terrestrial rocks, indicating that the Earth recovered remarkably quickly from this era of large and presumably sterilizing impacts.  "We do not know what happened on Mars, but conditions on the two planets at that time could have been quite similar."

Carr said the prospects for life on Mars were given an additional boost last summer with the finding of organic compounds in Martian meteorites that have hit the earth, together with fossil-like structures and mineral assemblages that resemble some that have produced biologically here on Earth.

Carr pointed out that the U.S.  has initiated a Mars exploration program that involves sending two spacecraft to Mars at every launch opportunity, or about every two years.  He said the early focus of the program is to better understand Mars' climate history and distribution of water because of their importance for biology.

He briefly described the missions of the two U.S.  spacecraft presently an their way to Mars:  the Mars Global Surveyor that will map various properties of the surface from orbit, and Mars Pathfinder, that will land a small rover at the mouth of a large flood channel.  Other missions will follow in the 1998 and 2001.

Carr said a major goal of those missions is to return samples to Earth later in the decade from "places that we judge will have the best chance of revealing whether there was life on Mars in the past."
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EXOBIOLOGY INSTRUMENTATION WEBSITE

David Agresti has kindly informed us of a new web site that should be brought to the attention of those interested in exobiology and Mars.  The URL is:
http://www.phy.uab.edu/exobiology/
The site contains contains the complete text of the Report of the Pt. Clear Exobiology Instrumentation Workshop.
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PLENITUDE OF NEW WORLDS CHALLENGES SKILLS OF PLANETARY MODELERS
UC Newswire

This is not your father's solar system

SEATTLE, WA -- About two years ago, astrophysicist Douglas Lin recalls, speaker after speaker at an astronomy meeting in Hawaii deplored the lack of convincing evidence for new planets outside of our solar system.  Lin then arose to state that making planets is incredibly easy.  Researchers weren't finding them, he said, for a simple reason:  Most young planets migrate into their parent stars, which consume them.

The civil audience pelted Lin with figurative tomatoes.  But a lot has changed in two years, and no one's hurling fruit now.

Indeed, Lin and other theorists are straining to keep up with the whirlwind of planetary discoveries that has blown through astronomy since late 1995.  They have stretched their models of how such systems evolve to accommodate a startling variety of planets, from ones with eccentric looping orbits to "hot Jupiters" that practically skim the outer atmospheres of their stars.  Even the history of our own solar system -- heretofore a peaceful scenario -- is undergoing new scrutiny.

"Planets appear ubiquitous, and planetary systems are extremely diverse," says Lin, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  "But to form a system that looks like ours, or one that can support the existence of life, may be a rare event." Lin will give a status report on the newly energized field of planetary-system modeling on Thursday, February 13, during "Old Worlds and New Worlds," a special two-day seminar at the AAAS meeting in Seattle.

Lin launched his recent modeling efforts in October 1995 when Swiss astronomers announced the first of the new batch of planets, called 51 Pegasi B.  A team at UCSC's Lick Observatory, led by UCSC alumnus Geoffrey Marcy, rapidly confirmed the planet.  From the outset its very existence seemed impossible.  The Jupiter-sized object raced around its star once every four days, at a distance just one-twentieth that of Earth from our Sun.  How could the planet, presumably a giant ball of gas, withstand this blast-furnace orbit? More puzzling still, how did it get there at all?

Within a day of the announcement Lin, Peter Bodenheimer of UCSC, and Derek Richardson of the University of Toronto had their solution.  The planet coalesced in a colder region of its star's nebula, perhaps 100 times further away than it is today.  Then, in a million-year gravitational tug-of-war among the star, the planet, and gas and dust in the rest of the disk, 51 Pegasi B spiraled slowly but relentlessly toward the star.  Finally, in the model's biggest surprise, inward and outward forces on the planet's orbit canceled each other out just before the star would have devoured the planet.  The team published its paper in Nature on April 18, 1996.

Lin's idea that infant planets can migrate either toward or away from their stars dates to the 1970s, but he doesn't hesitate to call those initial concepts "wild speculations." If his new model is correct, the truth is even weirder.  "I never thought the migration could stop, especially so close to the star," he says.  "That was a real shocker."

Two other curious systems (70 Virginis and HD 114762) have large planets that swoop close to their stars and then out again, almost like huge comets.  In a paper to appear in the
Astrophysical Journal, Lin and Shigeru Ida of the Tokyo Institute of Technology suggest that each star may have possessed a massive disk of gas and dust, spawning several large planets.  Within a few million years, the pernicious effects of gravity could have perturbed the planets sufficiently to make their orbits cross.  Then, inevitable collisions created a single enormous object with a bizarre orbital path.

If this notion sounds vaguely familiar, it should:  Immanuel Velikovsky proposed that similar events in our own solar system could explain certain oddities in the rotations and positions of planets.  Velikovsky's 1950 book Worlds in Collision went way off the deep end, but Lin acknowledges that the basic premise has merit -- if not here, than elsewhere.

"Dynamics among planets and within a planetary disk is a very rich game," he says.  For instance, our outer solar system is "marginally stable." If Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune each had the same mass as Jupiter, their orbits might degenerate within a billion years -- less than the Sun's lifetime -- and wreak havoc throughout the entire system.  "We are safe, but we are just safe," Lin says.  "It takes only subtle differences in initial conditions to cause very diverse evolutionary paths."

Edging further along this limb, Lin suggests that life most likely would arise in systems with single massive planets tucked close to their stars, like 51 Pegasi B.  He envisions such planets as the last in a succession of gas giants that migrate to their fiery dooms, sweeping up any rocky terrestrial planets in their paths.  Then, according to his models, the gas and dust that remains in the wake of the final planet spreads out, seeding a second generation of earthlike bodies.  With no gaseous titans further out to disrupt them, these planets could settle into stable orbits for billions of years.  It's not out of the question, Lin says, that such a chain of events marked our solar system's childhood.

This conjecture flatly counters a tenet in astronomy that earthlike planets form in the toasty conditions close to their stars while gas giants dominate the frigid outer reaches, and never the twain shall meet.  "I'm not a religious person," Lin says, smiling.  "I'm willing to challenge any paradigm."
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METEORITE ANALYSIS MAY HELP UNRAVEL MYSTERY CHARACTERISTIC OF LIFE'S MOLECULES
Forwarded for Arizona State University

An honors class on chemical evolution and the origin of life has led to research that might help to better explain how a molecular quirk developed in all life on Earth.

The research suggests that the light emitted by the remnants of an exploded star more than 4.5 billion years ago could have produced the quirk during organic chemical evolution that took place before the origin of life.  Arizona State University chemists John R.  Cronin and Sandra Pizzarello will publish their findings on the subject in the Feb.  14 issue of the journal "Science."

The molecular quirk is this:  scientists have known for a long time that many compounds in living things exist in mirror-image forms.  "The best way to explain that is to say that the two forms are like your two hands.  One is a mirror reflection of the other," Cronin said.  "They are different.  Put one hand over the other.  They don't coincide, and yet they are similar."

One-handed compounds are needed because without them, large biological molecules, like proteins, would be unable to form reproducible structures.  When scientists make the same compounds in the laboratory, half the molecules come up left-handed, half right-handed.  But in Earth organisms, amino acids, which are the building blocks of life, are all left-handed.

"Life is extremely fussy about which one of these it uses," Cronin said.  "So the question is, how did this ever come about that life was able to make this selection of one-handed forms over the other-handed forms, when they are equally probable?"

There are two major theories about how this came about.  According to one theory, there was some sort of influence acting on chemical evolution before the origin of life that either promoted the development of left-handed amino acids, or the breakdown of right-handed amino acids.

The other theory is that molecular handedness developed as a matter of biological evolution, after the origin of life.

Fortunately, meteorites rich in organic compounds provide a way to test the first theory.  Life probably arose on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago.  The organic compounds found in some meteorites go back 4.5 billion years.

Researchers have tried to conduct those tests for decades, but there's always been a problem.  It is all too easy to contaminate the meteorite with amino acids from Earth, creating a bias in the results.

Then came the spring 1995 semester, when Cronin taught a course in the ASU Honors College.  "One of the things that we looked into in that course was this whole question," Cronin said.

He learned of an intriguing suggestion by William Bonner, an organic chemist at Stanford University, regarding neutron stars.  These stars are what's left after a star has exploded in a supernova.  Neutron stars emit circular polarized light.  This means that the stars' light waves describe a narrow spiral as they travel.  The light waves can spiral to the left or to the right.

Left-handed organic compounds tend to absorb light waves spiraling in one direction.  Right-handed compounds tend to absorb those spiraling in the other direction.  Bonner and others had therefore proposed that circular polarized light emitted by a neutron star could have influenced molecular handedness in the great cloud of interstellar gas and dust from which the sun and its planets formed more than 4.5 billion years ago.

"It could either act to promote the synthesis of one, or more likely it could act in a degrading way to promote the breakdown of one or the other," Cronin said.

If there's any evidence of this process having taken place, Cronin figured, "we really ought to look at the meteorites and do it in a way that hasn't been done before." To get around the contamination problem that had plagued researchers in the past, he and Pizzarello analyzed amino acids in the Murchison meteorite that are unknown on Earth.

"There are many of those in the meteorite," Cronin said.  "We know of 40 or 50 different amino acids that have no terrestrial occurrence."

The ASU researchers have studied the organic chemistry of the Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969, for more than two decades.  The "Science" paper details their analysis of four amino acids from the meteorite.  Three of the amino acids have no earthly occurrence, and one was very limited in its occurrence in organisms.

"Sure enough, when we did this, we found excesses of the left-handed form that range from 2 percent to about 9 percent over the right-handed form," Cronin said.

Jeffrey L.  Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., said that there has been little convincing experimental evidence to previously support either of the competing theories explaining the one-handedness of organic compounds.

"The findings of Cronin and Pizzarello are probably the first demonstration that there may be natural processes in the cosmos that generate a preferred amino-acid handedness," Bada said.  "The discovery of this preferred handedness in the Murchison meteorite, if verified, is certain to generate a flurry of new investigations."
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POSSIBILITY OF VENUS HARBORING LIFE MAY NOT BE SO FAR-FETCHED, SAYS PROF
Forwarded from University of Colorado

Despite recent reports of possible fossils in Martian meteorites, Venus, not Mars, may hold the most promise for harboring life elsewhere in our solar system, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder professor.

Some four billion years ago when the sun was 40 percent cooler than today, Earth and Mars probably were frozen, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor David Grinspoon of the astrophysical and planetary sciences department.  But Venus, closer to the sun, may have had warm liquid oceans and a mild climate at the time.  "There is some reason to believe Venus may have been the best haven for life in the early solar system," he said.

With 900 degree Fahrenheit surface temperatures and an atmosphere permeated by carbon dioxide, chlorine and sulfuric acid clouds today, Venus seems inhospitable to "our kind of life," he said.  "But we really don't know much about life -- its requirements, it's differences and how to recognize it."

Humans on Earth "may have evolved from life forms provided by Venus," Grinspoon said.  "Pieces of planets were blasting off of each other all the time early in the evolution of the solar system, and microbes from Venus could easily have wound up on Earth."

The standard scientific view is that life requires water and carbon-based molecules, he said.  "We simply do not know if that is the only chemical system that can make life, because the only example of a biosphere we have is our own," said Grinspoon, who has been studying the surface, atmosphere and clouds of Venus for 10 years through NASA-sponsored programs.

Grinspoon is the author of "Venus Revealed," published by Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.  of Reading, Mass., this month.

In some ways, Venus may have a better environment for nurturing life than Mars, he said.  Like Earth, Venus has a "chemically lively surface and atmosphere" that could provide organisms with energy and nutrients.

"In my view, what makes Earth special is its atmospheric cycles that renew themselves like a garden tilling itself," he said.  "It could well be that kind of an environment on Venus is just as important for life as carbon."

Because the surface and atmosphere of Venus are constantly renewing themselves through volcanic activity, there is "more potential for interesting chemical and even biochemical processes on Venus than on Mars."

It's possible, he said, that Venus could have tiny microbes in its cloud particles, or that some form of Venusian life could have developed by using ultraviolet light much like Earth's plants use sunlight to make food.

There could even be a non-carbon-based equivalent to lichens atop Venus' five-mile-high volcanoes, perhaps feeding on sulfur gases, he said.

The interactions of Earth's oceans, clouds, surface and biosphere has led some scientists to support the Gaia theory that Earth itself is a living system, he said.  "By constantly exhaling sulfur gases that react with the clouds and surface minerals, Venus could be considered in that Gaia realm."

Although NASA's 1989 Magellan probe opened a new window on the planet using sophisticated radar mapping, there is still much to learn about Venus, said Grinspoon.  One key is to keep an open mind about chemical and perhaps biological processes that may be occurring there and on other planets.

"Venus is the closest thing Earth has to a twin," he said.  "Studying Venus is how we learned about the problem with our ozone layer, and it's a way for us to become wiser in taking care of our own planet."

Excerpts and images from "Venus Revealed" can be accessed on the World Wide Web at:  http://sunra.colorado.edu/david/book.html
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NATURAL CATASTROPHES DURING BRONZE AGE CIVILISATIONS:  ARCHAEOLOGICAL, GEOLOGICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL PERSPECTIVES
Conference announcement

Dr. Duncan Steel will be speaking at the SIS Conference, "Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisations:  Archaeological, Geological and Astronomical Perspectives", at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, 11th-13th July 1997.  His paper is titled, "Before the Stones:  Stonehenge I as a Cometary Catastrophe Predictor".

Full details about the conference, including free subscription for researchers to a closed pre-conference discussion list, can be found on the SIS Web site at:
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/sis/cambconf.htm

Other speakers and talks include:

Prof Mark Bailey (Armagh Observatory) Sources and Populations of Near-Earth Objects:  Recent Findings and Historical Implications

Prof Mike Baillie (Queen's University) Tree-Ring Evidence for Environmental Disasters during the Bronze Age:  Causes and Effects.

Dr Victor Clube (Oxford University) Predestination and the Problem of Historical Catastrophism

Dr Marie-Agnes Courty (Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon):  Abrupt Climate Change during the Early Bronze Age:  stratigraphic and petrographic evidence from the Middle East.

Dr Bas van Geel (University of Amsterdam) and Dr Hans Renssen (University of Utrecht):  The Impact of Abrupt Climate Change around 2650 BP in North-West Europe:  Evidence for Climate Teleconnections, and a tentative Explanation

Prof Gunnar Heinsohn (Bremen University) The Catastrophic Emergence of Civilisation:  The Coming of the Bronze Age Cultures.

Dr Bruce Masse (University of Hawaii) Earth, Air, Fire and Water:  The Archaeology of Bronze Age Cosmic Catastrophes

Prof William Mullen (Bard College) The Agenda of the Milesian School:  The Post-Catastrophic Paradigm Shift in Ancient Greece.

Dr Bill Napier (Armagh Observatory):  Cometary Catastrophes, Cosmic Dust and Ecological Disasters in Historical Times.

Prof David Pankenier (Lehigh University) Heaven-sent:  Understanding Disaster in Chinese Myth and Tradition

Dr Benny J Peiser (Liverpool John Moores Univ.) Comparative Stratigraphy of Bronze Age Destruction Layers around the World:  Archaeological Evidence and Methodological Problems.

Dr Duncan Steel (Spaceguard Australia):  Before the Stones:  Stonehenge I as a Cometary Catastrophe Predictor

Prof Gerrit Verschuur (University of Memphis):  Our Place in Space:  The Implications of Impact Catastrophes on Human Thought

Prof Irving Wolfe (University of Montreal) The 'Kutursturz' at the Bronze Age-Iron Age Boundary
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IS EARTH'S TEMPERATURE UP OR DOWN OR BOTH?
[Extracted from NASA/Marshall Space Sciences Lab.]

Scientists Investigate Reasons for Temperature Trend "Disagreements" Between Layers of the Atmosphere

February 6, 1997

Thermometers on the ground, measuring the near-surface air temperature, demonstrate a marked increase in globally-averaged temperature over the past two decades.  Computer models of global warming predict that the temperature trend in the Earth's thick lower atmosphere, called the lower troposphere, should be experiencing an even more pronounced warming that increases smoothly with altitude.  And yet, satellite observations of the temperature of the Earth's lower troposphere do not reveal any overall warming trend.  Although interpreted by some as a controversy, research from NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center and the Global Hydrology and Climate Center now suggests that the temperature structure of the atmosphere is more complex than we (and our computer models) originally thought.

These results will be presented today (February 6) at the 77th meeting of the American Metorological Society in Long Beach, California in a special session dedicated to the scientific study of global warming.

Dr. Roy Spencer, a scientist at NASA/Marshall and principal author on the paper, has been monitoring the temperature of layers in the Earth's atmosphere from space.  Along with Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Spencer has produced a temperature record spanning 18 years.  Acquired from Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) instruments flying aboard the TIROS series of weather satellites.  Their data show temperature variations in the lower troposphere, a region from the surface to about 5 miles into the atmosphere.

"The temperatures we measure from space are actually on a very slight downward trend since 1979 in the lower troposphere.  We see major excursions due to volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo, and ocean current phenomena like El Nino, but overall the trend is about 0.05 degrees Celsius per decade cooling," Spencer remarked.

However, temperature measurements on land and ocean are up.  "Thermometers taking the temperature at the surface show a warming trend of about +0.10 to +0.15 degrees Celsius per decade," Spencer continued.  "Current computer models of global warming always predict that the temperature variations at the surface should increase smoothly with height as you go up through the lowest 8 miles of the atmosphere." This should make the temperature trend in the troposphere not only upward, but more pronounced than on the surface.

But the space-based measurements show a more complex vertical structure, with cooling in the lower portion of this deep layer and warming in the upper portion.  Spencer and co-author Dr. William Braswell of Nichols Research Corporation have great confidence in the quality of their satellite data.  "We've concluded there isn't a problem with the measurements," Spencer explained.  "In fact, balloon measurements of the temperature in the same regions of the atmosphere we measure from space are in excellent agreement with the satellite results."

"Instead, we believe the problem resides in the computer models and in our past assumptions that the atmosphere is so well behaved.  These models just don't handle processes like clouds, water vapor, and precipitation systems well enough to accurately predict how strong global warming will be, or how it will manifest itself at different heights in the atmosphere," remarked Spencer.

These poorly modeled processes are all related to convection.  This is the continual overturning of the atmosphere that occurs as water, evaporated from the Earth's surface, carries excess heat energy into the upper atmosphere where it can be more efficiently radiated to outer space.  This convective redistribution, the scientists theorize, may be part of what causes the interesting height-dependent structure in the temperature variations seen in the MSU data.  Spencer says that the models also suffer from "numerical diffusion," wherein water vapor in the lower atmosphere is allowed to unrealistically diffuse into the upper atmosphere, where it acts as a greenhouse blanket.  "All of these effects together make the computer-modeled atmosphere look much more vertically uniform than it probably is," Spencer concluded.

For more information of measuring temperatures from space please contact:

Dr. Roy Spencer
Mail Code ES-41
Space Sciences Laboratory
NASA/Marshall
Huntsville, Alabama 35812
roy.spencer@msfc.nasa.gov
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FPSPACE 97 INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
3rd Announcement

4-14 April, 1997, Moscow, Russia

Friends and Partners in Space (FPSPACE), Bauman Moscow State Technical University (BMSTU) Youth Space Center, and Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) are pleased to announce that we have obtained the minimum number of participants for both the 10-day International Workshop and the 4-day extension trip to the Baikonur Cosmodrome.  In addition, since there is continuing interest in the program, we have extended our registration deadline to March 1, 1997.

The program for the 10-day workshop includes:  four workshop sessions (Space Policy and Economics, International Space Station, Lunar/Mars Programs, and Internet Applications); tours of space facilities (Star City, Mission Control (TsUP), Khrunichev Space Center, BMSTU Orevo Laboratory, and MAI Special Laboratories); an Astronaut/Cosmonaut Panel Session; and a panel session on Russian Manned Lunar Programs.  In addition, cultural programs are provided before and after the workshop.  The official languages for the workshop are English and Russian; however, FPSPACE can arrange for translation into other languages at an additional fee.

The price for the 10-day program is $1,295 and includes registration for the workshop, hotel, three meals per day, all ground transportation, all program materials, entrance fees to space facilities, opening reception and our April 12 Cosmonautics Day celebration.  Airfare is not included.  Group rates for airline tickets may be possible depending on the number of participants traveling from each destination.  Airport transfers are included in the price for arrivals in Moscow on April 4 regardless of country of origin; however, a $20 fee will be charged for airport transfers for early/late arrivals.

For those interested in a longer trip, we are offering an optional 5-day, 4-night (two nights in Moscow, two nights in Leninsk) extension to the Baikonur Cosmosdrome in Kazakhstan to tour the launch and integration facilities.  FPSPACE will operate this extension as close to cost as possible.  The cost to FPSPACE for this extension is $1750 (plus additional fee) per person based on a minimum attendance of 10 people and includes roundtrip airfare from Moscow-Baikonur, hotel, three meals per day, ground transportation, all program materials, and entrance fees.

In order to conduct the Baikonur extension we also need to cover the costs of at least three individuals from BMSTU.  The Sponsors of FPSPACE 97 are actively looking for funding to cover this additional cost; however, it is anticipated that a portion of these costs will have to be passed on to participants.  This cost will be equally divided amongst participants and in all cases the additional fee shall not exceed $250.

For more information on FPSPACE 97 and highlights from last April's FPSPACE 96 workshop, please see our WWW Homepage at:
http://www.fpspace.org/

For information on FPSPACE 97 via e-mail, please send a request to this address (jlgreen@clark.net) or for information via standard mail or fax please call Jennifer Green in the U.S.  at 301-464-3361 (daytime) or 301-251-9838 (evening).

FPSPACE is an international non-profit organization devoted to improving communication and cooperation between the West and Russia/Former Soviet Union.

Jennifer L.  Green, Director, Friends and Partners in Space (FPSPACE) jlgreen@clark.net, http://www.fpspace.org/
**Information and projects dealing with West-Russia/FSU space programs**
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End MARSBUGS, Vol. 4, No. 4.

