 NASA scientists have produced the most compelling evidence yet that bacterial life exists on Mars.
It showed that microscopic worm-like structures found in a Martian meteorite that hit the Earth 13,000 years ago are almost certainly fossilized bacteria. The so-called bio-morphs are embedded beneath the surface layers of the rock, suggesting that they were already present when the meteorite arrived, rather than being the result of subsequent contamination by Earthly bacteria.
According to scientists, the meteorite was broken off the surface of Mars by the impact of an asteroid, and landed in Allan Hills in Antarctica after floating through space. The meteorite also preserves evidence of liquid water on Mars, suggesting that the planet may have had more suitable conditions for life to develop in the past. |
|
 In a new research, a scientist has suggested that at least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe under Jupiter’s moon Europa’s global ocean.
The scientist in question is Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Below its icy crust, Europa is believed to host a global ocean up to a hundred miles (160 kilometers) deep, with no land to speak of at the surface. The extraterrestrial ocean is currently being fed more than a hundred times more oxygen than previous models had suggested, according to provocative new research.
That amount of oxygen would be enough to support more than just microscopic life-forms, and at least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa, according to Greenberg. |
|
 Frederick Downs, Jr., a Vietnam veteran and director of VA's Prosthetic and Sensory Aids Service who lost his left arm, was "brought to tears" when a prosthetic arm allowed him to take a drink of bottled water with a single motion.
Designed by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, the “Luke” prosthetic arm is named after Luke Skywalker’s famous duel with Darth Vader in Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (“… I am your father,” reveals Vader after cutting off Luke’s dueling hand with his lightsaber).
Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand of TAU's Department of Engineering, working with a team of European Union (EU) scientists, has now gone a step further than Kamen. His team has successfully wired a state-of-the-art artificial hand to existing nerve endings in the stump of a severed arm. This intelligent artificial prosthetic hand mimics the movement of a real human hand and gives the wearer a true sensation of feeling and touch.
|
|
 E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.
"The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.
Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology — the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos. |
|
 Did water come from ice-covered asteroids that may have reached the Earth around one hundred million years after the birth of the planets?
Contrary to preconceived notions, the atmosphere and the oceans were perhaps not formed from vapors emitted during intense volcanism at the dawning of our planet. Francis Albarède of the Laboratoire des Sciences de la Terre suggests that water was not part of the Earth's initial inventory but stems from the turbulence caused in the outer Solar System by giant planets. Ice-covered asteroids thus reached the Earth around one hundred million years after the birth of the planets.
The Earth's water could therefore be extraterrestrial, have arrived late in its accretion history, and its presence could have facilitated plate tectonics even before life appeared. |
|
 Medical marijuana gets a boost from major doctors group.
The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.
The nation's largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.
In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.
|
|
 No men OR women needed.
Human eggs and sperm have been grown in the laboratory in research which could change the face of parenthood.
It paves the way for a cure for infertility and could help those left sterile by cancer treatment to have children who are biologically their own.
But it raises a number of moral and ethical concerns. These include the possibility of children being born through entirely artificial means, and men and women being sidelined from the process of making babies. |
|
 The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest.
The dramatic changes in life triggered by the tsunami "might have been part of the fabric of the Atlantis story."
They add that although the discovery was very much an accident, the new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added. |
|
|
Pacific Northwest Earthquakes Could Strike Closer to Home
