"The presence of prismatic magnetites in Martian meteorite ALH84001 is strong evidence for life on early Mars."
- Kathie Thomas-Keprta, Biochemist,
Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
Mars by Hubble Space Telescope on June 30, 1999.
December 24, 2000 Houston, Texas - Three Christmases from now on December 26, 2003, a spacecraft built by the British called "Beagle 2" is scheduled to land on Mars to look for life. The lander will use a robotic arm to burrow into soil and under rocks. Samples will be analyzed chemically and results transmitted back to earth. What are the odds that Beagle 2 finds traces of organic life?
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Could skin cells that do not die at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, provide a better and unlimited skin supply for burn victims? Healthy skin supply is limited, demanding experiments such as this film seeded with autologous keratinocyte skin cells to repair a burned shoulder. Photo: Lyons Burn Centre, Edouard Herriot Hospital, Claude Bernard University, Lyons, France.
December 17, 2000 Madison, Wisconsin - In a week, it will be Christmas - a holiday to celebrate the birth of the man named Jesus Christ long considered by many to be divine, even immortal. The New Testament says his disciples heard Christ tell them that "whosoever believeth in Him who sent me shall have ever lasting life." As if to prove the lesson of his words, he also told the disciples that he would die before them and then resurrect with new life to walk among them again.
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An black interstellar cloud is being destroyed by strong radiation from a nearby hot star named Merope in the Pleiades. Hubble telescope photograph courtesy NASA, The Hubble Heritage Team, George Herbig and Theodore Simon, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii.
December 14, 2000 Hubble Space Telescope - In this new Hubble image, the star Merope in the Pleiades cluster is just outside the frame on the upper right. Not far away in astronomical terms is a cloud of dust and gas referred to as "Barnard's Merope Nebula," or IC 349. The cloud is being destroyed by the passage of Merope. NASA says the beautiful and eerie light effect is produced "like a flashlight beam shining off the wall of a cave. The star is reflecting light off the surface of pitch black clouds of cold gas laced with dust. These are called reflection nebulae." The parallel wisps extending from the lower left to upper right are explained by University of Hawaii astronomers, George Herbig and Theodore Simon, as dust particles slowed down by the strong starlight. Physicists call this phenomenon "radiation pressure."
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"On August 3-4, 1994, Werner Anderhub from Bern, Switzerland and a friend decided to visit a crop formation at midnight several days after it had been discovered on July 23rd. Researchers called it the "Galaxy" at West Stowell, a little east of Alton Barnes
"As the two men entered at the southeastern corner of the field about 150 meters from the Galaxy, a very large and bright light seemed to come from the ground inside the crop formation and rise into the sky. Werner told Bert Janssen and Janet Ossebaard in their 1999 documentary Crop Circles, The Research, "It was so bright, it lit up the hills in the background. It was bluish-white in color and about as big as the formation, fifty to sixty meters wide. The bright light formed some sort of cloud and it changed shape continuously as it hovered over the formation. After a couple of seconds, it rose at slow speed and disappeared into the darkness. My friend and I were totally flabbergasted!"
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Mad Cow Disease continues to panic Europe. Several countries including England, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland and The Netherlands have all reported the fatal disease. The European Union's agricultural minister told reporters, "Mad cow disease knows no borders, but is moving from one member state to another."
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Hubble Space Telescope image of Stephan's Quintet center where three galaxies are colliding 270 million light years from earth. The partial galaxy image at the bottom of the frame is now seen to be a much closer galaxy only 35 million light years away. Photograph courtesy European Space Agency and NASA.
November 26, 2000 Madrid, Spain - Galaxies in collision have fascinated scientists since 1877 when French astronomer Edouard Stephan discovered the first cluster that became known as Stephan's Quintet. The name applied to a group of five galaxies (NGC7317, 7318A, 7318B, 7319 and 7320) about 270 million light-years from earth in the constellation Pegasus. A sixth galaxy, NGC7320C, shown at the bottom of the above photograph, was originally thought to be part of the colliding cluster of galaxies. When its red shift (increasing wavelength emitted by receding celestial bodies) was measured in 1961, it was moving away from earth much more slowly (800 km/second) compared to the other galaxies (6000 km/second). That puzzling and discordant measurement provoked some scientists to argue that red shift is not related to distance and that the universe was not expanding.
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Cow infected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) that destroys brain tissue, on right, with a myriad of holes that resemble a sponge. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
November 26, 2000 Western Europe - On Friday, a shocked Germany and Portugal reported two new cases of mad cow disease that seems to be spreading in Europe. Doctors think the brain destroying prions that cause loss of muscle control and progressive dementia originated in Great Britain after cattle were given feed containing the ground up remains of infected sheep. There is a form of mad cow disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob which enters humans who eat infected meat. In England, 81 people have died of that disease since 1996.
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November 19, 2000 Cairo, Egypt - This week a Cambridge University Egyptologist from England, Dr. Kate Spence, announced a possible recalculation on the age of the Great Pyramid of Khufu or Cheops on the Giza Plateau near Cairo. She wanted to know how the ancient Egyptians lined up the Cheops pyramid so precisely north to south. She hypothesized that stars were the guide, so she used a computer to wind back time in the sky from today to about 4500 years ago. Dr. Spence found that the star Mizar, in the Big Dipper's handle, and Kochab, in the bowl of the Little Dipper, would have appeared one over the other at a point directly above the North Pole. Dr. Spence thinks that the Egyptians then hung a plumb line against the two stars to find true north for the construction of the great Cheops Pyramid. Her revised date for that construction is now 2478 B. C., give or take five years. If correct, the Great Pyramid could be 75 years older than traditional estimates.
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Deformed frog, only one rear leg. Photograph courtesy University of Minnesota.
November 12, 2000 Corvallis, Oregon - This year the largest ozone hole on record at the Antarctic extended over the city of Punta Arenas in Chile, exposing humans, animals and plants to increased ultraviolet radiation which can cause skin cancer, kill amphibian embryos and stunt and deform those that survive. Over the next four months, atmospheric scientists will be monitoring what happens at the North Pole. Will the Arctic ozone hole also get bigger as winter takes hold and expose more humans, animals and plants to increased ultraviolet radiation?
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Hundreds of near-earth asteroids such as this one orbit around the sun. Some are bigger than a mile across and a collision with earth would cause global destruction. Others are much smaller such as Near-Earth Object 2000 SG344 discovered September 29, 2000. Its size is estimated at only 150 feet. But what is it? Why is it pacing with our planet in the earth's plane? And could it hit the earth in 2071? Photograph courtesy NASA 2000.
November 5, 2000Pasadena, California - Asteroids headed towards, or near, earth are in the news again. On Friday, NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office in Pasadena, California announced that a small object discovered on September 29th had a small chance of colliding with this planet in September 2030. In fact, this was the first asteroid-like object to be given a Number One on the Torino scale which measures space collision threats. The scale was developed in 1998 by Richard Binzel, Professor of Planetary Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to help categorize near-earth objects. It's a sliding scale from zero to ten. Zero is no threat. A ten means definite impact that would cause a global catastrophe. A category one means scientists think this new object deserves careful monitoring. Paul Chodas, Principal Engineer for the NEAR Program Office at JPL, said "This is the highest probability of impact that we have ever calculated for an object."
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