ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 10, 1996 TAG: 9608120021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
THE THRILLING possibility that a meteorite that struck Earth 13,000 years ago holds evidence of life on Mars is testimony to the astonishing scientific knowledge humanity has been able to accumulate - and the untold knowledge it has yet to discover.
There is a universe still to be explored, and we must be about the business of finding out its secrets.
The layperson is struck by scientists' mere ability to theorize that a rock was formed 4.5 billion years ago, that it was blasted off of Mars by a comet or asteroid 16 million years ago, and that it fell to Earth 13,000 years ago.
That NASA scientists are able to draw from their study of this rock chemical and possibly fossil evidence of microbial life on Mars is astonishing. If true, mankind will have the first evidence that life exists elsewhere.
Of course, as NASA warns, it also is possible that what researchers have found in the potato-sized rock are ancient cracks formed in primordial mud that never held a microbe in all its billions of years of existence.
It's possible, even, that the meteorite didn't come from Mars in the first place. As noted by one planetary scientist, who is both impressed and unconvinced by NASA's dramatic find, scientists don't have a sample of rock known to have come from Mars, taken directly off the planet and brought to Earth. Such a sample is needed for comparison with meteorites found on Earth that are believed to have come from Mars.
The lack of certainty underscores the essential need for space exploration. It's early, yet, to be booking passage on a space-age Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria. Equally premature, though, is the response from a group calling itself Taxpayers for Common Sense. Fearing this week's news will prompt a spending boost, it already is warning against what its director is calling "a billion-dollar bacteria boondoggle." Why the presumption that this will be a boondoggle?
The evidence of ancient life on Mars is inconclusive, but it cannot be dismissed and demands further exploration. The fact that the evidence is microscopic, rather than big and green and shooting laser beams, makes it easy for foes of spending money on science to sneer. But national policy shouldn't be driven by the popular culture's demand for great special effects. Proof of even microscopic life on another planet would be profoundly significant, a discovery of religious proportions.
Dr. Stanley Miller of the University of California at San Diego explains: "If it turns out that there really was life on Mars, then we have to believe that if reasonably good conditions exist on any planet, life probably forms rather easily. The galaxy may indeed be full of inhabited places." In their view, we might be the aliens.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB