posted September 03, 2004 12:28 PM              

New Scientist said the signal could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon or even be a by-product from the telescope itself.

But the mystery beam has excited astronomers across the world.

"If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get exciting," Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath in western England told the magazine.

It was broadcast on the main frequency at which the universe's most common element, hydrogen, absorbs and emits energy, and which astronomers say is the most likely means by which aliens would advertise their presence.

posted September 03, 2004 12:39 PM              

(Twilight Zone theme)

So, that's what you're up to lately, LL...combing the universe for signs of intellegent life, huh?

It would be no surprise to, myself personally, and probably most of the world's population, if this was in fact a signal generated by other wordly inhabitants of the universe. We've been 'eased into' the possibility of their existence over the course of many many decades, so I really do think the world's population can handle it, if they were to decide to make contact in a very real way in the not-to-distant future. In fact, many folks would be like "it's about time you dudes "came out of the astro- closet", so to speak.

As long as they're not here to steal our water or something malevolent like that, it's all good.

posted September 03, 2004 12:51 PM              

Call me superstitious or whatever... But the fact that the FIRST time we've found a "possible" alien signal...

It came from between Pisces & Aries on the wheel...

Symbolizing perhaps... the END or the BEGINNING? of something...

posted September 03, 2004 12:55 PM              

I dunno if it's conspiracy theory stuff. It's not a new out-of-the-blue concept, afterall. In fact, it's pretty broken in, I'd say.

posted February 16, 2005 06:54 PM              

WASHINGTON -- A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.

The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed.

What Stoker and Lemke have found, according to several attendees of the private meeting, is not direct proof of life on Mars, but methane signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth.

Stoker and other researchers have long theorized that the Martian subsurface could harbor biological organisms that have developed unusual strategies for existing in extreme environments. That suspicion led Stoker and a team of U.S. and Spanish researchers in 2003 to southwestern Spain to search for subsurface life near the Rio Tinto river—so-called because of its reddish tint—the product of iron being dissolved in its highly acidic water.

Stoker did not respond to messages left Tuesday on her voice mail at Ames.

Stoker told SPACE.com in 2003, weeks before leading the expedition to southwestern Spain, that by studying the very acidic Rio Tinto, she and other scientists hoped to characterize the potential for a “chemical bioreactor” in the subsurface – an underground microbial ecosystem of sorts that might well control the chemistry of the surface environment.

Making such a discovery at Rio Tinto, Stoker said in 2003, would mean uncovering a new, previously uncharacterized metabolic strategy for living in the subsurface. “For that reason, the search for life in the Rio Tinto is a good analog for searching for life on Mars,” she said.

Stoker told her private audience Sunday evening that by comparing discoveries made at Rio Tinto with data collected by ground-based telescopes and orbiting spacecraft, including the European Space Agency’s Mars Express, she and Lemke have made a very a strong case that life exists below Mars’ surface.

The two scientists, according to sources at the Sunday meeting, based their case in part on Mars’ fluctuating methane signatures that could be a sign of an active underground biosphere and nearby surface concentrations of the sulfate jarosite, a mineral salt found on Earth in hot springs and other acidic bodies of water like Rio Tinto that have been found to harbor life despite their inhospitable environments.

One of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers, Opportunity, bolstered the case for water on Mars when it discovered jarosite and other mineral salts on a rocky outcropping in Merdiani Planum, the intrepid rover’s landing site chosen because scientists believe the area was once covered by salty sea.

Stoker and Lemke’s research could lead the search for Martian biology underground, where standing water would help account for the curious methane signatures the two have been analyzing.

“They are desperate to find out what could be producing the methane,” one attendee told Space News. “Their answer is drill, drill, drill.”

NASA has no firm plans for sending a drill-equipped lander to Mars, but the agency is planning to launch a powerful new rover in 2009 that could help shed additional light on Stoker and Lemke’s intriguing findings. Dubbed the Mars Science Laboratory, the nuclear-powered rover will range farther than any of its predecessors and will be carrying an advanced mass spectrometer to sniff out methane with greater sensitivity than any instrument flown to date.

posted February 16, 2005 07:11 PM              

Its a message from the hyperspace bypass commitee telling us that they have sensed we are on Mars and we havent paid our tolls and therefore are in breach of interstellar rule number 1807 and prolly have some interuniversal commitee pre-ordained amount of time time to vacate Earth before they send in the 'big boys' :-}