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Re: Mars again




>I am scratching my head over one issue, however.  With the recent contention 
>that some Martian meteorites could contain traces of extraterrestrial 
>bacteria, let's say you are  a scientist devoting your entire life on 
>finding traces of life in meteorites, wouldn't you want to examine the 
>entire rock?  Would one piece of the
>rock really suffice?

Good point. In the case of ALH84001 however, the potential microfossils
were just found in a few areas of the meteorite (the orange carbonate
areas), and not the entire meteorite.  In fact, the 1996 paper from the
NASA/Stanford team was based on just just a 2 gram fragment of ALH84001.

Ron Baalke

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