The two researchers, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke, do think they may have
evidence for methane in Mars' atmosphere. Methane cannot last long without being
replenished, and it's not easy to replenish it. There are non-biological ways
(for example, sunlight + C02 plus water, which can be found on Mars), but life
is the easiest way we know of. As the story went, they had a secret meeting --
with whom, we don't know -- and they were discussing releasing this bombshell to
either coincide or predate an article submitted to
Nature, a premier scientific journal.
But -- and this is the important bit --
there was never any meeting! Nor is there a
Nature paper.
I have a friend,
Penny
Boston, who studies cave geomicrobiology, just the kind of life this
story is talking about. She is good friends with Carol Stoker. I happened to
email Penny yesterday to tease her a little about Hoagland's silly claims on C2C
last night (he happened to mention her name), and she emailed me back today. She
told me that Dr. Stoker had emailed her about all this. Dr. Stoker has issued a
statement, which I will quote here:
| Dr. Carol Stoker
wrote: |
A story has appeared in Space.com which quotes us
inaccurately and without permission. The story is based on hearsay
and is factually incorrect.
Here are the facts:
1. On
Sunday night we were attending a private party
of space exploration
enthusiasts in which there was a
discussion about the possible meaning
of the results
from recent Mars missions. We engaged in the
discussion and expressed thoughts and opinions as
individual
scientists on our own time and did not
represent ourselves as speaking
for NASA.
2. No one at the party identified themselves as a
reporter, and in fact no reporters were present. This
article is
based on hearsay about what somebody at the
party thought they heard
us say. We think this
represents extremely poor journalistic
standards.
3. No Nature paper has been submitted with Rio Tinto
results. This claim is simply wrong and we did not
make this
claim. The MARTE project has several papers
in preparation that
describe the work we are doing at
Rio Tinto and the first results of
that work, but
nothing has been submitted yet. Preliminary results
have been published in abstract form at various
scientific
meetings. If you want to see what the MARTE
team has actually said
about results from Rio Tinto
drilling and its relevance to life on
Mars, go to
www.marteproject.com and click on publications.
All
our REAL publications are posted there.
4. The work at Rio
Tinto is relevant to finding life
in a subsurface terrestrial
environment and can't be
used to infer anything about life on Mars,
directly.
The Rio Tinto work by its very nature can't tell us if
there is life on Mars, but certainly helps formulate
the strategy
for how to search for life on Mars. One
approach to searching for
extant life on Mars is by
drilling. Partly for this reason, the MARTE
project
was selected for funding by NASA's ASTEP program, out
of
the Science Mission Directorate and is a joint
project between NASA
and Spain's Center for
Astrobiology.
|
So there you go. There is clearly more going to happen
here. Will NASA issue a press release about all this? What will space.com do? I
do not yet have all the facts. Dr. Stoker is clearly upset with space.com, but I
will reserve judgement until I find out more.