On Nov 22, 2008, at 9:54 AM, Taylor J. Smith wrote:
Hi All,
Has Gaia produced us fire-making animals to stop Earth
from plunging into another deep freeze? You may find the
follwoing of some interest:
Jack Smith
---------------
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-03/ns_folk.html
``Nanobacteria: surely not figments, but what under heaven
are they?
ROBERT L. FOLK Note 1
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas,
Austin, Texas 78712, USA
Received February 11, 1997, published March 4, 1997
Note the Mars reference therein:
"Even if they are not "normal" bacteria, they can easily be cultured
(Figure 2) and those grown for a few days look exactly like those
occurring in rocks and minerals (Figure 3) as old as 2 billion years
or as recent as today, and are dead ringers for those occurring on
Mars as to size, shape, and surface features (see McKay et al. 1996)."
"And so the study of nannobacteria chugged along at a sluggish pace
until the electrifying discovery of the meteorite from Mars in
Antarctica (McKay et al. 1996). Chris Romanek of NASA had heard my
1992 lecture, my "coming out of the closet" presentation on
nannobacteria in carbonate rocks (Folk 1992) and decided to try the
techniques on the Martian meteorite ALH84001. Forms in the 0.1
micrometer range, exactly resembling nannobacteria found on Earth,
were discovered in this meteorite. The "incognoscenti" immediately
attacked, using the arguments "too small to be bacteria,"
"artifacts," being unaware of the previous six years of work done on
these minute creatures. In fact, unpublished photographs of work done
by myself and F. Leo Lynch on Sicilian volcanic clays with
nannobacteria can exactly duplicate every published photograph issued
by NASA (Figure 3, Lynch and Folk 1996). Even more "far out," work by
us on a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite (Allende) reveals distinct
grape-like clusters of 0.05 micrometer balls, probably nannobacteria
as well, and this time kosher extraterrestrials without any chance of
contamination from earthly ice or soils (Figure 5)."
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
