There was a pre-announcement at NASA HQ today on a big Astrobiology announcement coming this Thursday. This story is too good to pass up. First, I want to look at the woo crystal ball and predict what will hit the news and then take a deeper look at what the announcement might actually be about. Looking back at the old astrobiology questions is fun and interesting.
The Woo Crystal ball
I read about this story first from Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer on his blog earlier today "Snowballing Speculation over a NASA Press Conference", and then by a movie director friend on Facebook. By that time, I figure the story must have hit the mainstream. The Woo Crystal Ball says that an announcement from NASA about Astrobiology MUST be about the discovery of life on a different planet, maybe one of those rovers finally caught undisputable proof of a little green man or a Mars weed or something…some will say that it will be final disclosure that alien visitors have been with us on Earth for some time now.
This is silly. But I do hope that this week’s Mysterious Universe will be recorded before the Announcement so I can get a summary of what people are saying.
What the Announcement Might Actually Be About
The NASA Press Release gives very few details, but it gives a list of scientists and this sentence describing the meeting “to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”. The potential of this announcement rings of the ALH84001 announcement, for which President Clinton made a formal announcement including this statement “If this discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our universe that science has ever uncovered. Its implications are as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as can be imagined. Even as it promises answers to some of our oldest questions, it poses still others even more fundamental.” Well, sir, this might sound like an ALH84001 announcement, but it is NO ALH84001.
As Phil Plait notes, important publications typically have an embargo period where the announcement is held back until the publication date. This is maybe to keep up sales of Nature and Science? In fact, the press release notes that this announcement is under embargo until 2:00pm on Thursday. Because Science, the journal, only reports significant findings, the announcement must be on the results of an aggressive and interesting study. But what could it be?
My first thought was not to speculate about what kind of research is being done in astrobiology or what the open questions are in the field. Nope, my first thought was, what does it take to stalk a scientist? Not very much, below I have the search results of typing in the five authors’ names into Google and tracking down descriptions of their work.
- Mary Voytek, director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington
‘aquatic microbial ecology and biogeochemistry. She studies environmental controls on microbial transformations of nutrients, xenobiotics, and metals in freshwater and marine systems. She has worked in several extreme environments including Antarctica, hypersaline lakes, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and terrestrial deep- subsurface sites. At the USGS, she heads the Microbiology and Molecular Ecology team. She has conducted deep-biosphere studies at the Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure.’
- Felisa Wolfe-Simon, NASA astrobiology research fellow, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.
“a background in molecular biology, biochemistry, and phytoplankton physiology to uncover the sequence of events that shaped the evolution of the modern oceans phytoplankton and life itself.”
- Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Conrad, P.G., et al (2006). The Bread-crumb trail: distribution of organic chemical biosignatures from cryptoendolithic communities on the surfaces of Arctic and Antarctic sandstone rocks. Astrobiology, 6(1):167.
- Steven Benner, distinguished fellow, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, Fla.
http://www.ffame.org/people/sbenner.html
The origin of proteins and nucleic acids
Ricardo, A Benner, SA
Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology, ed. Woodruff T. Sullivan and John A. Baross, Cambridge University Press 154-173 (2007)
- James Elser, professor, Arizona State University, Tempe
“In more recent work he has extended the work to investigate the connections among C:N:P stoichiometry, growth rate, rRNA physiology and genetics, and ecological dynamics in diverse biota and ecosystems and to evaluate the application of these ideas to tumor dynamics. Currently, he is an active member of the ASU’s NASA-funded Astrobiology project “Follow the Elements” and a co-organizer of ASU’s Sustainable Phosphorus Initiative.”
What do these descriptions have in common? What would the focus of a collaborative research effort of one or more of these folks include? Clearly, they all have an emphasis on microbiology, DNA, and evolutionary biology with an emphasis on astrobiology. While it is unclear to me precisely what kind of research this announcement is going to be on, it is clear to me that it is going to be a study on evolutionary geobiology. The youngest scientist, Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology research fellow with grad time working at Dr. Ariel Anbar’s lab at ASU, had the most compelling blurb on her blog “To unravel details regarding the co-evolution of life and Earth.” I think they are going to announce a fundamentally different type of DNA or life process – maybe a non-carbon based chemistry that would support life. How cool would that be?
We’ll see and I’ll follow up with a little blurb Thursday evening!
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