Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
“We observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars,
one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane.”
- Geronimo Villanueva, Ph.D., NASA Goddard
January 25, 2009 Greenbelt, Maryland - Methane on Mars was first detected in 1999 and 2001, and then has been measured in persistent quantities since 2003 over at least two “hot spots” in the Martian northern hemisphere shown on map above:
“We know there’s been water all over the place, but how frequently have the conditions been hospitable for life? We can say pretty confidently that when water was present in the places we looked at, it would have been a happy, pleasant environment for life.”
- John Mustard, Ph.D., Geological Sciences, Brown University
December 20, 2008 San Francisco, California - At the annual American Geophysical Union Fall 2008 meeting held in San Francisco from December 15 to December 19, Brown University graduate student, Bethany Ehlmann, reported finding the mineral carbonate on Mars, increasing the chances that life might have existed on the red planet in the past when there was a less acidic watery surface. Carbonates result from carbon dioxide dissolved in water.
“The entire sun is blowing solar wind significantly less harder, about 20% to 25% less harder and 13% lower temperature, than it was during the previous solar minimum a decade ago. ...Over the entire record of solar wind observations (about 50 years), this is the lowest prolonged pressure that we’ve ever observed.”
– Dave McComas, Ph.D., Solar Wind Principal Investigator, Ulysses
September 23, 2008 Pasadena, California - NASA produced a media teleconference today with Ulysses spacecraft scientists to announce, “The entire sun is blowing significantly less hard, about 20% to 25% less hard, than it was during the previous solar minimum a decade ago and its solar wind temperature has lowered 13%.” Ulysses is the first spacecraft from Earth to orbit around the poles of the sun. Since its launch on October 6, 1990, from the Space Shuttle Discovery (mission STS-41) as a joint venture of NASA and the European Space Agency, Ulysses has completed almost three orbits around the sun's poles that began with the 1990 solar minimum, included the 2000 solar maximum and is running out of heat and power as it nearly completes a third orbit during this 2008 solar minimum that has had a prolonged period without sunspots.
“The discovery of Higgs boson particles would be the discovery
of a new force of Nature and the first one we will have seen in over a century.”
- Joseph Lykken, Ph.D., Fermi Lab Particle Physicist
Return to Part 1
September 9, 2008 Batavia, Illinois -
Composition of Universe .4% glowing matter such as stars. 3.6% “normal” matter as we know it in planets and stars. 22.0% cold, invisible “dark matter” detectable only by its gravitational influence on normal matter. 74.0% invisible “dark energy.”
“I am surprised that if it’s going to be big solar cycle 24, it’s taking this long for sunspots to get started.”
- David Hathaway, Ph.D., Solar Physics Team Leader,
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
August 29, 2008 Huntsville, Alabama - On July 11, 2008, NASA headlined one of its press releases as, “What's Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing).” The featured scientist in the news release was solar physicist David Hathaway, Ph.D., Solar Physics Team Leader, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Dr. Hathaway received his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado - Boulder in 1979.
“Right now, we don't know whether finding perchlorate is good news or bad news for possible life on Mars.”
- Peter Smith, Ph.D., Phoenix Lander Principal Investigator
August 5, 2008 Pasadena, California - Responding to the growing buzz on the internet about suppressed Mars Phoenix Lander data and the White House Science Adviser being briefed on a new and potentially disturbing discovery in the lander's soil analysis, today Phoenix mission scientists spoke and answered questions in an hour phone conference produced by NASA and JPL.