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Public release date: 23-Apr-2012
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Contact: Dirk Schulze-Makuch
dirksm@wsu.edu
509-335-1180
Washington State University

Sensors would punch into soil, run range of tests

PULLMAN, Wash.A Washington State University astrobiologist is leading a group of 20 scientists in calling for a mission to Mars with “a strong and comprehensive life detection component.” At the heart of their proposal is a small fleet of sensor packages that can punch into the Martian soil and run a range of tests for signs of ancient or existing life.

They call the mission BOLD. It’s both an acronym for Biological Oxidant and Life Detection and a nod to the proposal’s chutzpah. The proposal, which comes as NASA is reevaluating its Mars exploration program, appears in the journal Planetary and Space Science.

“We really want to address the big questions on Mars and not fiddle around,” says Dirk Schulze-Makuch, whose earlier proposals have included an economical one-way trip to the red planet. “With the money for space exploration drying up, we finally have to get some exciting results that not only the experts and scientists in the field are interested in but that the public is interested too.”

The BOLD mission would feature six 130-pound probes that could be dropped to various locations. Shaped like inverted pyramids, they would parachute to the surface and thrust a soil sampler nearly a foot into the ground upon landing. On-board instrumentation would then conduct half a dozen experiments, transmitting data to an orbiter overhead.

The soil analyzer would moisten a sample and measure inorganic ions, pH and light characteristics that might get at the sample’s concentration of hydrogen peroxide. Schulze-Makuch has hypothesized that microbial organisms on Mars could be using a mixture of water and hydrogen peroxide as their internal fluid. The compound might also account for several of the findings of the Viking Mars landers in the late 1970s.

The probe’s microscopic imager would look for shapes similar to known terrestrial microfossils.

Another instrument would look for single long molecules similar to the long nucleic acids created by life on earth.

Some experiments would repeat work done by the Viking landers but with a greater precision that could detect previously overlooked organic material.

Each probe would have about a 50-50 chance of landing successfully. But with the redundancy of six probes, the chance of one succeeding is better than 98 percent.

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 23-Apr-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Dirk Schulze-Makuch
dirksm@wsu.edu
509-335-1180
Washington State University

Sensors would punch into soil, run range of tests

PULLMAN, Wash.A Washington State University astrobiologist is leading a group of 20 scientists in calling for a mission to Mars with “a strong and comprehensive life detection component.” At the heart of their proposal is a small fleet of sensor packages that can punch into the Martian soil and run a range of tests for signs of ancient or existing life.

They call the mission BOLD. It’s both an acronym for Biological Oxidant and Life Detection and a nod to the proposal’s chutzpah. The proposal, which comes as NASA is reevaluating its Mars exploration program, appears in the journal Planetary and Space Science.

“We really want to address the big questions on Mars and not fiddle around,” says Dirk Schulze-Makuch, whose earlier proposals have included an economical one-way trip to the red planet. “With the money for space exploration drying up, we finally have to get some exciting results that not only the experts and scientists in the field are interested in but that the public is interested too.”

The BOLD mission would feature six 130-pound probes that could be dropped to various locations. Shaped like inverted pyramids, they would parachute to the surface and thrust a soil sampler nearly a foot into the ground upon landing. On-board instrumentation would then conduct half a dozen experiments, transmitting data to an orbiter overhead.

The soil analyzer would moisten a sample and measure inorganic ions, pH and light characteristics that might get at the sample’s concentration of hydrogen peroxide. Schulze-Makuch has hypothesized that microbial organisms on Mars could be using a mixture of water and hydrogen peroxide as their internal fluid. The compound might also account for several of the findings of the Viking Mars landers in the late 1970s.

The probe’s microscopic imager would look for shapes similar to known terrestrial microfossils.

Another instrument would look for single long molecules similar to the long nucleic acids created by life on earth.

Some experiments would repeat work done by the Viking landers but with a greater precision that could detect previously overlooked organic material.

Each probe would have about a 50-50 chance of landing successfully. But with the redundancy of six probes, the chance of one succeeding is better than 98 percent.

###

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

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We’d like to think that IQ isn’t the determining factor for success in life.

But psychology professors David Hambrick and Elizabeth Meinz recently wrote an Op-Ed for The New York Times, “Sorry Strivers, Talent Matters,” where they cite a few scientific studies that point to innate talent ? not practice ? as what separates the good from the great.

This is a bummer for many of us who want to believe that putting in the work will yield successful results. And not to say it doesn’t: it just can’t compete with outright intelligence.

Another unpopular idea is that of intelligence quotient (IQ) tests being an accurate barometer of a person’s smarts (the Op-Ed also points out that SAT tests are pretty good measures of IQ).This all goes against recent thinking on the subject ? including Malcolm Gladwell’s thesis in Outliers, which says that hard work is a key predictor of one’s success.

As it turns out, many factors throughout our lives affect our IQ scores ? and conversely, our IQ scores can greatly affect the outcome of our lives.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/facts-you-dont-want-to-know-iq-2011-11

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Image: Vincent Laforet stocklandmartelarchives.com

It?s hard to pin down the precise moment the world?s center of gravity shifted. For thousands of years, people lived in the countryside. They worked on farms or in villages, knew little of the world beyond their immediate families and neigh?bors, and generally got by on their own. Slowly, they began to congregate. It happened in Mesopotamia and Egypt, later in Greece and Rome, and also in Europe and the Americas. More recently, we?ve seen fast growth in Africa and, most spectacularly, in Asia. And then, by 2008, according to the United ?Nations, the balance finally tipped: in the ebb and flow of daily births and deaths, the number of people who inhabit the world?s cities ticked into the majority, for the first time ever.

The milestone itself isn?t nearly as significant as the trend. In the 20th century cities grew more than 10-fold, from 250 million people to 2.8 billion. In the coming decades, the U.N. predicts, the number of people living in cities will continue to rise. By 2050 the world population is expected to surpass nine billion and urban dwellers to surpass six billion. Two in three people born in the next 30 years will live in cities.

Many otherwise lucid thinkers, from Tho?mas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright to President Gerald Ford, tended to think of cities as centers of poverty, crime, pollution, con?gestion and poor health. In recent years, though, the thinking has shifted along with the demographics. Many experts have come to realize that people are better off when they live in a city. This is not to dismiss the problems of urban life; cities, particularly fast-growing ones in the poorer parts of Asia and Africa, can be places of great human suffering. But even a city slum has benefits that you won?t find on the farm or in the village. The move from the country leads, for instance, to dramatic changes for many women. As Kavita N. Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women notes in Stewart Brand?s Whole Earth Discipline (Penguin, 2010), ?In the village, all there is for a woman is to obey her husband and relatives, pound millet, and sing. If she moves to town, she can get a job, start a business, and get education for her children.?

Indeed, the city has come to look less like a source of problems than as an opportunity to fix them. Investments in sanitation and water have turned many cities in the developed world from places of disease and pestilence into bastions of health. City folk are at lower risk of death from motor vehicle accidents and suicide by firearms (although they are overstressed). From the stand?point of the metropolis, climate change also seems less intractable. Because city residents rely less on cars and live in more compact dwellings than suburbanites, they tend to leave smaller carbon footprints. The challenge is to extend the efficiency of the urban center to the wider conurbation, embracing the city center, suburbs and satellite towns. Although climate is bigger than any one fix, how we build our cities, and how efficiently we live in them, is going to factor large in our response.

The most hopeful impact of city life may be its effect on the mind. Humans are social animals; we draw stimulation from other minds close at hand. Plato and Socrates both lived in fifth-century b.c. Athens, a city-state. Galileo and Michelangelo lived in Renaissance Florence. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak grew up in a western U.S. conurbation that includes Silicon Valley. The young, agile minds at work on the next Big Thing are probably tweeting?they live, as author William Gibson points out on page 88, in a kind of digital meta city. Chances are, they are living in a physical city, too. Technology is reshaping city life and making it more intellectually productive, but it will not soon replace the easy interchange of ideas that comes from casual proximity, the cornerstone of city life.

This issue of Scientific American celebrates the city as a solution to the problems of our age. We have tried to present it in the true urban spirit: best ideas forward.?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=284f8aae4deaafac99e0f400670c50ee

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