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'Milestone in Humankind's Search for Life' ; Science Magazine Hails Twin Mars Rovers As Breakthrough of*'04

Posted on: Friday, 7 January 2005, 03:00 CST

The twin roving robots and their geological doings that led scientists to conclude there was water in Mars' red, rocky hills was hailed as 2004's breakthrough by the editors of Science.

"Their finds mark a milestone in humankind's search for life elsewhere in the universe," editors wrote in Science.

Some astronomers note that for many years they thought this was the case, but the findings' suggestion of a former warm, wet Mars that might -- just might -- have supported life billions of years ago captured the public's imagination.

Science's editor in chief, Donald Kennedy, said there was little doubt that the rovers deserved the honor for demonstrating that water was "responsible for depositing, forming, and altering rocks on a large scale on early Mars."

The rovers' interplanetary traveling show, which began last year, and nine other research advances made the annual list of the top 10 scientific achievements, appearing in the Dec. 17 issue of one of the world's leading publishers of peer-reviewed, original research.

"Water is the key to life. For life to have originated and evolved on Mars, the presence of water was needed. Now there is chemical evidence that salty seas existed on Mars sometime in its early history," said atmospheric scientist Joel Levine of NASA's Langley Research Center.

Astronomer Ken Wilson of the Science Museum of Virginia said that this new "big picture" history will "help develop and target future Mars probes, especially those that will return samples to Earth. These future expeditions will, we hope, gather the evidence needed to show if some sort of life once developed during Mars' historic wet past."

Upcoming robotic explorers could bring down to Earth samples of rock, dirt or dust that might have preserved details of the lives of any possible "Martians."

The first runner-up to a watery Mars was the discovery announced in October of small humanlike remains in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. The scientists reporting the find suggest that modern humans and these small "hominids," Homo floresiensis, shared the Earth just 18,000 years ago.

Those conclusions have since been challenged, with skeptics saying the bones are those of modern humans with small heads because of a condition called microcephaly.

Among the other breakthroughs in 2004 named by the journal:

*Human cloning: South Korean researchers startled the world with word in February that they had cloned a human embryo to the early blastocyst stage to create embryonic stem cells, the body's building blocks. Success in primate cloning remains elusive and no other scientific team has produced human clones. The announcement reinvigorated the national debate over stem-cell research, but so far has failed to produce any consensus in the United Nations on a ban against human cloning.

*Condensates: At terribly cold temperatures, a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero (459 degrees below zero), atoms can lose their individual identities and behave like a single, huge atom in a single energy level or "condensate." This past year, physicists learned more about how these condensates act when the atoms grow apart. Physicists hope that further research will help reveal the mysteries of high-temperature superconductivity, a phenomenon with the potential to improve energy efficiency in a number of applications.

*Junk DNA: The human genome contains about 3.1 billion base pairs of which a small fraction are the regions or genes that code for proteins. For a long time, any DNA that didn't make up genes was considered useless junk. Researchers now know that these junk genes may play regulatory roles, turning other genes on or off at the right time and place, or even jumping around the genome.

*Pulsar pair: Early in 2004, a team of Australian, Italian and U.S. astronomers detected the first system of two pulsars orbiting each other, the only such duo found so far among the thousand or so pulsars discovered in the last 35 years. A pulsar is the collapsed core of a massive, exploded star. These spinning stars spew jets of radiation. The discovery has major implications for testing Einstein's general theory of relativity.

*Diversity declines: More distressing news about the decline of diversity among species other than our own. Last month, researchers said that about 10 percent of all bird species face extinction by the end of the century, affecting the environment and agriculture. Climate change may be altering the natural history of many areas.

*More water: Water is the most abundant liquid on our planet. Despite its ubiquitous presence, why solidifying water expands, when most substances contract, remains puzzling. Advances in understanding the molecular bonds that hold hydrogen and oxygen together prove that "water still gives researchers much to scratch their heads about."

*Medical partnerships: Organizations using public-private partnerships came to the fore with research initiatives on such worldwide problems as AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and dengue. The work is changing the way drugs are developed, tested and distributed to the poorest nations.

*New genes: In March, Department of Energy-funded researchers reported sequencing microbes in the Sargasso Sea. In the process, they discovered at least 1,800 new species and more than 1.2 million new genes.

Scientific fields the journal said "to watch" this year include: anti-obesity drugs; the Haplotype Map's insights into human genetic variation and disease; regulations of nanotechnology; and the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft's investigation of Saturn's moon, Titan.

Source: Richmond Times - Dispatch

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