"Life in the universe - what scientists mean by 'life,' the search for life and what life forms might exist in the universe - was the topic of a free, non-technical talk presented by Dr. Chris Chyba of the SETI Institute. SpaceRef is pleased to provide this multimedia presentation."

"European space scientists got an unsettling sense of déjà vu last week. The European Space Agency had asked its 15 member governments for a 4% annual increase for its much-praised science program, but instead, government ministers meeting in Edinburgh approved only 2.5%--barely enough to keep up with inflation"

"Just over a week ago, Sean O'Keefe was publicly criticizing NASA for cost overruns and poor management. Now those problems are his responsibility. President George W. Bush nominated O'Keefe, currently the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and an influential Washington insider to NASA's top job, vacated on 16 November by Dan Goldin."

"Astronomers craving their first image of a giant planet beyond our solar system now have fresh targets to explore: newly identified siblings of Beta Pictoris, the most famous dust-shrouded star in the sky."

"Evidence for water and organic compounds on Mars and Europa has astrobiologists seriously pursuing the possibility that primitive life once existed on other planets and moons. As they gear up for the real acid test -- collecting samples from these distant bodies to examine them directly for evidence of life -- they are tackling nothing less profound than the origins of life in the universe. "

"Everett Gibson, a NASA researcher who was among the group that first proposed that ALH840001 contained evidence of life, said that Buseck has not even looked at the Mars meteorite. "How can he draw this conclusion without seeing the material?" Gibson asked. He said that other researchers have found evidence that supports the NASA group."

"A program designed to study the mid-ocean ridge system and enhance understanding of the relationship between the geological processes that lead to planetary renewal in the deep ocean and life forms that thrive in the absence of sunlight has found a home at Penn State."

"As part of its Research Associateship Programs, the National Research Council is offering NASA Astrobiology Institute postdoctoral awards. In the first year of the program (2000), six new Astrobiology Institute awards were made; in the second year (2001), six additional new awards were made. The Associateship Programs provide opportunities for Ph.D., Sc.D., or M.D. scientists and engineers of unusual promise and ability to perform research on problems largely of their own choosing yet compatible with the research interests of NASA and the member Astrobiology institutes. The applicant, in consultation with the prospective research adviser, will submit a concise research proposal which describes an innovative astrobiology research project."

"Astronauts or unmanned space vehicles may one day detect and quantitate the gases found on other planets using tiny chemical sensors - each measuring about 100 microns, approaching the width of a human hair-based on a design developed at NIST."

"Christopher Chyba insists he sleeps, but it's hard to imagine how he finds time for more than a quick nap here and there. An astrobiologist who also happens to be an expert on international relations, bioterrorism and nuclear security, Chyba is devoted to searching for intelligent life in the universe and doing his part to make life on Earth a little wiser, too."

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the search for life beyond our planet is getting serious and Europe is playing a full role. Over the next two years, the European Space Agency will be sending two spacecraft (Rosetta and Mars Express) to search for clues to life's origins elsewhere in our Solar System. A third ESA probe, Huygens is already on its way to Titan, a planetary-sized laboratory for pre-biotic chemistry. ESA is also planning a series of spacecraft to find planets orbiting other stars and even to look for life's signatures on other worlds that look much like our own. These missions are providing scientists from all over Europe with unprecedented opportunities to unravel the origins of life."

"The Space Exploration Advisory Committee (SEAC) advises the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Space Science Program on matters pertaining to space exploration in Canada. A SEAC subcommittee has been formed to study the feasibility of establishing a Canadian Astromaterials Facility (CAF). The subcommittee has identified a rationale, outlined the preferred nature of a CAF, and envisioned important links and upgrades to existing Canadian laboratories to complement a CAF. SEAC now needs response from the space exploration community in Canada to this initiative. If the community is supportive, the subcommittee also seeks to identify individuals and institutions that are interested in implementing such a facility. "

"Several impact craters on Jupiter's satellite Europa exhibit central peaks. On the terrestrial planets, central peaks consist of fractured but competent rock uplifted during cratering. Therefore, the observation of central peaks on Europa indicates that an ice layer must be sufficiently thick that the impact events did not completely penetrate it. We [have concluded] that the ice must be more than 3 to 4 kilometers thick."

"The morphologies (structure) of some craters indicate that these impacts didn't completely vaporize or melt through a cold, brittle ice layer on Europa. So based on this observation, our impact simulations demonstrate that the ice crust must be more than 3 to 4 kilometers thick," Turtle said. "I should emphasize that what we've done is put a lower limit on the thickness of the ice. These simulations do not put an upper limit on ice thickness.""

"The suggestion that life may have arisen in hydrothermal systems raises a number of questions: What about the warm, prebiotic soup we all learned about in school? What about experiments by Stanley Miller and others in the 50s that replicated an early Earth atmosphere, zapped it with simulated lightning, and succeeded in forming some of the building blocks of the molecules of life?"

"As a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and Director of ASU's Astrobiology Program, I have continually come into contact with wonderfully visionary scientists who are helping expand the horizons of astrobiology," Farmer said. "This has been my main source of inspiration. I guess at the bottom line, it's just an exciting time to be in science."

"For many billions of years, the only life that existed on Earth was microbial, that is, microscopic organisms that we generally call bacteria. These were commonly so abundant that microbial mats basically covered much of the Earth's ocean seafloors. Then during the Cambrian, a little more than a half billion years ago, animals evolved and burrowed into the microbial mats and took advantage of this rich food source. Of course, that means they eventually ate up the mats. "

"A budding theory to describe Earth processes could help solve some martian mysteries as well, believes Victor Baker, Regents' Professor and head of the hydrology and water resources department at the University of Arizona, and a group of his colleagues."

"... it is quite possible that a shallow ocean may have existed on Mars very early in its history, as some have suggested based on completely different data." "

"Assuming that the OPR of ammonia in comets was unchanged in the nucleus, the derived spin temperature of ammonia (28 ± 2 kelvin) suggests that a formation region of the cometary ammonia ice was between the orbit of Saturn and that of Uranus in the solar nebula."

"Observations made with the High-Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS) of Subaru Telescope have, for the first time, allowed astronomers to measure the formation temperature of ammonia ice in a comet. The temperature of 28 +/- 2 Kelvin (about -245^oC or -410^oF) suggests that this comet, Comet LINEAR (C/1999 S4), was formed between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. These observations provide us with not only direct evidence of the environment in which the comet was born, but also establish brand new methods for probing the origin of comets."

"The purpose of this study was to assess, for the first time, the presence of muramic acid (Mur) and 3-hydroxy fatty acids (3-OH FAs), chemical markers for terrestrial bacteria in "curated" lunar samples by use of state-of-the-art gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. It is suggested that future life detection studies of other samples of extraterrestrial origin (e.g., from Mars) might be greatly aided by concurrent analysis of chemical markers for terrestrial bacteria and by including pristine lunar dust to provide a negative baseline."

"Yale University researcher Michael Snyder and his colleagues have created the first microchip able to analyze virtually all yeast proteins, the chemicals that carry out the activities necessary for life. "

"Preliminary findings from an expedition last year to the deep-sea of the Angola Basin are revealing a wealth of new information on biodiversity in the poorly known depths of the south Atlantic Ocean."

NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey gave mission managers a real treat this Halloween with its first look at the Red Planet. It's a thermal infrared image of the Martian southern hemisphere that captures the polar carbon dioxide ice cap at a temperature of about -120°C (-184°F).

"In the Oct. 26 issue of the journal Science, Japanese scientists and Devreotes describe success in imaging single molecules of cAMP as they interact with docking points, or receptors, on the surface of these amoebae. The technique provides real-time video of how the receptors and cAMP behave."

"Stanford University plans to combine its expertise in life sciences with NASA's enormous computer power and space research to better understand life on Earth and in space. This in turn is expected to foster new treatments for disease. The two partners will be Stanford's Center for Biomedical Computation and NASA's Center for Computational Astrobiology and Fundamental Biology at Ames Research Center near Mountain View."

"Within the endemic invertebrate faunas of hydrothermal vents, five biogeographic provinces are recognized. Invertebrates at two Indian Ocean vent fields belong to a sixth province, despite ecological settings and invertebrate-bacterial symbioses similar to those of both western Pacific and Atlantic vents. Most organisms found at these Indian Ocean vent fields have evolutionary affinities with western Pacific vent faunas, but a shrimp that ecologically dominates Indian Ocean vents closely resembles its Mid-Atlantic counterpart."

"Since the discovery of brown dwarfs in 1995, hundreds have been detected in different astronomic environments. In his Perspective, Gizis reviews the current knowledge about these "failed stars," which are too light to sustain nuclear fusion. It is intriguing that the lightest brown dwarfs may be lighter than the heaviest planets. Gizis argues that the two classes of objects should nevertheless have different statistical properties, which should allow them to be distinguished. "

The NASA Astrobiology Institute prepared this report in order to articulate the relationship between astrobiology and solar-system exploration, and the role of astrobiology in planetary science. This report provides input into the National Research Council's task of constructing of a decadal strategy for solar system exploration.

"The impressive rho Ophiuchi cloud is one of the heavenly meeting points for astronomers in search of young stars. Located 540 light-years away in the constellation of Ophiucus, in the celestial equator, this dusty region is the nest of more than one hundred newborn stars. But ESA's Infrared Space Observatory, ISO, has also found a surprise hidden in the dust: 30 brown dwarfs, elusive and ambiguous objects considered to be 'failed stars' because they have too little mass to shine as stars."

"The California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are hosting a multi-disciplinary workshop to identify what observations of the composition of the Mars atmosphere would allow the detection of extant subsurface life, remnants of life, or signatures of past climate supportive of life."

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today named 23 recipients of this year's MacArthur Fellowships. Each will receive $500,000 over five years of "no strings attached" support. Among the recipients are two noted astrobiologists:

"The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) has reached an agreement with Celera Genomics Group, an Applera Corporation business in Rockville, MD, on the use of AURA's Operational Pipeline Unified Systems (OPUS) software package. Originally designed for use in the Hubble Space Telescope program, OPUS is being used by Celera to process bioinformatics data. "

The United States returned to Mars tonight as NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey fired its main engine at 7:26 p.m. Pacific time and was captured into orbit around the red planet. At 7:55 p.m. Pacific time, flight controllers at the Deep Space Network station in Goldstone, Calif., and Canberra, Australia, picked up the first radio signal from the spacecraft as it emerged from behind the planet Mars.

"NASA's Center for Computational Astrobiology and Fundamental Biology (NCCAFB), based at NASA's Ames Research Center, and Stanford's Center for Biomedical Computation (CBMC), today announced a collaborative partnership to conduct multi-disciplinary research and development in the emerging field of computational biology. The goal of the collaboration is to develop new methods of computational biology and apply them to explain how cells function, evolve and are affected by diseases, both on Earth and in space. Computational biology is an emerging interdisciplinary field that uses computers and specialized software to solve biological problems and apply the solutions to diverse applications in biology, medicine and space science. "

"An international team of astronomers has discovered eight new extrasolar planets, bringing to nearly 80 the number of planets found orbiting nearby stars. The latest discoveries, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA, uncovered more evidence of what the astronomers are calling a new class of planets. These planets have circular orbits similar to the orbits of planets in our solar system."

"Purdue University engineers used "genetic algorithms" to design innovative constellations, or collections, of satellites orbiting the Earth. The algorithms are helpful in designing low-cost constellations that save money by placing a small number of satellites around the Earth at relatively low altitudes, said William Crossley, an associate professor at Purdue's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a faculty member of the university's Center for Satellite Engineering."

"NASA researchers have uncovered evidence that gravity, or the lack thereof, may play an important role in the development and evolution of life. The study suggests fertilization is gravity-sensitive and works differently in the near-weightless environment of space than it does here on Earth. Using sperm from tiny sea urchins, the research team conducted both ground- and space-based experiments to examine the impact gravity has on the reproduction process."

"An enormous ancient drainage basin and aquifer system lies hidden and deformed in one of the most geologically dynamic landscapes on Mars, scientists conclude from a comprehensive, more than 10-year study. They estimate that a basin almost the size of the United States or Europe for billions of years covered part of Tharsis, a magmatically active bulge in the western hemisphere. Tharsis landforms are a complex of towering volcanoes, lava flow fields, igneous plateaus, fault and rift systems, flood channels, vast canyon systems, and tectonic features. Most scientists believe that periodic release of internal planetary heat at Tharsis has for more than three billion years had a major impact on Mars' geology, hydrology and climate."

"Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's 12 Meter Telescope at Kitt Peak, AZ, have discovered the complex organic molecule vinyl alcohol in an interstellar cloud of dust and gas near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The discovery of this long-sought compound could reveal tantalizing clues to the mysterious origin of complex organic molecules in space."

"Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's 12 Meter Telescope at Kitt Peak, AZ, have discovered the complex organic molecule vinyl alcohol in an interstellar cloud of dust and gas near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The discovery of this long-sought compound could reveal tantalizing clues to the mysterious origin of complex organic molecules in space."

A team of researchers has uncovered microbes which have literally eaten their way through rock. Traces of this process are preserved in the glassy margins of underwater lava flows (scientists call super-cooled lava spewed by undersea volcanoes "glass," which is similar to material used to make stone-age axes and knives). Glass samples were recovered by drilling as deep as four miles below sea level. Yet another example of what terrestrial life can do - implications for life elsewhere?

"The first detailed global mapping of an asteroid has found that most of the larger rocks strewn across the body were ejected from a single crater in a meteorite collision perhaps a billion years ago. "One big impact spread all this debris," says Peter Thomas, senior researcher in Cornell University's Department of Astronomy. "This observation is helping us start answering questions about how things work on the surface of an asteroid."

"Things are crackling on the giant Jovian moon, Europa, and a group of earth-bound ocean scientists funded by the Office of Naval Research are intriguedŠ could Jupiter's Europa be hiding an ocean of water under that icy surface? A salty oceanŠ larger than all the oceans of the earth combined? The potential for an ocean on Europa makes it one of the best bets in our solar system for life as we know it."

"Biosphere 2 marks its first decade today, and since eight people were sealed inside the 3.15-acre miniworld for a two-year experiment, the oft-criticized project has been transformed into a research facility that could yield data crucial to understanding global climate science. Barry Osmond, president and executive director of Columbia University's Biosphere 2 Center, said the project's change in focus is an "exceptionally good illustration of the principle of evolution of scientific understanding."

Diversa Corporation today announced the completion of the sequencing of the Pyrolobus fumarii genome. P. fumarii was discovered in the wall of a black smoker, or a deep-sea hydrothermal vent formed by sulfur-bearing minerals from beneath the Earth's crust, located in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The organism grows at temperatures between 90 degrees C and 113 degrees C, the highest temperature recorded for an organism to date.

"Once traits like this are found, they're usually not restricted to one organism. We've seen this in a variety of cyanobacteria. If this really a widespread ability of bacteria, it also has implications on how we understand the bacterial communities in the deep subsurface. Bacterial communities may be following water in the subsurface over large distances," he said. Similarly, there are implications for locating life in another extreme environment - Mars. Though cyanobacteria are among the most primitive living things, they have developed sophisticated skills for dealing with an environment where water is both scarce and transitory. "

NASA released the most detailed pictures ever taken of a comet's surface today. The images were taken by the Deep Space 1 spacecraft last Saturday as it flew a scant 1,350 miles above the surface of Comet Borrelly at a speed of 36,900 mph. As a result, our knowledge of cometary surface details, chemical composition, and interaction with the space environment was substantially enhanced.

"A new type of carbonaceous chondrite, the Tagish Lake meteorite, exhibits a reflectance spectrum similar to spectra observed from the D-type asteroids, which are relatively abundant in the outer solar system beyond the main asteroid belt and have been inferred to be more primitive than any known meteorite. Until the Tagish Lake fall, these asteroids had no analog in the meteorite collections. "

"The Tagish Lake meteorite fell last year on a frozen lake in Canada and may provide the most pristine material of its kind. The findings provide insight into an outcome of early solar chemical evolution that differs from any seen so far in meteorites."

"Terrestrial planets orbiting in the habitable zones of stars - where planetary surface conditions are compatible with the presence of liquid water - are of enormous interest because they might have global environments similar to Earth's and even harbour life. The light scattered by such a planet will vary in intensity and colour as the planet rotates; the resulting light curve will contain information about the planet's surface and atmospheric properties. Here we report a model that predicts features that should be discernible in the light curve obtained by low-precision photometry."

"Scientists at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study conducted a detailed study of Earth's reflections not for insights into an alien's view of our home planet, but as a way for human scientists to learn about distant planets that may be like our own. They are participating in the early planning for a NASA mission known as the Terrestrial Planet Finder, a space probe that will scan the skies for planets hospitable to life. "

"Planetary scientists are using data reported by a NASA spacecraft flying past the Galilean satellites Europa, Ganymede and Callisto to provide new insight into the unique chemical reactions that take place on extremely cold icy surfaces under high vacuum, driven by high-energy electrons and ions rather than normal thermal processes."

"The first results are in from the organic analysis of the Tagish Lake Meteorite, a rare, carbon-rich meteorite classified as a "carbonaceous chondrite" that fell on a frozen Canadian lake in January 2000 and is the most pristine specimen ever studied of this group of important space objects. "

"Brown geologists Takahiro Hiroi and Carle Pieters and a colleague from NASA have identified the location from which an unusually well-preserved meteorite fell -- the mid-to-far end of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Their results confirm that the Tagish Lake meteorite is made of probably the oldest materials in the solar system."

"Here we report the discovery of significant amounts of trapped noble gases in chondrules whichconsists of highly reduced minerals. The most plausible explanation for the high noble-gas concentration and the characteristic elemental ratios is that solar gases were implanted into the chondrule precursor material, followed by incomplete loss of the implanted gases through diffusion over time."

"The dominant theory of how our moon was formed is that it is a by-product of a large off-centre collision between the earth and an approximately Mars-sized protoplanet. This theory has become the consensus view as no other theory reconciles so many of the facts about the Earth and the Moon. Until recently it has been impossible to model this theory, but now new mathematicalalgorithms and the availability of the necessary computing power are allowing scientists to put the theory to the test. "

"The "giant impact" theory, first proposed in the mid-1970s to explain how the Moon formed, has received a major boost as new results demonstrate for the first time that a single impact could yield the current Earth-Moon system."

"A nearby young star recently gave birth to millions of comets, according to new observations using NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) spacecraft. The result provides clues to how our own solar system formed and evolved."

Molecular hydrogen (H₂) is by far the most abundant material from which stars, protoplanetary disks and giant planets form, but it is difficult to detect directly. Infrared emission lines from H₂ have recently been reported towards Pictoris, a star harbouring a young planetary system. This star is surrounded by a dusty 'debris disk' that is continuously replenished either by collisions between asteroidal objects or by evaporation of ices on Chiron-like objects. A gaseous disk has also been inferred from absorption lines in the stellar spectrum."

"A team of astronomers has found a Jupiter-size planet in a circular orbit around a faint nearby star. The planet is the second found to orbit the star 47 Ursae Majoris in the Big Dipper. The new planet is at least three-fourths the mass of Jupiter and orbits the star at a distance that, in our solar system, would place it beyond Mars but within the orbit of Jupiter."

"The largest genetic study ever performed to learn when land plants and fungi first appeared on the Earth has revealed a plausible biological cause for two major climate events: the Snowball Earth eras, when ice periodically covered the globe, and the era called the Cambrian Explosion, which produced the first fossils of almost all major categories of animals living today. "

"The colonization of land by eukaryotes probably was facilitated by a partnership (symbiosis) between a photosynthesizing organism (phototroph) and a fungus. However, the time when colonization occurred remains speculative. Our protein sequence analyses indicate that green algae and major lineages of fungi were present 1000 Ma and that land plants appeared by 700 Ma, possibly affecting Earth's atmosphere, climate, and evolution of animals in the Precambrian."

"About 30% of detected extrasolar planets exist in multiple-star systems. The standard model of planet formation cannot easily accommodate such systems and has difficulty explaining the odd orbital characteristics of most extrasolar giant planets."

"The protosolar nebula is believed to have had a homogeneous isotopic composition. Yet the isotopic composition of water on Earth differs widely from that of the primitive Sun. "

"Congressional lawmakers are at odds with each other and with the new Administration over which U.S. space science efforts should be funded-or cut-in 2002. The high-stakes legislative game affects plans for several important space projects, from Mars exploration to a successor for the Hubble Space Telescope. The politicians also want to shunt hundreds of millions of dollars into pork programs-a move likely to increase the pressure on NASA's strained budget."

"A bunch of sea urchins turned up in the Cretaceous like a bad penny, millions of years after they were believed to have gone extinct. Their reappearance casts doubt on the existence of one long-presumed mass extinction and by implication the existence of several others. "

"It appears that there is much more nitrogen fixation than we know about," Zehr said. "In the open ocean, there are only one or two organisms known to fix nitrogen. They probably can't account for all the nitrogen getting fixed."

"The new method offers greater efficiency, and access to a much more detailed geologic record than current dating methods, the scientists say. The successes of the early phases of the research have led to funding for development of a new electron microprobe that will significantly enhance the potential of the technique."

"The agreement provides for the license, purchase and use by the NASA Ames Research Center of CombiMatrix's active biochips (microarrays) and related technology to conduct biological research in both terrestrial laboratories and in space.

"A vast number of bacteria and archaea have the ability to transfer electrons to iron through a reduction process," explained Lovley. "In other words, they digest one form of a metal and excrete it as another form. This transfer leaves behind deposits of solid metal in unlikely places on Earth or maybe even on Mars. What's left behind is often more useful, or more accessible to humans, than the original form of the same substance."

"California astronomers are broadening the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) with a new experiment to look for powerful light pulses beamed our way from other star systems. Scientists from the University of California's Lick Observatory, the SETI Institute , UC Santa Cruz, and UC Berkeley are coupling the Lick Observatory's 40-inch Nickel Telescope with a new pulse-detection system capable of finding laser beacons from civilizations many light-years distant. Unlike other optical SETI searches, this new experiment is largely immune to false alarms that slow the reconnaissance of target stars. "

"One of Jupiter's largest moons, Callisto, may hold watery secrets beneath its surface, suggests a new analysis. The satellite's icy crust may be the planetary equivalent of a blanket, insulating an underground ocean."

"The discovery of the induced magnetic field of Callisto has been interpreted as evidence for a subsurface ocean, even though the presence of such an ocean is difficult to understand in the context of existing theoretical models. "

"Microorganisms living in anoxic marine sediments consume more than 80% of the methane produced in the world's oceans. In addition to single-species aggregates, consortia of metabolically interdependent bacteria and archaea are found in methane-rich sediments. "

"Most of the methane that rises toward the surface of the ocean floor vanishes before it even reaches the water. A team of researchers has provided the clinching evidence for where all that methane goes: It is devoured by vast hordes of mud-dwelling microbes that belong to a previously unknown species of archaea. These methane-eating microbes--once thought to be impossible--now look to be profoundly important to the planet's carbon cycle."

"Methane consuming archaeobacteria and sulfate-reducing bacteria, acting together, are responsible for consuming most of the methane in the world's oceans, according to a team of microbiologists and geoscientists. "Past research had shown that there is a consortia of these two very different single-celled organisms, and indirect tests indicated they might be the source of methane consumption," said Dr. Christopher H. House, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State. "We decided to directly test if these organisms are responsible."

"The advent of oxygenic photosynthesis on Earth may have increased global biological productivity by a factor of 100­1,000 , profoundly affecting both geochemical and biological evolution. Much of this new productivity probably occurred in microbial mats, which incorporate a range of photosynthetic and anaerobic microorganisms in extremely close physical proximity."

"Darwinian evolution favours genotypes with high replication rates, a process called 'survival of the fittest'. However, knowing the replication rate of each individual genotype may not suffice to predict the eventual survivor, even in an asexual population."

"Chuck Klein, whose nickname came from a popular baseball player of his youth, has been in the forefront of what is now called astrobiology since the 1960s. For decades he was a driving force at the SETI Institute, encouraging and participating in research into the possibilities of life beyond Earth. Klein died on July 15"

"The results of 16 new 3D N-body simulations of the final stage of the formation of the terrestrial planets are presented. The principal effect of using an initially bimodal mass distribution is to increase the final number of planets. Each simulation ends with an object that is an approximate analogue of Earth in terms of mass and heliocentric distance.

"The panel for this hearing was comprised of three eloquent scientists and one NASA bureaucrat. The topics discussed ranged from the definition of intelligent life (and whether there is any in Washington DC); the odds of finding extraterrestrial life (of any kind) in the universe; the extremes to which life seems to be able to adapt and what this suggests for extraterrestrial abodes; and lastly whether UFOs are indeed piloted by intelligent visitors from another world. Not your typical Congressional hearing."

"As an alien sun blazes through its death throes, it is apparently vaporizing a surrounding swarm of comets, releasing a huge cloud of water vapor. The discovery, reported in an article to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature, is the result of observations with the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS), a small radio observatory NASA launched into space in December 1998."

"The remarkable hydrothermal vent structures serendipitously discovered last December in the mid-Atlantic Ocean, including a massive 18-story vent taller than any seen before, are formed in a very different way than ocean-floor vents studied since the 1970s, according to findings published July 12 in the journal Nature. The circulation of fluids that forms this new class of hydrothermal vents apparently is driven by heat generated when seawater reacts with mantle rocks, not by volcanic heat. "

"[This article proposes] the concept of a "Galactic Habitable Zone" (GHZ). Analogous to the Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ), the GHZ is that region in the Milky Way where an Earth-like planet can retain liquid water on its surface and provide a long-term habitat for animal-like aerobic life."

"The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft are currently traveling through the outer reaches of the solar system. Voyager 1 may soon encounter the termination shock, a region that provides a clue to the overall size of the heliosphere. Current estimates suggest that the termination shock is located at 80 to 100 times the Sun-Earth distance; Voyager 1 may soon provide a more precise answer. "

"Formation of the solar system may have been triggered by a stellar wind. From then on, the solar system would have followed a conventional evolutionary path, including the formation of a disk and bipolar jets. The terrestrial planets took ~100 million years to form. Consequently, they would have accreted already differentiated bodies, and their final assembly was not completed until after the solar nebula had dispersed. This implies that water-bearing asteroids and/or icy planetesimals that formed near Jupiter are the likely sources of Earth's water. "

"Biogeochemical and stable carbon isotopic analysis of black-shale sequences deposited during an Albian oceanic anoxic event (~112 million years ago) indicate that up to 80 weight percent of sedimentary organic carbon is derived from marine, nonthermophilic archaea. . Their massive expansion may have been a response to the strong stratification of the ocean during this anoxic event. Indeed, the sedimentary record of archaeal membrane lipids suggests that this anoxic event marks a time in Earth history at which certain hyperthermophilic archaea adapted to low-temperature environments."

"Molecular phylogeny and biogeochemistry indicate that eukaryotes differentiated early in Earth history. [This paper shows] that the cytoskeletal and ecological prerequisites for eukaryotic diversification were already established in eukaryotic microorganisms fossilized nearly 1,500 Myr ago in shales of the early Mesoproterozoic Roper Group in northern Australia."

"[This paper reports] an experimental simulation of nitrogen fixation by lightning over a range of Hadean (4.5­3.8 Gyr ago) and Archaean (3.8­2.5 Gyr ago) atmospheric compositions, from predominantly carbon dioxide to predominantly dinitrogen (but always without oxygen)."

"Could life thrive where the Sun never shines? The answer to this unorthodox question bears directly on the tantalizing possibility that life exists in the hidden, perpetually dark oceans that are thought to shroud some of Jupiter's moons, most prominently Europa."

"Recent planetary exploration has provided evidence for large subsurface oceans on several jovian moons. In their Perspective, Chyba and Hand assess the chances for life in these oceans, which are deprived of sunlight. Photosynthesis is therefore ruled out, but other sources may provide molecular oxygen in sufficiently high concentration to serve as an energy source for life. "

"Surprisingly bright infrared light from free-floating brown dwarfs in the nearby Trapezium star cluster indicates that the mysterious bodies are failed stars and not stray planets . Out of 100 brown dwarfs surveyed in the cluster, astronomers concluded that 63 were bright enough to be harboring protoplanetary disks--vast lenses of dust and gas that form around young stars but not around planets."

"The scientists said they also found that the gene-altered algae grew at 15 times the density of sunlight-grown algae, partly because the algae in outdoor ponds can shade each other, restricting the available light."

"A new energy-generating, light-absorbing pigment called proteorhodopsin is widespread in the world's oceans, say scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). "

"Hundreds of circumstellar disks in the Orion nebula are being rapidly destroyed by the intense ultraviolet radiation produced by nearby bright stars. These young, million-year-old disks may not survive long enough to form planetary systems. Nevertheless, the first stage of planet formation--the growth of dust grains into larger particles--may have begun in these systems."

"Work on a quarantine facility must begin soon if it is to be ready in time for spacecraft returning to Earth with martian rocks and soil in tow, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. Although the probability is extremely low that these samples will contain hazardous organisms, prudence dictates that all material must be rigorously quarantined at first."

"The question of whether life exists or has existed on other planets is not a new one. For centuries, it has inspired the imaginations of astronomers, philosophers, authors, and members of the public. Nor is the question frivolous. Recent evidence of ancient water on the surface of Mars and an ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa compels us to entertain the notion - however remote - that Earth is not the only planet in the solar system capable of sustaining life."

"The observations provide evidence for a true accretion disk that is about the size of our solar system and located around a massive star. A model of the radio emission suggests the presence of a binary protostellar system. The primary protostar, G192 S1, at the center of the outflow, with a protostar mass of about 8 to 10 times the solar mass, is surrounded by an accretion disk with a diameter of 130 astronomical units (AU). The companion source, G192 S2, is located 80 AU north of the primary source. "

"Reflectance spectra from Galileo's near-infrared mapping spectrometer (NIMS) suggests that the surface of Ganymede, the largest satellite of Jupiter, contains hydrated materials. These materials are interpreted to be similar to those found on Europa, that is, mostly frozen magnesium sulfate brines that are derived from a subsurface briny layer of flui"

"By mimicking evolution in the lab, scientists have produced the first RNA enzyme that can make copies of other RNA molecules. The discovery provides a missing piece of evidence for a primitive biological world that existed before DNA and proteins entered the scene."

"Some bacteria respire minerals; that is, they harvest energy from minerals through using them as electron acceptors. Many details of this respiration process have remained obscure. "

"Some time in the last century, Comet C/1999 S4 Linear (aka Comet LINEAR) began its first foray into the inner solar system from the Oort cloud, a spherical swarm of comets located beyond the orbit of Pluto. As it entered the inner solar system the comet blew apart into a swarm of mini-comet fragments. This comet's death throes are now providing insights into cometary composition and the role its ingredients may have played in the origin of Earth's oceans, and perhaps, the origin of life on Earth."

"In some of the strongest evidence yet to support the RNA world-an era in early evolution when life forms depended on RNA-scientists at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have created an RNA catalyst, or a ribozyme, that possesses some of the key properties needed to sustain life in such a world."

"Once again, microbes are proving just how versatile they can be. Key players nearly everywhere--from deep-sea vents to termite guts, and perhaps even on the Red Planet--microbes carry out biochemical reactions that help recycle the elements of life, such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen."

"Microorganisms may play a more active role in the geochemical carbon cycle than previously recognized, with profound implications for controls on the abundance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere over geologic time."

"It is believed that oceanic crust generated in the Archean differed from that produced today, but evidence has been hard to come by."

"The documentation of a complete Archean ophiolite implies that mechanisms of oceanic crustal accretion similar to those of today were in operation by 2.5 billion years ago at divergent plate margins and that the temperature of the early mantle was not extremely elevated, as compared to the present-day temperature. Plate tectonic processes similar to those of the present must also have emplaced the ophiolite in a convergent margin setting."

"The end-Triassic mass extinction is one of the five most catastrophic in Phanerozoic Earth history. Here we report carbon isotope evidence of a pronounced productivity collapse at the boundary, coincident with a sudden extinction among marine plankton, from stratigraphic sections on the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, Canada."

"Bruno D'Argenio, a geologist working for the Italian National Research Council, and Giuseppe Geraci, professor of molecular biology at Naples University, identified and brought back to life extraterrestrial microorganisms lodged inside 4.5 billion-year-old meteorites kept at Naples' mineralogical museum. "

"A mass extinction about 200 million years ago, which destroyed at least half of the species on Earth, happened very quickly and is demonstrated in the fossil record by the collapse of one-celled organisms called protists, according to new research led by a University of Washington paleontologist."

"A Saint Louis University researcher has made a discovery near the Great Wall in China that could change the science of plate tectonics and provide some clues into how life might have developed on Earth. Last summer researchers discovered the oldest complete section of oceanic sea floor on the planet, which is more than 500 million years older than previously documented. This discovery shows that the plate tectonic forces that create oceanic crust on the Earth today were in operation more than 2.5 billion years ago."

"Current models of the evolution of the known extrasolar planetary systems need to incorporate orbital migration and/or gravitational interactions among giant planets to explain the presence of large bodies close to their parent stars. These processes could also lead to planets being ingested by their parent stars, which would alter the relative abundances of elements heavier than helium in the stellar atmospheres."

"Using the ESO VLT 8.2-m KUEYEN telescope, astronomers have detected the presence of the rare isotope Lithium-6 in HD 82943, a solar-type star known to possess a planetary system. Curiously, any primordial Lithium-6 would not survive the early evolutionary stages of a metal-rich solar-type star. The Lithium-6 now seen in HD 82943 must therefore have been added later. Astronomers believe that this observation strongly suggests that the star has engulfed one of its planets, whose Lithium-6 was then deposited in the star's atmosphere."

Editor's note: The contents of the first issue are online and available free of charge.

Over the weekend, the Hubble Space Telescope entered into Zero Gyro Sun Point (ZGSP) mode when gyroscope #5 malfunctioned. This gyroscope was shut down and Gyro #2 was turned on. Once the HST's gyroscopes were re-configured the telescope's normal plan of operations were resumed.

"Discoveries by a Virginia Tech doctoral student have provided missing information about how oxygen was able to build up in the earth's atmosphere two billion years ago, and is helping to trace the history of the ocean between Wyoming and Minnesota."

The show starts at 2:00 PM EDT. Listen to it online

Guests:

• Mark Norell, American Museum of Natural History
• Pascal Lee, Planetary Scientist, SETI Institute
• David Wettergreen, Carnegie Mellon University

"NASA and the NCI are launching a joint program to support the development of radically new technologies for biomolecular sensors. The collaboration of these disparate agencies results from their recognition of common needs for minimally invasive strategies for early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and radiation damage. The biomolecular sensors sought by the agencies will build on new discoveries in nanoscale sensing of macromolecules and tools to enable dynamic monitoring that will be developed through the new joint program. "

"The NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft executed a low-altitude flyover of asteroid 433 Eros, making it possible to image the surface at a resolution of about 1 meter per pixel. The images reveal an evolved surface distinguished by an abundance of ejecta blocks, a dearth of small craters, and smooth material infilling some topographic lows."

"During the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR)-Shoemaker's low-altitude flyover of asteroid 433 Eros, observations by the NEAR Laser Rangefinder (NLR) have helped to characterize small-scale surface features."

Recent research has heightened interest in "worlds that may be rich in liquid water below the surface," said Chris Chyba, associate professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford University and director of the Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute. Mars is one such world. Another, in some ways even more tantalizing, is Europa.

Back in 1953 scientists thought they had the origin of life figured out. Chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey at the University of Chicago had simulated that crucial instant around 3.9 billion years ago when a batch of simple inorganic molecules, zapped by a bolt of lightning (or maybe just the sun's warmth during a break in the clouds), fell together to form the prototypes for the complex organic compounds that life is made from. But the Miller-Urey experiment, important as it was, had a flaw.

"The premier issue of Astrobiology, an innovative multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal that deals with fundamental questions about life's origin, evolution, distribution, and destiny in the universe, has been launched by publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Editor in chief of the new journal is Sherry L. Cady, Ph.D., of the Department of Geology of Portland State University, Portland, OR. It is published both in print and online."

"Simulating a high-velocity comet collision with Earth, a team of scientists has shown that organic molecules hitchhiking aboard a comet could have survived such an impact and seeded life on this planet. The results give credence to the theory that the raw materials for life came from space and were assembled on Earth into the ancestors of proteins and DNA."

"The latest results from Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), NASA's spacecraft now in orbit around the Red Planet, are revealing that Mars may not be completely dry or geologically inactive. After feeding the latest temperature and topography data into a model, Robert Haberle from NASA Ames found that, even today, conditions could occasionally permit liquid water to surface in a few regions where ancient lakes are thought to have existed."

"Today, an international team of astronomers from the Geneva Observatory and other research institutes is announcing the discovery of no less than eleven new, planetary companions to solar-type stars, HD 8574, HD 28185, HD 50554, HD 74156, HD 80606, HD 82943, HD 106252, HD 141937, HD 178911B, HD 141937, among which two new multi-planet systems. The masses of these new objects range from slightly less than to about 10 times the mass of the planet Jupiter. "

"Dr. Philip Lucas (University of Hertfordshire) and Dr. Patrick Roche (Oxford University) controversially announced last year that they had directly observed 13 faint points of light in Orion (a giant stellar nursery where thousands of stars are being born) which appeared to have masses closer to those of the giant planets -- a few times more massive than Jupiter in our Solar System -- than the stars. "

"Scientists from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, working with colleagues from the Open University (OU) in Milton Keynes, have been examining an intriguing arrival from outer space. The Tagish Lake meteorite, which fell in the Yukon region of northern Canada on the morning of 18 January 2000, contains some of the most primitive material ever to have landed on the Earth. Samples from this rare visitor are rich in carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and sulphur, confirming that it is an extremely unusual meteorite, closely related to comets."

"The evolution of life on our planet is inextricably linked with extraterrestrial influences. It is now well-established that various mass extinction events identified in the palaeontological record were triggered by the cataclysmic explosions produced when large asteroids or comets happened to collide with the Earth. The best-known episode is that in which the dinosaurs died 65 million years ago, but there have been many other catastrophic impacts both before then, and since. "

"Scientists who hope to work on the International Space Station fear that proposed budget cuts will severely impair the orbiting laboratory's research potential. The researchers say that a new attempt to cut costs represents the biggest setback for the project since its last major redesign in 1993. The cost controls were introduced by the incoming Bush administration when it found that the station's price tag had soared to $4 billion more than its planned level."

"U.S. researchers eager to use the international space station are threatening mutiny if NASA carries out plans to trim facilities and crew in the wake of exploding costs. A biological sciences advisory group says the proposed cuts undermine the scientific rationale for the station. Although critics have long questioned the station's likely scientific payoff, what's new about the latest attack is that it's coming from the station's staunchest scientific supporters."

"NASA has selected four new teams to become part of the agency's Astrobiology Institute (NAI), a national and international research consortium that studies the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life on Earth and in the universe. After a highly competitive peer-review process, teams from Michigan State University (MSU), East Lansing; the University of Rhode Island (URI), Kingston; the University of Washington (UW), Seattle; and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA, today were notified of their selection."

"Scientists have had their first inside look at ice layers, frozen debris and a surprising channel of water deep beneath an Antarctic ice stream. Plunged more than 1,200 meters (more than 3,900 feet) down four boreholes drilled in the West Antarctic ice sheet, JPL's probe paves the way for the development of technology capable of withstanding extreme environments on Earth and other planets."

NASA has outlined the details of one last mission extension for Galileo, which includes five more flybys of the Jovian moons before a final plunge into the crushing pressure of the giant planet's atmosphere.

"The International Space Station cosmonauts and astronauts now have a miniature aquarium to study during their long stay on Space Station Alpha. Paragon Space Development Corporation of Tucson, Arizona designed and built the experimental aquatic biosphere now on ISS. Cosmonauts and astronauts will observe the adaptation of miniature red shrimp and other inhabitants of the ``ISS aquarium'' to the microgravity environment. The experiment uses Paragon's patented Autonomous Biological System (ABS) technology, and is the first educational -- and among the first commercial -- payloads onboard ISS."

"Planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis and various collaborators have concluded that the Tharsis rise in Mars' Western Hemisphere is key to many of the Red Planet's mysteries, including its large-scale shape and gravity field, and its early climate and water distribution."

A French research team recently collected sample droplets from cloud cover as well as snowflakes in the Alps. Results of testing showed an average of 1500 bacteria per cubic centimeter of cloud water, not very much compared to the 10,000 to 10 million found in lakes and oceans but 1500 more than anyone had previously imagined to exist in clouds. The lake specialists put it this way for their atmospheric colleagues: "clouds are an immense but shallow lake, only 50 centimeters of water deep but covering two-thirds of the globe. And this lake is inhabited".

"On orders from the White House, NASA managers last week told Congress they intend to cancel plans for a Pluto flyby and a mission to study the solar wind. The agency is also following orders to make major cuts to the international space station after acknowledging huge cost overruns in the orbiting lab. Meanwhile, the president has called for a blue-ribbon panel of scientists to decide whether the space agency should swallow up the ground-based astronomy program run by the National Science Foundation."

"Life on Mars jumped back into the headlines last week with the publication of two papers claiming that nanoscale mineral grains in the famous martian meteorite ALH84001 were left by ancient martian bacteria. One paper was old news to researchers. The other got a generally cautious reception when it was reported in the media, but now many experts are turning downright incredulous as they get a chance to inspect the published images."

"The paper being published in Precambrian Research this month offers new observations of two additional Martian meteorites, evaluates subsequent studies for and against the original lines of evidence, measures evidence for past life on Mars against established criteria for accepting terrestrial samples as fossils, and considers the problem of terrestrial contamination of martian samples-a problem that must be solved before samples are brought from Mars to Earth in 2014. Everett Gibson, senior author of the paper noted, "If the features observed in the two younger Martian meteorites are confirmed to have a biogenic origin, life may have existed on Mars from 3.9 billion years ago to as recently as 165-175 million years ago."

NASA announced today that a team of scientists have determined that small magnetite crystals in the now-famous ALH84001 Martian meteorite were almost certainly produced by living organisms - organisms that must have lived on Mars. According to the researchers: "these crystals are interpreted as Martian magnetofossils and constitute evidence of the oldest life yet found."

"Using a novel form of linking events on Earth with objects in space, a research team as shown that a second large mass extinction of life on Earth was likely due to the impact of a large body millions of years ago. With this announcement, a clear picture is now available showing that the course of evolution on Earth is inextricably linked to extraterrestrial factors."

"The innermost structure of the donut-shaped dust cloud surrounding a massive young star and the first glimpse of its previously unknown companion star was seen by applying new technology to the Keck telescope. Astronomers viewed regions in the surrounding dust cloud that are closer to the central star than anything previously seen, and imaged for the first time the central void in these clouds caused by the star's intense heat and radiation."

° Images

"Japan's Subaru Telescope has taken a sharp image of a star-forming region and discovered many small planet-like objects with masses less than that of ordinary stars. "

"Using spectral tools for infrared and submillimeter wave observations, astronomers are looking for the building blocks of life in all the right places: where there might be oxygen and where it is wet. "We may now have the tools to find those elements that are the preconditions for life." says Martin Harwit, professor emeritus of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y."

"Dr Norman Murray, from the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, told a major science conference in the US that more than half the stars in his study showed evidence of having gorged themselves on rocky, iron-rich material. This being the case, he said, it must be reasonable to assume these stars still had material in orbit about them, possibly in the form of planets the size of Earth."

"A hypothetical interplanetary transfer of viable microorganisms requires that the microbes survive the following steps: (i) escape process, (ii) transient journey in space, and (iii) entry process. Step 1 involves hypervelocity impact under strong shock metamorphism of the ejected microbe-bearing rock fragment. This paper reports experimental studies on the survival of microbes after a simulated meteorite impact."

"We all know that, somehow, life arrived on earth. But how and why it got started -- and where -- remains one of the great mysteries of science. Theories range from incubation in primordial ooze or lightning zapping the ammonia-rich atmosphere of the young planet to reactions nurtured in the chemically rich water flowing from undersea vents and even living microbes riding earthward in meteorites. Now a team of scientists headed by Louis J. Allamandola of the Astrochemistry Laboratory at NASA's Ames Research Center has cooked up a new recipe: Take some frozen stardust from interstellar space and just add water. "

"Subaru Telescope has successfully taken a sharp and deep infrared image of the star-forming region, S106. In addition, many objects with masses less than that of an ordinary star have been discovered in this region. S106 is at a distance of approximately 2000 light-years from the Earth. There is a large massive star called IRS4 (Infrared Source 4) at the center of S106. The star is approximately one hundred thousand years old, and its mass is approximately 20 times that of the Sun. The hourglass appearance of S106 is thought to be the result of the way material is flowing outwards from the central star. A huge disk of gas and dust surrounding IRS4 produces the constriction at the center."

"Up to now, most biologists have studied the molecules of life in test tubes, watching how large numbers of them behave. But now researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., are using nanotechnology to build microscopic silicon devices with features comparable in size to DNA, proteins and other biological molecules -- to count molecules, analyze them, separate them, perhaps even work with them one at a time. The work is called "nanofluidics."

"The requirements for the upcoming mission to Jupiter's moon Europa are unique and challenging, requiring critical technologies to be developed in order to meet important science objectives. The Litton