Scientists are ramping up the search for extraterrestrial life with a powerful array of new telescopes and a refined sense of where to look within the vast expanses of our universe. At the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last weekend, a panel of experts discussed the key components of life and what it might mean to find them within our own solar system -- or beyond.

Two new studies are challenging the notion that the desolate Martian plains once brimmed with salty pools of water that could have supported some form of life. Instead, the studies argue, the layered rock outcrops probed by NASA's robot rover Opportunity and interpreted as signs of ancient water could have been left by explosive volcanic ash or a meteorite impact eons ago. That would suggest a far more violent and dry history than proposed by the scientists operating Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, on the other side of the planet.

A University of California, Berkeley, study of methane-producing bacteria frozen at the bottom of Greenland’s two-mile thick ice sheet could help guide scientists searching for similar bacterial life on Mars. Methane is a greenhouse gas present in the atmospheres of both Earth and Mars. If a class of ancient microbes called Archaea are the source of Mars’ methane, as some scientists have proposed, then unmanned probes to the Martian surface should look for them at depths where the temperature is about 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than that found at the base of the Greenland ice sheet, according to UC Berkeley lead researcher P. Buford Price, a professor of physics. This would be several hundred meters - some 1,000 feet - underground, where the temperature is slightly warmer than freezing and such microbes should average about one every cubic centimeter, or about 16 per cubic inch.

A University of Arkansas researcher has found methane-producing microorganisms in an unexpected place - arid desert soils. This finding strengthens the possibility that such microorganisms can exist under the conditions found on Mars and points the way to possible future experiments for detection of life on a distant planet. Tim Kral, professor of biological sciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, along with researchers from the University of Southern California reported their findings online in the journal Icarus. "You don't commonly find organisms such as methanogens in dry areas," said Kral. "But finding them in a dry area on Earth is especially significant because the surface of Mars is dry."

While Earth germs may not kill attacking Martians as they did in "War of the Worlds," a new study is calling on NASA to prevent contamination of Mars with microbes from our planet. NASA is planning a return to the Moon and eventually to send manned spacecraft to Mars, and the National Research Council warned Monday that if life forms from Earth were able to survive the trip they could contaminate the Red Planet.

Far from discovering life on Mars, Nasa may have put it there. The American space agency believes the two rover spacecraft scuttling across the red planet are carrying bacteria from Earth, writes John Harlow. The bacteria, bacillus safensis, were found in a chamber in California that had been used to test the rovers. Officials believe it is likely some of the microbes, possibly from scientists’ skin, were on board when the mission left.

The methane in Mars's atmosphere could easily be produced by mineral chemistry, rather than life. That's the claim from a pair of geologists whose calculations suggest that some experts have been too quick to assume a bacterial source for the gas.

Some hardy Earth microbes could survive long enough on Mars to complicate the search for alien life, according to a new study co-authored by University of Florida researchers. Though scientists looking for life on Mars worry about contamination from stowaway spores clinging to spacecraft, the inhospitable Martian environment is actually an effective sterilizing agent: The intense ultraviolet rays that bombard the Martian surface are quickly fatal to most Earth microbes. However, the new study shows that at least one tough Earth species, a type of blue-green algae called Chroococcidiopsis, could live just long enough to leave a biological trace in the Martian soil – creating a potential false positive.

In an effort to help determine the chances of survival of life on Mars, scientists have proposed that techniques that are used to drill for oil could prove useful in estimating the odds of survival on the Red Planet. Professor John Parnell from the University of Aberdeen and his team of researchers have proposed this method. The team has just returned from the Arctic where they were involved in studying a meteorite crater using methods for detecting oil and gas. The site that they were studying happens to be the 23-million-year-old Haughton meteorite impact site in the Arctic. This site is located in the Canadian High Arctic and is a project undertaken by NASA via Ames Research Center and the Mars Institute.

Not so long ago it was unthinkable for respectable scientists to talk about life on Mars. Such talk was best left to X-Files fans. But no longer. Evidence is building to suggest biological processes might be operating on the red planet, and life on Mars, many scientists believe, is now more a likelihood than merely a possibility. "The life on Mars issue has recently undergone a paradigm shift," said Ian Wright, an astrobiologist at the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute at the Open University in Britain, "to the extent now that one can talk about the possibility of present life on Mars without risking scientific suicide." Much of the excitement is due to the work of Vittorio Formisano, head of research at Italy's Institute of Physics and Interplanetary Space.

Future hunts for past or present life on Mars, hauling back to Earth samples of martian rock and soil, as well as setting the stage for a human voyage to the red planet is taking on a decidedly European look. European Space Agency (ESA) officials are taking steps to shift into high gear the building of the ExoMars robotic rover mission. The lander would be launched in 2011, likely onboard a Soyuz Fregat 2b booster from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

A bizarre community of microbes has been discovered inside rocks in Yellowstone National Park, thriving in pores filled with water so acidic it can dissolve steel nails. The clusters, interwoven with flourishing green algae, comprise at least 40 different new species of bacteria, according to Jeffrey Walker, a University of Colorado microbiologist -- and he and his colleagues say the microbes' fossil forms could provide powerful clues to the nature of early life on Earth and life that may have existed billions of years ago on Mars.

Evidence for intense local enhancements in methane on Mars has been bolstered by ground-based observations. The methane, as well as water on Mars, was detected using state-of-the-art infrared spectrometers stationed atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii and in Cerro Pachón, Chile. Scientific teams around the globe are on the trail of methane eking out of Mars. And for good reason: The methane could be the result of biological processes. It could also be an "abiotic" geochemical process, however, or the result of volcanic or hydrothermal activity on the red planet. Many types of microbes here on Earth produce a signature of methane. Indeed, the tiny fraction of atmospheric carbon found as methane on our planet is churned out almost entirely biologically with only a very small contribution from abiotic processes, scientists say.

Occam's Razor: Faced with multiple possible explanations, don't go for the splashiest; choose the simplest - the one that requires the least number of coincidences - the one that is least astonishing. If the simplest explanation doesn't pan out, move on to the next simplest (which is also a bit more astonishing). The leader of the team running an instrument aboard Mars Express - a European Space Agency spacecraft orbiting Mars - believes his data imply something truly astonishing: Martians.

Carol Stoker thought she was talking casually to friends at a party. A NASA scientist, Stoker and her husband and colleague Larry Lemke described work they were doing looking for biological activity — life — at a site in Spain called Rio Tinto that may be similar to potential habitats on Mars. What happened next is up for debate. Stoker says neither she nor Lemke ever implied that her work could be extrapolated to suggest present life on Mars. She certainly never told anyone that a paper to that effect was about to be published in the journal Nature, she says. Several people at the party, however, later told a journalist that they had said that. The subsequent Space News article set off a brief media frenzy in mid-February that eventually led to a rare official denial from NASA.

New images of Mars reveal that flowing water, large glaciers and active volcanoes have scoured the planet in recent geologic times. Scientists say Mars has been geologically active in the past few million years -- an eyeblink in the planet's 4.5-billion-year history. Three studies appearing in the March 17 issue of the journal Nature add to a growing body of evidence that points to recent liquid water and present vast stores of underground ice near the planet’s equator. Combined, the research provides further impetus to search Mars for signs of life, scientists said.

The hunt for some form of life elsewhere in our universe may spur a veritable fleet of robot orbiters, landers and rovers to study the surface of Mars in the coming years. But they might look in the wrong place. Instead of probing for signs of alien life on Mars’ harsh surface, some researchers have suggested looking inside the planet, where there is mounting evidence of water ice near the equator and the potential for underground aquifers that could support basic, microbial organisms.

Spherix Incorporated (Nasdaq: SPEX - News) -- One of the persons most relishing the news out of last week's ESA Mars Conference in the Netherlands that 75 percent of the attending scientists now believe that Mars may have had life, and 25 percent saying that Mars may currently have life, is Dr. Gilbert V. Levin. Now working as Executive Officer for Science of Spherix Incorporated, the firm he founded in 1967, Levin was Experimenter on the Labeled Release (LR) life detection experiment aboard NASA's 1976 Viking Mission seeking life on Mars.

European Space Agency scientists think that there was and could even still be life on Mars and want a new European mission to the red planet to take samples, a conference heard on Friday. "Mars is the most Earth-like planet in our solar system," said Agustin Chicarro, ESA Mars Express Project Scientist at the end of a one-week conference during which scientists from around the world discussed ESA's Mars mission findings so far.

A U.S. scientist claims to have thawed out a new life form, which he said raises questions about possible contemporary life on Mars. The organism froze on Earth some 30,000 years ago, and was apparently alive all that time and started swimming as soon as it thawed, said Richard Hoover from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

News reports on February 16, 2005, that NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect.

A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water. The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed.

With each passing day, those peppy robots on Mars – Spirit and Opportunity – churn out extraordinary new views of the red planet. Each android is over a year in operation, relaying a steady stream of eye-catching photos. And more than once, the Mars machinery has sent back an image that stirred up a promising eureka moment: Finding evidence for life on that remote world.

Extremophilic microbes are a wild bunch. They can be found thriving in some of the most hostile environments imaginable – swimming in near-boiling water, eating rocks, lounging in sub-zero temperatures, and hanging out where radiation levels rival nuclear reactors. Recent discoveries have greatly expanded the range of these wild things. Here's a census of small creatures living in some of the worst conditions imaginable.

A compact "life detector" has been built for future missions to Mars. Called the Mars Organic Analyzer, the briefcase-sized device reportedly has 1,000 times greater sensitivity than the 1976 Viking probes, which didn't detect organic molecules.

To find life on Mars, you must either bring a sample back to a laboratory or find a way to take a lab to Mars. As this ScienCentral News video reports, researchers have found a way to shrink down a lab so it can go to Mars.

Conditions on vast plain on Mars could have been suitable for life, states Steve Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy and leader of the rovers' Athena science team , in the latest special Science issue. With 2005 bringing the completion of the first year of pioneering development from the robotic rovers on Mars, Fiona Stewart investigates and presents a review of the latest Martian news for BellaOnline readers in a summary for ‘Year of Life on Mars?’. 11 peer-reviewed articles published present conclusive evidence for water on mars and infer at some point mars may have been habitable for a considerable period of time. Water formation and eroded surface structures? Epsom-like salts hide significant amounts of water? Fiona Stewart delves deeper and finds excitement mounting about life on mars, with significance attached to the living essential water, salts, methane, haematite “blueberries”, magnesium, sulfates and similarities between the origins of Earth and Mars.

Evidence is mounting that the time-weathered red planet was once a warm and water-rich world. And a Mars awash with water gives rise to that globe possibly being fit for habitation in its past – and perhaps a distant dwelling for life today. As sensor-laden orbiters circle the planet, NASA’s twin Mars rovers -- Spirit and Opportunity -- have been tooling about and carrying out exhaustive ground studies for nearly a year.

Scientists have long been tantalized by the question of whether life once existed on Mars. Although present conditions on the planet would seem to be inhospitable to life, the data sent back over the past 10 months by NASA's two exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, showed a world that might once have been warmer and wetter -- perhaps friendly enough to support microbial organisms. Now a Cornell University-led Mars rover science team reports on the historic journey by the rover Opportunity, which is exploring a vast plain, Meridiani Planum, and concludes with this observation: "Liquid water was once present intermittently at the martian surface at Meridiani, and at times it saturated the subsurface. Because liquid water is a key prerequisite for life, we infer that conditions at Meridiani may have been habitable for some period of time in martian history."

Researchers can now say definitively that Mars once supported a watery environment, but whether the red planet could have ever supported life is still far from certain. The success of NASA's Mars rover Opportunity in finding tell-tale signs of past water at its Meridiani Planum landing site has left some researchers believing the region could have once been a habitable, albeit still hostile, environment.

Methane detected on Mars could be a sign of extraterrestrial life, scientists said yesterday. But don't get ready for E.T. just yet. There are many possible explanations for the methane, and tiny Martian critters are only one. Still, the detection of methane had scientists buzzing in Louisville at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences. "I stand before you and tell you, quite honestly, I'm shocked by these results," said Michael Mumma, an astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Five spacecraft are circling Mars and creeping across its ruddy surface, looking for traces of long-gone waters and signs that the cold, arid planet may once have been hospitable to life. The robotic martian invasion - three orbiters and two six-wheeled rovers - has already uncovered strong evidence that water once flowed on Mars and is now locked in subsurface ice. But big questions about water on Mars remain. When did it flow? How long did it last? How much was there? Where did it come from? Where did it go? Perhaps the most tantalizing question: Were there long-lived watery environments where microbial life could have gained a foothold?

For centuries, humans have struggled to answer the question, "Are we alone in the universe?" The discovery of methane gas in the Martian atmosphere this past March by the Mars Express orbiter may bring scientists one step closer to being able to answer that question. This discovery has set off a wave of excitement in scientific circles around the world, but nowhere more so than in the laboratory of Univeristy of Arkansas biology professor Timothy Kral. For years, Kral and his team of researchers at the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences have been exploring the possibility that the Red Planet could sustain life.

A University of Michigan scientist is part of a European Space Agency team that has detected methane gas on Mars, and the findings will be published in the online Web journal Science Express today. Sushil Atreya, professor and director of the Planetary Science Laboratory in the College of Engineering says the detection of methane is the clearest indicator of the possibility of life on the Red Planet yet.

As President Bush outlines plans for putting humans on the face of the cursed red planet, we have to ask ourselves, what is the big deal about Mars? A trip to Mars would be hugely expensive when completed in 20 to 25 years. Who cares? Mars research has been a difficult process. Whole careers have been derailed. Ptolemy, who devised an early earth-centered view of the solar system, failed to explain why Mars seemed to back up in its orbit occasionally.

Data obtained by the Mars Express probe that is currently orbiting the red planet show that water vapor and methane gas are concentrated in the same regions of the Martian atmosphere, the European Space Agency recently announced. The finding may have important implications for the possibility that microbial life could exist on Mars. If microbes are making methane in the Martian atmosphere as part of their living process, they would rely on water.

Canada's first astronaut in space says he's convinced there was once life on Mars and Canadians are uniquely placed to figure out if there still is. Garneau said he's convinced there once was life, but he's doubts there still is, although it could exist in a kind of dormant state under the planet's surface. "We need to find it," he said. Canadian companies could be at the forefront of finding it. It requires mining.

An international team of scientists has found life on a Norwegian island. No surprises there, but the successful field test of a collection of life-detection instruments may be a stepping stone for future endeavors to sniff out life on Mars. "It’s the first time we have employed a package of tools ranging form spectroscopy to microbial techniques," said the lead investigator, Hans Amundsen of the University of Oslo, Norway.

In the first published study to track methane on Mars, researchers have concluded that life is the only plausible source of the gas. The putative martians are hiding in a few isolated spots and the rest of the planet is totally sterile, they say. Teams at conferences have already discussed finding martian methane. But Vladimir Krasnopolsky, an atmospheric scientist from the Catholic University of America in Washington DC, says that his study, to be published shortly in the peer-reviewed journal Icarus, is the first hard evidence for methane on the planet.

Methane and water vapour are concentrated in the same regions of the Martian atmosphere, say scientists studying data from Europe's Mars Express orbiter. They say the link may point to a common source - possibly life - but others remain sceptical about the detection.

Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep those Mars rovers rolling. You can almost hear the crack of a Martian whip. Since January, NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity robots have been wheeling and dealing with the red planet. Last week they had their driving licenses renewed for an additional six months. The science results already have changed how researchers view Mars, and the mission could be far from over.

A new test that produced methane under conditions mimicking the deep interiors of Earth and Mars lends support to an idea that the gas could theoretically support unseen colonies of microbes on both worlds. And the study hints at the possibility of a potential vast supply of petroleum products. While the lab work doesn't reveal what's really down there, it has nudged a controversial theory about what's under our feet one step closer to the mainstream. The research was led by Henry Scott of Indiana University at South Bend and was published online last week by the National Academy of Sciences.

A new theory about ancient Mars puts some fizz back in the idea that the red planet was once warm, wet and potentially habitable. Many studies have suggested that early Mars was covered by large oceans and blanketed by a thick atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide -- the stuff that puts the bubbly zing in soda. But if that's all true, then when the oceans evaporated a lot of the carbon dioxide should have turned into what scientists call carbonates, which should be strewn all over the place. Problem is, the carbonates aren't there. One recent study found trace amounts in Martian dust, just enough to conclude that Mars probably didn't have vast oceans. The new model provides a way around this problem. It suggests the chemistry of Martian seas was different than has been assumed, so the clues have been missed.

While most of us tend to think of motion control as a very down-to-earth topic, designers of space apparatus and undersea equipment have a very different view of the technology. As a matter of fact, these types of out-of-this-world applications usually demand extraordinarily precise and highly specialized motion control products, which mandate close collaboration between the makers of the motion control devices and designers of specialty equipment in order to meet these special needs. It was this type of close collaboration that landed a customized linear actuator on a concept apparatus that may help determine whether life exists on Mars. Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, designed the concept apparatus as a model of a device that may one day be built and sent along on a future space mission to determine whether amino acids are present in the Martian soil. This very important test could determine whether life exists on the Red Planet because amino acids are considered a signature of life.

It seems wherever scientists look on Earth they can usually find some kind of lifeform eking out an existence. And microbe colonies discovered living under rocks in the Arctic and Antarctic are just the latest example. Their high-latitude polar habitats are among the most extreme on the planet, with damaging levels of ultraviolet light as well as sub-zero temperatures.

New data showing that patterns of water and methane in Mars' atmosphere overlap may have important implications for the idea that the planet could harbour life. The finding comes from the Mars Express probe in orbit around the Red Planet. If microbes are making methane seen in Mars' atmosphere, they would rely on water, so the association between the two has excited some researchers.

Recent analyses of ESA’s Mars Express data reveal that concentrations of water vapour and methane in the atmosphere of Mars significantly overlap. This result, from data obtained by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS), gives a boost to understanding of geological and atmospheric processes on Mars, and provides important new hints to evaluate the hypothesis of present life on the Red Planet.

Scientists yesterday confirmed the presence of methane on Mars, raising two possibilities - volcanos, or life on the red planet. "Methane should be short-lived in that atmosphere. It should last for less than a few hundred years," Andrew Coates, of the Mullard space science laboratory at University College London, told the British Association science festival in Exeter. "So there must be a very recent source, perhaps even a current source. The two possible sources could be volcanism - very recent or current volcanism - or life. All life as we know it on Earth, even down to the tiniest microbe, produces methane as a byproduct."

Iron meteorites may have been responsible for the evolution of life on Earth, according to NASA funded research. In a study to be published shortly in the journal Astrobiology, University of Arizona's Dante Lauretta, assistant professor of planetary sciences, and doctoral candidate Matthew Pasek, suggest that iron meteorites brought enough phosphorus to Earth to give rise to biomolecules which eventually assembled into living, replicating organisms.

This much is known: At some point in Mars's past, at least one region of the planet was drenched in water. Ancient Mars provided a habitat suitable for life as we know it. What kind of organism might have lived there? And is life lying dormant there still, just waiting for things to warm up a bit? No one can say. But one scientist, taking cues from earthly bacteria, has a pretty good idea of how a martian microbe could survive.

The planet Venus is like Earth in many ways. It has a similar size and mass, it is closer to us than any other planet, and it probably formed from the same sort of materials that formed Earth. For years scientists and science fiction writers dreamed of the exotic jungles and life forms that must inhabit Earth's twin sister.

Is a human mission to Mars in the future? Not until a source of water can be found to support life. NASA has asked Purdue engineers to help. They want to know which plants can grow normally when fed sewage. The idea is to reclaim drinkable water from the astronauts' waste.

In possibly the ultimate in recycling, people who voyage to Mars may be able to quench their thirst with water recovered from waste. Engineers and agronomists are testing plants to identify ones that can grow normally when fed sewage. The circle of life would be complete when drinkable water is reclaimed from the plants.

Sniffing out any whiff of biology on Mars has become a scientific battle of the bands – spectral bands that is. The purported detection of methane in the martian atmosphere by Mars Express, the European Space Agency (ESA) probe now orbiting the red planet, has sparked measurable debate.

A $500,000 challenge grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles will enable Derek Sears and his students and colleagues to investigate how liquid water forms on Mars and examine the existence of considerable amounts of near-surface ice all over the planet. They also will study how slight changes in pressure and temperature could transform Mars into a wet planet hospitable to simple life forms. Additionally, a laboratory used by Sears, a professor of chemistry in Fulbright College and director of the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences, will be renovated and named the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Space Simulation at the University of Arkansas.

Robotics experts are getting a next-generation rover ready to hunt for life in the driest place on Earth. The two-month-long dry run in Chile's Atacama Desert could help set the stage for a similar search someday on Mars. The four-wheeled, solar-powered rover, named Zoë, was created at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. It's designed to cover up to 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) a day, at speeds of up to 2.2 mph (1 meter per second). That's 20 times as fast as the top speed for the twin rovers currently working on Mars.

A future astronaut traipsing across the landing sites of the Mars Exploration Rovers – Spirit and Opportunity – might be squishing into a welcome mat of microbes, according to one NASA scientist. While the twin robots push ahead in scouring their real estate locations at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum, they leave behind a tantalizing trail of issues that need to be sorted out. One big unknown: Did life ever take root on Mars? And if so, is that planet home to living organisms today? So far, the life-on-Mars card has not played out. Rover scientists have seen nothing they regard as needing a biological explanation.

Life is hard. For some, it's almost impossible. Specialized microorganisms called extremophiles thrive in nuclear waste, volcanic vents, boiling geothermal geysers and even deep inside rocks. Their unique biology allows them to feast on chemicals and radiation that would kill most organisms. But there is a place on Earth so hostile to life that even extremophiles perish: Chile's Atacama Desert.

Those twin robots hard at work on Mars have transmitted teasing views that reinforce the prospect that microbial life may exist on the red planet. Results from NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers are being looked over by a legion of planetary experts, including a scientist who remains steadfast that his experiment in 1976 proved the presence of active microbial life in the topsoil of Mars. "All factors necessary to constitute a habitat for life as we know it exist on current-day Mars," explained Gilbert Levin, executive officer for science at Spherix Incorporated of Beltsville, Maryland.

The Spirit rover has crossed into a new martian frontier - an unexplored hilltop that might hold secrets from the planet's earliest history. Since it arrived Jan. 4, Spirit has spent its time exploring rocks on top of a powdery surface of volcanic rock and ash - called an ejecta blanket - spewed out from an ancient meteorite impact, said Larry Crumpler, a Mars Exploration Rover team member and curator at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. The rocks there were interesting, but not nearly as cool or old as the rocks Spirit reached last week, when it got to Columbia Hills, named after the space shuttle that exploded in February 2003.

Sitting at a coffee shop table in the University of Washington's University Village might just be the guy who finds life on another planet. "I'm not going to make any promises," said 21-year-old Christopher Glein with an aw-shucks shrug, "but it's real exciting."

Texas A&M University and NASA are teaming up to bring new levels of planetary protection against forward contamination of other worlds from our space probes. The team hopes to sterilize future hardware using a well-known technique called electron beam irradiation.

As Mars Express sends back the best ever data about the chemicals present in the martian atmosphere, rumours abound that scientists are beginning to detect signs of life on the red planet. What signs of life are scientists looking for on Mars? The smells of digestion. Life, as we know it, depends on chemicals built up from carbon and nitrogen, and whenever those chemicals break down they release gases like methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3). Some bacteria on Earth get their energy by reacting carbon dioxide with hydrogen to make methane and water. Such 'methanogenic' bacteria are prime candidates for life on Mars, because they do not need sunlight or oxygen to survive.

For a brief time last week, there was a small flutter that raised the tantalizing possibility of scientists coming closer to using the "L" word regarding the exploration of Mars. Alas, as a corollary to the famous comment by Mark Twain, reports of life on the red planet have been exaggerated.

The famous softball-sized meteorite found at Allan Hills in Antarctica continues to spawn debate about its organic vs. inorganic origins. While there is little doubt the meteorite is remarkable at over four and half billion years old and largely undamaged during its fiery terrestrial descent, alternative inorganic hypotheses about its strange interior shapes now has new laboratory evidence.