Hoover makes several claims to show that a non-biotic origin for these structures is very unlikely. I am not an expert and won’t cast my vote either way here. This is not the first time Hoover has made such claims;he gave a similar presentation in 2007. There have also been many similar claims in the past. In fact, in the second episode of "Bad Universe" I interviewed NASA astrobiologist Dave McKay, who has also found very interesting features in a Mars meteorite that look a lot like bacteria. However, definitive proof is another matter. McKay’s opinion is that what he found was once alive, but he also was clear that scientifically he could not be sure (I found his skepticism to be well-grounded and at the right level, to be honest)....
So, to conclude: a claim has been made about micro-fossils in a meteorite. The claims are interesting, the pictures intriguing, but we are a long, long way from knowing whether the claim is valid or not! We’ve been down this road before and been disappointed. As with any scientific claim, skepticism is needed, and in the case of extraordinary claims, well, you know the saying.
Fox News broke the story, which ought to make one immediately suspicious — it's not an organization noted for scientific acumen. But even worse, the paper claiming the discovery of bacteria fossils in carbonaceous chondrites was published in … the Journal of Cosmology. I've mentioned Cosmology before — it isn't a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth. It doesn't exist in print, consists entirely of a crude and ugly website that looks like it was sucked through a wormhole from the 1990s, and publishes lots of empty noise with no substantial editorial restraint. For a while, it seemed to be entirely the domain of a crackpot named Rhawn Joseph who called himself the emeritus professor of something mysteriously called the Brain Research Laboratory, based in the general neighborhood of Northern California (seriously, that was the address: "Northern California"), and self-published all of his pseudo-scientific "publications" on this web site.
Surgeon Anthony Atala demonstrates an early-stage experiment that could someday solve the organ-donor problem: a 3D printer that uses living cells to output a transplantable kidney.
__________________
"Opinions are like demo tapes, and I don't want to hear yours" -- Stephen Colbert
...researchers at the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at Columbia University, led by Dr. Klaus Lackner, have designed a faux tree that is supposed to do the job of a real tree.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Cheese For This Useful Post:
Ten days from now – on March 17 EDT – the MESSENGER spacecraft will execute a 15-minute maneuver that will place it into orbit about Mercury, making it the first craft ever to do so, and initiating a one-year science campaign to understand the innermost planet.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Cheese For This Useful Post:
One of the main climate skeptic claims when presenting the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) record is that climate change during the Holocene is normal, that there is nothing new about the warming we see today. This is not a claim that is substantiated by the full body of research. We're going to take out a "license to kill" this particular skeptic meme.
View the LIVE Webcast of the event beginning at 7:55 p.m. EDT!
Status Time Event 6:30 p.m. EDT The Deep Space Network’s four antennas and a fifth backup antenna were readied for orbit insertion. 7:45 p.m. EDT The Mission Operations Team is verifying the configuration of MESSENGER's propulsion system, getting ready for the main thruster firing in about 50 minutes. 8:09 p.m. EDT The team at APL is taking a last look at detailed telemetry data from MESSENGER, verifying system status, and making final preparations to get the spacecraft and ground systems ready for the upcoming engine burn.
Kind of concerning since I had migraines with an aura for about 12 years starting at age 13. Haven't had one in over a year now so hopefully I grew out of it and it had nothing to do with my heart.
I dont have time to watch the video right now, but I saw his photo and said to myself, I've met that guy. I dont what he was talking about in this video but i bet it is "enlightening"....
6:30 p.m. EDT The Deep Space Network’s four antennas and a fifth backup antenna were readied for orbit insertion. 
7:45 p.m. EDT The Mission Operations Team is verifying the configuration of MESSENGER's propulsion system, getting ready for the main thruster firing in about 50 minutes. 
