- It's a veggie, Jim, but not as we know it. Scientists
have successfully raised a crop of fresh greens on Martian soil, significantly
boosting the possibility that there is, or at least could be, life on the
Red Planet.
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- The experiment has not taken place on Mars itself - where
the temperature is rarely warmer than an inclement minus 60 C - but in
a laboratory in New Zealand. Taking soil samples scraped from meteorites
which fell to earth from the planet thousands of years ago, a team of researchers
have grown tiny asparagus and potato plants.
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- In comparison with soils from other planets, the samples
show high levels of phosphates - necessary for growing good vegetables.
The best results came from scrapings from a meteorite that landed in Australia
in 1969 which soil fertility indicators showed had similar properties to
the soil on earth.
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- 'If we build colonies in space we will have to grow plants
for food, so obviously we need to know that the soil can support that.
It shows that space-based soil could potentially support future human expansion
in the solar system,' said Dr Michael Mautner, leader of the research team.
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- It took Mautner and his colleagues only a few weeks to
grow shoots several millimetres high. Previously whole crops have been
raised on space stations. Cereals planted in space on orbiting units have
even produced fertile seeds. Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University
said the new research confirms previous work with Martian soil.
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- Pillinger himself has replicated the red planet's soil
on earth and planted seeds in it. 'We grew some lovely vegetables; peppers,
cucumbers, tomatoes and so on. We exhibited them at Chelsea Flower show
and won a gold medal,' he said.
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- The Open University team's research has shown it is possible
to extract water from Martian rocks. 'Everything is there for life except
the life itself,' said Pillinger, who believes humans will live on Mars
within 30 years.
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- Scientists may eventually be able to plant some forms
of life throughout the galaxy, seeding distant planets to test if they
could support life. The New Zealand experiment has shown materials from
interplanetary dust, meteorites and comets could have helped trigger life
on earth. One theory is that organic compounds and whole cells could have
been transported across galaxies by comets made of ice. If materials in
the meteorites could grow potatoes then they could have provided the first
micro-organisms with nutrients needed for survival.
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- Britain's first landing on Mars, with a tiny robot explorer
called 'Beagle Two' is scheduled for Boxing Day 2003. The 60kg unit will
land on the surface of the planet and 'sniff' for organic chemicals associated
with water and life and, presumably, little green men.
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- Two weeks ago scientists at the American space agency
Nasa said a four-year study of a Martian meteorite that was discovered
in Antarctica in 1984 had concluded that it contained microscopic magnetic
crystals that were identical to grains produced by bacteria on earth.
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- The crystals are so similar that anyone studying the
meteorite who did not know that it came from Mars would almost certainly
conclude that it held evidence of life, the scientists who made the discovery
said.
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- The meteorite is about 4.5 billion years old and has
lain in the Antarctic ice for 13,000 years. The vital crystals are so small
that a billion of them would fit on the head of a pin.
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