Meteors,Mars and Extraterrestrial Life

 

                                                             RobertC. Newman

                                                   BiblicalTheological Seminary

                                   ETSEastern Regional Meeting, March 21, 1997

 

 

            Howcommon is life in our universe?  Noone on earth really knows. Creation­ists are not agreed among themselves, nor are evolution­ists.  In both groups, some think life veryrare, others think it rather common.

 

            Admittedly,the media tends to see the matter in black and white C evolution­ists claim lifeis common, and crea­tion­ists that it is unique to earth.  Perhaps this is because most mediaattention and federal money go to those who think it common.  After all, why would a talk show hostfeature a guest who claims there is life only on earth?  How exciting is that?  UFO stories also imply that life iscommon, and they certainly sell. And how are you going to get government funding to look for radiosignals from intelli­gent civiliza­tions if you think there aren't anywithin radio range? 

 

            Yetbiolo­gist Ernst Mayr and physicist Enrico Fermi are prominent examples ofevolutionists who feel life (at least intelligent life) is very rare or evenunique to earth in all our uni­verse.[1]  They think so (though they believe inevolution) because they have also paid close attention to the calculations thatshow the random assembly of life from non-life is enormously unlikely.[2]

 

            Onthe creationist side, there is also a range of opinion.  In fact, Bible-believers realize thatthere is at least one intelli­gent race beside humanity C the angels C though we often seem toforget about them when talking about extraterrestrial life.  We might argue whether angels belong toour universe or not, yet Scripture is clear that they can at least enter andmove around in it. 

 

            Inhis science fiction trilogy C. S. Lewis pictured intelligent life as quitecommon  (on earth, Mars, Venus,even in space).[3]  Of course, that was Lewis' fiction; buthe also wrote an article exploring the theologi­cal implications of lifeelse­where in the universe.[4]  On the other hand, the SCP Journal, after a survey of thepossibil­i­ties, thought life unique to earth.[5]

 

            Nowherein the Bible does it say there is no life but earth-life.  Yet the Scrip­ture's very silenceon the subject has been taken by many to indicate there isn't.  After all, how would the atone­mentwork if there are intelligent races elsewhere in our uni­verse?  Yet the Bible's explicit teaching thatangels, demons and such do exist already raises the question of how these creatures might be affectedby Jesus' death.  The situa­tionis not going to be drastically different if the universe has other racesbesides these.

 


The Mars Rock Discovery

 

            Enterthe Mars rock.  On August 7, 1996,the U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration released the followingannouncement:[6]

 

            ANASA research team of scientists at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Houston,TX, and at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, has found evidence that stronglysug­gests primi­tive life may have existed on Mars more than 3.6billion years ago.

 

            TheNASA-funded team found the first organic molecules thought to be of Martianorigin; several mineral features characteristic of biological activity; andpossible micro­scopic fossils of primitive, bacteria-like organisms insideof an ancient Martian rock that fell to Earth as a meteor­ite.  This array of indirect evidence of pastlife will be reported in the August 16 issue of the journal Science, presenting the investigationto the scientific community at large for further study.

 

            Thepress release goes on for several more pages, but the picture given isbasically this:  A rock on thesurface of Mars during its early history was cracked by some sort of shock,probably from a meteor striking nearby. Later, water seeped into these cracks, depositing carbonate minerals.  Some sort of primitive bacteria livedfor a while in these carbonates, leaving behind evidence of their pres­ence.  All these things took place some 32 to 42 billion years ago, when waterwas fairly abundant on Mars.  Then,just 15 million years ago, the rock was blasted into space by a meteor strikingthe Martian surface with a glancing blow. The rock went into orbit around the sun, and about 13 thousand yearsago, it fell to earth on the Antarctic ice sheet.  In the course of time, the rock was brought to the surfaceby movements within the sheet, and recovered by investi­gators in1984.  Since then, it wasdiscovered to be Martian and quite old. A subsequent search within it for evidences of life found what has justbeen reported.[7]

 

            Toa layperson, it all sounds like fantasy. A Mars rock?  Where did theyfind it?  On earth?  The South Pole?  Gimme a break!  I bet this is just some stunt by NASAto get money to send astronauts to Mars!

 

            Well,no doubt NASA would like to send an expedition to Mars, or at least a series ofsophisticated robot landers.  Butthe evidence that this rock is a meteorite from Mars is really quite good.  Let's see.

 

 


Meteorite from Mars?

 

            Scientistshave recently concentrated on Antarctica in their search for meteor­itesfor several reasons.  Meteors areless likely to shatter striking an ice field than they would strikingrock.  Then again, they are easierto spot on ice than in dirt.  Andthird, they are less likely to be contami­nat­ed by earth-life.  Our particu­lar rock, labelled ALH84001 because it was the first meteorite cata­logued in the 1984 AllenHills expedition, has a thin, dark, glassy coating on most of its surface C a distinctive fusion crustwhich a meteor picks up as its surface melts during its fiery descent throughour atmo­sphere.[8]

 

            OK,so the rock is a meteorite.  How dowe know it is from Mars?  Afterall, most meteorites are thought to come from the debris floating around loosein the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.  This is sometimes knocked out of orbit by a collision thatsends pieces into the inner solar system, where some of them will eventuallycollide with earth.  Other suchmaterial is diverted inward by gravita­tional interaction with the planetJupiter.  Why should we think thismeteorite is any different?

 

            Forone thing, calcula­tions show that a large meteor striking a planet at agrazing angle can throw debris from the planet's surface into space.  And in recent years, astronauts havebrought back mineral samples from the moon's surface.  These samples have a very distinct mineralogy, and itmatches that of some meteor­ites that have been found.  These meteorites were apparentlyblasted off the surface of the moon at one time or another. 

 

            Wehave not yet been able to bring back rock samples from Mars, but we do have adetailed analysis of the Martian atmosphere from the two Viking landers, and itis quite unusual also.[9]  Gas bubbles found trapped in ALH 84001turn out to have the same composi­tion.[10]  In addition to this, the mineralogy ofALH 84001 fits that of the group of so-called SNC meteorites, for which themost likely source is also Mars.[11]  So the rock was apparent­ly once onMars.  The details (given above)about how the rock got here, and the times involved, are guesses based onvarious radiometric ages in the rock,[12]but the identifi­cation of the rock as Martian does not depend upon them.

 

            Soit looks like the rock was once on Mars. The big ques­tion is, does it really contain evidence of primitiveMartian life?  This question hasnot yet been settled to the general satis­faction of the scientificcommunity.  Let's review thesituation.

 

Martian Life Inside?

 

            Investigatorsagree that the rock has nothing alive in it at present.  The question is whether the rock everhad Martian life in it at one time C life which has left behind evidence of its presence C or whether the phenomenaobserved are the results of purely inorganic processes.

 

            Therock contains microscopic carbonate globules in cracks in the rock, which theinvestigators think were formed some billions of years ago by organic processesin the presence of liquid water.

 

            Theseglobules contain several features that suggest very small bacteria once livedin them:

 

            1.Shapes that resemble bacteria have been found in the cracks.  These are much smaller than the usualbacteria on earth, but their shapes and sizes resemble so-called nanobacte­ria,a life form recently discovered on earth living inside rocks hundreds of feetbelow the earth's surface.[13]

 

            2.Microscopic mineral grains of the sorts produced by bacteria have been foundthere also.  These con­sist ofmagnetite (an iron oxide), pyrrhotite and greigite (two sorts of ironsulfide).  Though any of these canbe formed by inorganic pro­cesses, their presence together in carbonateglobules is thought to be very unlikely for inorganic forma­tion.

 

            3.Chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have also been foundin the rock.  PAHs form from thedecay of living things, including bacte­ria, though they may easily beformed in other ways.  Thepeculiarity here is that they are not the sort of PAHs that would be picked upfrom earth's industrially pol­luted atmosphere, but are too abundant tohave been absorbed into the rock during the pre-indus­trial period onearth.  They are not the sort ofPAHs found in interplanetary dust, interstel­lar dust grains, or mostmeteorites.  In any case, theydon't appear to be a contamination which came into the rock from outside afterit reached the earth, as they are found with higher concentrations inside therock than near its sur­face, and especially near and in the carbonate glob­ules.

 

            Theinvestigators admit that any of these phenomena taken alone would notnecessarily indicate the presence of organic activity, since all can beproduced by inorganic processes. It is the combination of these, especially in close proximity in therock, that they feel strongly points to biological activity in the rock when itwas on Mars.

 

            Sincethe press release and paper appeared last August (1996), other scientists havebeen busy trying either to confirm or refute the observations andinterpretations made therein.  Sofar as I can tell, there has been little objection to the observations.  The rock does appear to be a meteorite,most likely from Mars.  It doeshave the chemi­cals mentioned, and the strange shapes.  The objections, rather, have related tothe interpretation of the observations.[14]

 

            Forone thing, some now claim the PAHs are the result of contami­nation,perhaps while on earth, perhaps while in space, possibly even while on Mars, byinorganically produced or terrestrial PAHs.  Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Ocean­ographysay that some of the same kinds of PAHs have been found in Antarctic ice, andprobably penetrated into the meteorite while it was lying in the ice after itsfall to earth.  They note thatcarbonates tend to soak up PAHs they come in contact with.[15]The original researchers on the Mars rock (the McKay team) have respond­ed(1) that if it were contamination the concentra­tion of PAHs ought to belarger near the surface of the rock, but in fact it is just the opposite; (2)that such a large amount of water would have had to flow through the cracks inthe rock to bring in as many PAHs as are found there that they would havebrought in a lot of clay also, but there is very little clay present; and (3)that the relative frequency of oxygen isotopes should be very different if thePAHs were from earth rather than from Mars.[16]

 

            Anothergroup of scientists headed by Harry McSween claim that the crystal structure ofthe carbon­ates in the rock shows it was formed from vapors at hightemperatures (up to 1400o F) rather than from liquid water, too hotfor life to exist.[17]  Here the original research­ersrespond that the crystals described by the McSween group are different thanthose they investigated, and may well have formed at high temperatures someother time in the rock's history. But the carbonate globules the McKay team studied were formed at muchlower tempera­tures, and seem to have been dissolved by biological activityat the same places where the magnetite and iron sulfides were deposited.[18]

 

            Athird objection also comes from the McSween group, indicating that the apparentfossils are actually crystals of iron oxide rather than nanobacteria.[19]  But, of course, fossils are often madeout of a different material than the original living organism from which thefossil was formed (e.g., petrified wood, sharks' teeth).  The crucial test here will be to getreally good pictures of these objects and see whether or not cells walls andsuch can be detected.

 

            Meanwhile,a team of British scientists have found additional evidence in ALH 84001 thatpoints to the presence of biological activity, plus evidence consistent withbiological activity in one of the other eleven meteorites thought to have comefrom Mars.[20]  This is meteorite EETA 79001, found inElephant Moraine, Antarctica in January of 1980, and thought to be much youngerthan ALH 84001.  The team's findingconcerning ALH 84001 is that something has been concentrating the isotopecarbon-13 relative to its more common partner carbon-14; this is something thatbacteria do very easily.  In EETA79001, they detected some carbon in a reduced rather than oxidized state, whichmay also point to biological activity.


What Do We Make of AllThis?

 

            Clearly,the debate is sometimes hard to follow. And it involves a lot of technical detail that only special­ists ineach particular area are able to evaluate.  It may be that some item will turn up that will definitelydecide the question whether ALH 84001 contains fossils or not.  Or the matter may remain unresolved,not to be settled without extensive investigation of the Martian surface.  Even now, a major meeting to discussthese matters (the Lunar and Planetary Conference) is winding up in Houston, TXas I speak.  I will try to get thelatest results via the Internet if possible.

 

            Ifthe materials turn out not to be biological, we need make nothing of it.  It fits with the idea that life is rareor even unique to earth, but it certainly doesn't prove it.

 

            Ifthese really are fossils from early in Martian history, then we will learn thatlife has existed on more than one planet in our universe.  Those evolutionists who think liferather common (and have been troubled by theoretical calculations to thecontrary) will feel vindicated and will make much of this in the media.  Yet the existence of simple life onMars, the nearest planet down-wind from the earth, may mean nothing more thanthat (1) such life was transported to Mars by the solar wind, having floated upinto the upper reaches of our atmosphere and been carried off.  Or (2) that a large meteor struck theearth and blew material into space which later fell on Mars when the planetstill had enough surface water to support life.  Or (3) that God created life on Mars as well as onearth.  The scientific problems ofevolution do not go away even if life is discovered on another planet.

 

            Meanwhile,we Christians should be cautious about taking hard positions on questions forwhich Scripture has not provided answers. We already face strong hostility from many in academia and the media whoare not beyond emphasizing off-the-wall statements made by evangelical andfundamental Christians that make the Bible and Christianity lookridiculous.  As pastors andteachers, we need to have enough information in our hands to speak responsiblyto those we are able to influence. We need to point out where evolutionists are going far beyond the datathemselves, and where we as creationists have explicit biblical and scientificsupport and where we are guessing. The Lord will honor our attempts to be faithful to Him.

 

References

 


[1]. Ernst Mayr, "TheProbability of Extraterrestrial Intelligence" in Edward Regis, Jr., Extraterrestrials:  Science and Alien Intelligence (Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1987), pp 23-30, esp. p. 24; Fermi is cited in ibid., p.129.  A particularly powerfulrecent argument against life being common by an evolutionist is that of RobertNaeye, "OK,  Where AreThey?" Astronomy 24, no, 7 (July, 1996), 36-43.

[2]. See, for example, Charles B.Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, and Roger L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life'sOrigin: Reassessing Current Theories (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984; reprint, Dallas:Lewis and Stanley, 1994); Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to theCreation of Life in the Universe (New York: Summit Books, 1986); Hubert P. Yockey, InformationTheory and Molecular Biology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992); J. P.Moreland, ed., The Creation Hypothesis:  Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer (Downers Grove, IL:InterVarsity, 1994).

[3]. C. S. Lewis, Science FictionTrilogy: Outof the Silent Planet (1943), Perelandra (1944), That Hideous Strength (1946); paperback editions (NewYork: Collier, 1965).

[4]. C. S. Lewis, "Will We LoseGod in Outer Space?" Christian Herald (Apr 1958); reprinted as "Religion andRocketry" in C. S. Lewis, The World's Last Night and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt BraceJovanovich, 1973), ch 6.

[5]. Brooks Alexander (?), "ASum of Shipwrecked Stars:  UFOs andthe Logic of Discernment," SCP Journal 1, no 2 (Aug 77): 25-30.

[6]. Donald L. Savage, JamesHartsfield, and David Salisbury, "Meteorite Yields Evidence of PrimitiveLife on Early Mars," NASA Press Release 96-160. 7 Aug 1996.<ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/ 1996/96-160.txt> (6 Dec1996).  A transcript of the pressconference is provided by Ron Baalke and David M. Seidel, "NASA Briefingon Discovery of Possible Early Martian Life." 7 Aug 1996, rev. 15 Aug1996. <http://www.vas.org/mars/> via <http://spot.colorado.edu:80/~marscase/cfm/presscnf.html> (6 March 1997).

[7]. The article mentioned in thepress release is David S. McKay, Everett K. Gibson, Jr., Kathie L.Thomas-Keprta, Hojatollah Vali, Christopher S. Romanek, Simon J. Clemett,Xavier D. F. Chillier, Claude R. Maechling, and Richard N. Zare, "Searchfor Past Life on Mars: Possible Relic Biogenic Activity in Martian MeteoriteALH84001," Science 273 (16 Aug 1996): 924ff; available on the Internet at <http:// www.eurekalert.org/E-lert/current/public_releases/mars/924/924.html> (27 Feb1997).  A less technical explanationis provided by Allan H. Treiman of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in"Fossil Life in ALH 84001?" 21 Aug 1996.<http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/pub/lpi/meteorites/life.­html> (6 Dec1996).

[8]. Oliver K. Manuel,"Meteorite," McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Astronomy (1983), p 192.

[9]. Joseph F. Baugher, TheSpace-Age Solar System (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1988), p 160; see also "ALH 84001:Technical Discussions" under subhead "Martian Origin"<http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/ pub/lpi/ meteorites/Technicalities.html> (6Dec 1996).

[10]. "ALH 84001: TechnicalDiscussions" under subhead "Martian Origin."<http://cass.jsc.nas­a.gov/ pub/lpi/ meteorites/Technicali­ties.html>(6 Dec 1996).

[11]. Eric W. Weisstein, "SNCMeteorites." <http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/astro/snode28.html>(27 Feb 1997).

[12]. "ALH 84001: TechnicalDiscussions," under subheads "Igneous Age," "ShockAge," "Age of Carbonate Formation," "Cosmic Ray ExposureAge," and "Terrestrial Age," <http://cass.jsc.nasa.­gov/pub/lpi/

mete­orites/Technica­lities.html>(6 Dec 1996).

[13]. Andrew Chaikin interviewingKathie Thomas-Keprta, "Scientist Discusses Evidence for Past Life onMars," Encarta Encyclopedia Online Updates.<http://www.encarta.com/downloads/archive/jan97/ mars.asp> (27 Feb 1997).

[14]. John Noble Wilford, "OnMars, Life's Getting Tougher (If Not Impossible)," New York TimesInterna­tional Edition 146, no. 50,649 (22 Dec 1996): 1, 6.

[15]. L. Becker, D. P. Glavin, and J.L. Bada, "Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Antarctic Martianmeteorites, carbonaceous chondrites, and polar ice,"  Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 61, no. 2 (Jan 97): 475-481.

[16]. Kathie Thomas-Keprta interview.

[17]. NY Times (22 Dec 96); J. P. Bradley, R.P. Harvey, and H. Y. McSween, Jr., "Magnetite whiskers and platelets inthe ALH 84001 Martian meteorite: Evidence of vapor phase growth," Geochimicaet Cosmochimica Acta 60, no. 24 (Dec 1996): 5149-5155.

[18]. Thomas-Keprta interview.

[19]. NY Times (22 Dec 96).

[20]. Thomas-Keprta interview; JohnNoble Wilford, "New Traces of Past Life on Mars," New York Times (1 Nov 1996), page A-12.