As the Martian rovers continue their search for more evidence of life-giving water, a Prairie View A&M University researcher is creating life using an artificial soil simulating that found on Mars. For the past four years, Raul Cuero has used NASA’s factory-made soil to breed microbes in his lab, much like 100 other scientific researchers in the nation — and seven others in Texas — have done since 1998. And as Opportunity sits at Endurance, a 430-foot-wide crater on Mars, awaiting NASA’s command to jump in, Cuero has moved forward in his discovery that Mars soil may lead to solutions that could rid Earth of toxins.
May 7th, 2004
NASA Funds Sci-Fi Technology Wired News
For 25 years, Ross Hoffman has had a vision: to use tiny changes in the environment to alter the paths of hurricanes, slow down snow storms and turn dark days bright. For most of those years, Hoffman kept his ideas largely to himself. His adviser at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told him weather control was too outlandish for his Ph.D. thesis. The chances of a buttoned-down foundation or government agency funding such research were so slim, Hoffman didn’t even bother to ask. But, in 2001, all that changed. Hoffman stumbled upon a tiny, obscure cranny of the American space program — the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or NIAC. In this $4 million-a-year agency, Hoffman found a place where the wildest of ideas were not only tolerated, they were welcome.
April 22nd, 2004
Space enthusiasts debate modifying Mars for man Khaleej Times
Space enthusiasts are conducting a lively debate about whether to make the planet Mars habitable for human beings, or to leave it in its pristine state as a place hostile to life. Technology offers various ways to provide Mars with an Earth-style atmosphere and gradually warm it up over several centuries. The prospect recalls warnings from cosmologist and physicist Stephen Hawking that continued climate change on Earth may one day leave humanity no other choice but to emigrate to another world.
April 16th, 2004
Researchers Reveal Iron As Key To Climate Change Moss Landing Marine Laboratories
A remarkable expedition to the waters of Antarctica reveals that iron supply to the Southern Ocean may have controlled Earth’s climate during past ice ages. A multi-institutional group of scientists, led by Dr. Kenneth Coale of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) and Dr. Ken Johnson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), fertilized two key areas of the Southern Ocean with trace amounts of iron. Their goal was to observe the growth and fate of microscopic marine plants (phytoplankton) under iron-enriched conditions, which are thought to have occurred in the Southern Ocean during past ice ages. They report the results of these important field experiments (known as SOFeX, for Southern Ocean Iron Enrichment Experiments) in the April 16, 2004 issue of Science.
April 15th, 2004
Money that grows on crops The Christian Science Monitor
He can’t quite make money grow from trees, but a New Zealand scientist has devised a way to harvest gold from plants. The idea: Use common crops to soak up contaminants in soil from gold-mining sites and return the areas to productive agriculture. The gold harvested from the process pays for the cleanup – with money left over for training in sustainable agriculture.
April 13th, 2004
Plan to build emissions scrubber
Engineers are trying to build a system to remove the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in an effort to reduce climate warming.
Two companies based in Tucson, Arizona, in the US are involved in the project, which aims to complete the first phase of a working unit by early 2005.
March 29th, 2004
Scientists planning to make Mars habitable The London Observer
Scientists hope to use a process known as `terraforming’ to thicken Mars’ atmosphere and increase the temperature to accommodate life from Earth.
Finding life on Mars has proved an elusive dream for decades. But now scientists believe they may be able to do it for themselves — by turning the Red Planet into a blue world with streams, green fields and fresh breezes and filling it with earthly creatures.
March 28th, 2004
Now NASA looks to change Mars into a garden of Earthly delights Guardian Unlimited
Finding life on Mars has proved an elusive dream for decades. But scientists now believe they may be able to do it for themselves – by turning the Red Planet into a blue world with streams, green fields and fresh breezes and filling it with Earthly creatures. The idea – known as terraforming – sounds like science fiction. But turning Mars into an Earthly paradise is being taken seriously by increasing numbers of researchers. They believe that, billions of years after its last seas and rivers dried up, Mars could be restored to its ancient glory thanks to human ingenuity.
March 26th, 2004
NASA Mars Terraforming Debate to be held at Astrobiology Conference SpaceRef.com
A group of science fiction writers, academic luminaries and NASA scientists will hold a lively debate about terraforming Mars at NASA Ames Research Center on March 30, 2004. The debate is the first in a new series of discussions entitled “Science Fiction Meets Science Fact.” This series is the result of a shared vision between NASA, Breakpoint Media and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle, scheduled to open in summer 2004. The free, open-to-the-public debate will take place from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. PST in the main tent on the Moffett Field parade grounds at NASA Ames.
March 20th, 2004
Report: Carbon dioxide buildup accelerating
Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this 2-mile-high station atop a Hawaiian volcano. Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. A leading climatologist, Ralph Keeling, whose father, Charles D. Keeling, developed methods for measuring carbon dioxide, noted that the rate “does fluctuate up and down a bit,” and said it was too early to reach conclusions. But he added: “People are worried about ‘feedbacks.’ We are moving into a warmer world.” He explained that warming itself releases carbon dioxide from the ocean and soil. By raising the gas’s level in the atmosphere, that in turn could increase warming, in a “positive feedback,” said Keeling, of San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.