Study Nixes Mars Life in Meteorite Found in Antarctica

FILE - The meteorite labeled ALH84001 is held in the hand of a scientist at a Johnson Space Center lab in Houston, Aug. 7, 1996. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
FILE - The meteorite labeled ALH84001 is held in the hand of a scientist at a Johnson Space Center lab in Houston, Aug. 7, 1996. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
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Study Nixes Mars Life in Meteorite Found in Antarctica

FILE - The meteorite labeled ALH84001 is held in the hand of a scientist at a Johnson Space Center lab in Houston, Aug. 7, 1996. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
FILE - The meteorite labeled ALH84001 is held in the hand of a scientist at a Johnson Space Center lab in Houston, Aug. 7, 1996. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

A 4 billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a splash here on Earth decades ago contains no evidence of ancient, primitive Martian life after all, scientists reported Thursday.

In 1996, a NASA-led team announced that organic compounds in the rock appeared to have been left by living creatures. Other scientists were skeptical and researchers chipped away at that premise over the decades, most recently by a team led by the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Andrew Steele, The Associated Press said.

Tiny samples from the meteorite show the carbon-rich compounds are actually the result of water — most likely salty, or briny, water — flowing over the rock for a prolonged period, Steele said. The findings appear in the journal Science.

During Mars' wet and early past, at least two impacts occurred near the rock, heating the planet's surrounding surface, before a third impact bounced it off the red planet and into space millions of years ago. The 4-pound (2-kilogram) rock was found in Antarctica in 1984.

Groundwater moving through the cracks in the rock, while it was still on Mars, formed the tiny globs of carbon that are present, according to the researchers. The same thing can happen on Earth and could help explain the presence of methane in Mars' atmosphere, they said.

But two scientists who took part in the original study took issue with these latest findings, calling them “disappointing." In a shared email, they said they stand by their 1996 observations.

“While the data presented incrementally adds to our knowledge of (the meteorite), the interpretation is hardly novel, nor is it supported by the research,” wrote Kathie Thomas-Keprta and Simon Clemett, astromaterial researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“Unsupported speculation does nothing to resolve the conundrum surrounding the origin of organic matter” in the meteorite, they added.

According to Steele, advances in technology made his team's new findings possible.

He commended the measurements by the original researchers and noted that their life-claiming hypothesis “was a reasonable interpretation" at the time. He said he and his team — which includes NASA, German and British scientists — took care to present their results “for what they are, which is a very exciting discovery about Mars and not a study to disprove” the original premise.

This finding “is huge for our understanding of how life started on this planet and helps refine the techniques we need to find life elsewhere on Mars, or Enceladus and Europa,” Steele said in an email, referring to Saturn and Jupiter’s moons with subsurface oceans.

The only way to prove whether Mars ever had or still has microbial life, according to Steele, is to bring samples to Earth for analysis. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover already has collected six samples for return to Earth in a decade or so; three dozen samples are desired.

Millions of years after drifting through space, the meteorite landed on an icefield in Antarctica thousands of years ago. The small gray-green fragment got its name — Allan Hills 84001 — from the hills where it was found.

Just this week, a piece of this meteorite was used in a first-of-its-kind experiment aboard the International Space Station. A mini scanning electron microscope examined the sample; Thomas-Keprta served as operated it remotely from Houston. Researchers hope to use the microscope to analyze geologic samples in space — on the moon one day, for example — and debris that could ruin station equipment or endanger astronauts.



Kashmir’s Saffron Growers Experiment with Indoor Farming as Climate Pressures Mount

Kashmiri villagers collect stigma from saffron flowers in Pampore, 19 km (12 miles) south of Srinagar.(Reuters)
Kashmiri villagers collect stigma from saffron flowers in Pampore, 19 km (12 miles) south of Srinagar.(Reuters)
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Kashmir’s Saffron Growers Experiment with Indoor Farming as Climate Pressures Mount

Kashmiri villagers collect stigma from saffron flowers in Pampore, 19 km (12 miles) south of Srinagar.(Reuters)
Kashmiri villagers collect stigma from saffron flowers in Pampore, 19 km (12 miles) south of Srinagar.(Reuters)

Tucked in a valley beneath the snow-capped Himalayas of the Indian Kashmir region is the town of Pampore, famed for its farms that grow the world's most expensive spice - the red-hued saffron.

This is where most of saffron is farmed in India, the world's second-largest producer behind Iran of the spice, which costs up to 325,000 rupees ($3,800) a kg (2.2 pounds) because it is so labor-intensive to harvest.

Come October, the crocus plants begin to bloom, covering the fields with bright purple flowers from which strands of fragrant red saffron are picked by hand, to be used in foods such as paella, and in fragrances and cloth dyes.

"I am proud to cultivate this crop," said Nisar Ahmad Malik, as he gathered flowers from his ancestral field.

But, while Malik has stuck to traditional farming, citing the "rich color, fragrance and aroma" of his produce through the years, some agrarian experts have been experimenting with indoor cultivation of the crop as global warming fears increase.

About 90% of India's saffron is produced in Kashmir, of which a majority is grown in Pampore, but the small town is under threat of rapid urbanization, according to the Indian Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR).

Experts say rising temperatures and erratic rainfall pose a risk to saffron production, which has dropped from 8 metric tons in the financial year 2010-11 to 2.6 metric tons in 2023-24, the federal government told parliament in February, adding that efforts were being made to boost production.

One such program is a project to help grow the plant indoors in a controlled environment in tubes containing moisture and vital nutrients, which Dr. Bashir Ilahi at state-run Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences said has shown good results.

"Growing saffron in a controlled environment demonstrates temperature resistance and significantly reduces the risk of crop failure," said Ilahi, standing in his laboratory between stacks of crates containing tubes of the purple flower.

Ilahi and other local experts have been helping farmers with demonstrations on how to grow the crocus plant indoors.

"It is an amazing innovation," said Abdul Majeed, president of Kashmir's Saffron Growers Association, some of whose members, including Majeed, have been cultivating the crop indoors for a few years.

Manzoor Ahmad Mir, a saffron grower, urged more state support.

"The government should promote indoor saffron cultivation on a much larger scale as climate change is affecting the entire world, and Kashmir is no exception," Mir said.