New Mars samples ’unlike any seen before’
New Mars samples ’unlike any seen before’
A new site being explored by the Mars rover Opportunity has yielded soil samples unlike any examined before on the red planet and that appear more favorable for life, scientists said.
Opportunity, the indefatigable robot that has been exploring Mars for seven and a half years, arrived three weeks ago at the edge of a 22 kilometer (13.6 mile) wide crater named Endeavour and has been sending back images of the surrounding environment.
File photo shows the “red” planet taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists say a new site being explored by the Mars rover Opportunity has yielded soil samples unlike any examined before.
The first rock it examined is a flat-topped object about the size of a foot stool that apparently was cast up by an impact that left an impression the size of a tennis court on the rim of the crater.
Called Tisdale 2, the rock “is different from any rock we’ve ever seen on Mars,” said Steve Squyres, a Cornell University scientist who is the principal investigator for Opportunity.
“It has a composition similar to some volcanic rocks, but there’s much more zinc and bromine than we’ve typically seen,” he said at a news conference.
The observations and measurements taken by the American Martian orbiters leads scientists to believe that the rocks on the rim of the crater contain clay minerals that form in wet conditions and which are less acidic and possibly more favorable for life, they said.
A bench around the edge of the crater resembles sedimentary rock that has been cut and filled with veins of material possibly left there by water, said Ray Arvidson, another member of the team who is from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.
During the past two weeks, researchers have used an instrument attached to Opportunity’s robot arm to identify the elements that make up the rock.
Article from: france24.com
Scientists Discover Rare Flowing Water on Mars, Supports Alien Life
This image combining orbital imagery with 3-D modeling shows flows that appear in spring and summer on a slope inside Mars’ Newton crater.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
-Scientists have discovered flowing salt water on Mars which has sparked conversations about potential alien life within the planet’s surface. The images sent from NASA’s orbiter unveiled flowing waters descending down from rocky slopes.
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Information from the orbiter have fed new fuel to the discussion on Mar’s capability of supporting alien lifeform. Scientists have sent numerous space missions in obtaining a variety of evidence that may reveal biological microbial life outside of Earth. The latest evidence of flowing water have strengthened support and hope of discovering a live specimen.
“NASA’s Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form…And it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
Planet Mars contains many crevices, perhaps remains of dried up bodies of waters, valleys, and rivers. Scientists speculate that millions of years ago, Mars contained lakes and other large bodies of liquid, but over time the water has disappeared, perhaps flowing down beneath the planet’s surface through the numerous cracks. The latest photos of flowing water presents theories that living organisms are able to survive in Mar’s underground flowing waters, living in darkness under the planet’s surface. There are examples of such organisms on Earth, and it may also hold true on Mars.
The water shows up as dark colored finger like streaks flowing down from various slopes and crevices. Based on seasonal photos, the water patterns appear to grow or recede depending on the season. Scientists hypothesize that the briny water could appear and disappear based on the winter or summer months on the Red Planet.
“We expect water on Mars to be briny, to be salty, because we know that the surface is salty from all of the past landers and rovers…Furthermore, the salt serves to depress the freezing point of the water, so in places where it’s below freezing, we see this activity, it is still plausible for that to be salty water,” said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona.
The theory of Mars holding briny salty water is connected to its freezing point. The more salt water contains, the lower the freezing temperature. Based on McEwen’s observations, the apparent unfrozen flowing waters were spotted on steeper slopes as it descends at warmer seasonal months. Water streaks on Mars are thought to be hundreds of years old.
Read the full article at: ibtimes.com
Entheogen—Awakening the Divine Within
A FEATURE length documentary which invites the viewer to rediscover an enchanted cosmos in the modern world by awakening to the divine within.
The film examines the re-emergence of archaic techniques of ecstacy in the modern world by weaving a synthesis of ecological and evolutionary awareness, electronic dance culture, and the current pharmacological re-evaluation of entheogenic compounds. Within a narrative framework that imagines consciousness itself to be evolving, Entheogen documents the emergence of techno-shamanism in the post-modern world that frames the following questions: How can a renewal of ancient initiatory rites of passage alleviate our ecological crisis? What do trance dancing and festivals celebrating unbridled artistic expression speak to in our collective psyche? How do we re-invent ourselves in a disenchanted world from which God has long ago withdrawn?
Stan Grof, Marilyn Schlitz, Ralph Metzner, Alex Grey, Terrence McKenna, John Markoff, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Kat Harrison among others, postulate how the disenchantment of the modern world may be remedied by summoning the courage to take the next leap in the evolution of planetary consciousness.
Entheogen invites the viewer to consider that the answers to these questions lie within the consciousness of each and every human being, and are accessible if only we give ourselves permission to awaken to the divine within.
Source: Entheogen.tv | DMT: The Spirit Molecule | Manifesting the Mind | Ayahuasca
Phone telepathy: You knew it was true
Phone telepathy: You knew it was true
NORWICH, England (Reuters) — Many people have experienced the phenomenon of receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after thinking about them — now a scientist says he has proof of what he calls telephone telepathy.
Rupert Sheldrake, whose research is funded by the respected Trinity College, Cambridge, said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e- mails.
Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone.
“The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected,” he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
“The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one.”
He said he found the same result with people being asked to name one of four people sending them an e- mail before it had landed.
However, his sample was small on both trials — just 63 people for the controlled telephone experiment and 50 for the email — and only four subjects were actually filmed in the phone study and five in the email, prompting some skepticism.
Undeterred, Sheldrake — who believes in the interconnectedness of all minds within a social grouping — said that he was extending his experiments to see if the phenomenon also worked for mobile phone text messages.
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