UFO UpDates Mailing List
From: United Kingdom UFO Network <ufo@holodeck.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 20:39:05 +0000
Fwd Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 08:53:02 -0500
Subject: {71} part 1 - United Kingdom UFO Network
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U K / / // ___/ / / ' March 24th, 1997
/ / // / / / / N E T W O R K part 1 Issue 71
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This issue comes in 2 parts. If any part is missing please mail:
ufo@holodeck.demon.co.uk giving the issue number. The issue will
be reposted to you. Please put the details as below in the subject
section e.g. Repost {71}
Contents:
Editorial
---------
Air Traffic Control
Next Issue
----------
United Kingdom News
-------------------
[U1] Our girls seduced by aliens says Eric
[U2] Xyratex opens X-File on life on Mars
World News
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[W1] It's ice-crust moon could harbour life on ocean floor
[W2] Dinosaur doomsday
[W3] Search for life on a frozen moon
[W4] Blame it on the aliens...
[W5] Alien Antarctica
[W6] UFO Network shares reports, offers support
[W7] Mystery Hum
[W8] After Dolly, Martian Microbes?
[W9] Europa and the 'Hoagland Eccentricity'
[W10] Hale-Bopp could give clue to Earth's oceans
[W11] Comet promises a cosmic festival of light
[W12] Tail of the century
[W13] Mars life theory gets a boost
[W14] Livnat, Knesset discuss extraterrestrial life
[W15] Arizonans report strange lights in Thursday's sky
[W16] UFO sightings in PV, other areas
[W17] It's just 2.5 miles of yarn
[W18] Physicist Bob Wood Wants to Know How UFOs Get Here
Editorial
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uk.ufo.nw Dave says: I recently had the chance to visit Air Traffic
Control (ATC) at Birmingham Airport. Working at the airport enabled
me to arrange a visit for myself and two colleagues. ATC at
Birmingham is a relatively small affair compared to the likes of say
Gatwick and Heathrow. Over the past eleven years this was probably my
fourth visit. The one thing that has always struck me is just how
interested they all appear to be in their respective jobs. Nothing
had changed on this visit except that over the last few years a fair
amount of equipment appears to have been updated.
While we were in the radar operators room having the various blips
and smudges that were moving around the screen explained to us, I
could not pass up the opportunity to ask the inevitable question. I'm
sure the majority of you would have done the same. It did cause my
two colleagues to look at me with embarrassed smiles. Their interest
in ufology is near zero. However I asked the operator if over the
years they came across many unidentified objects on radar and if so
how did they log them. He asked me what I meant. I replied "UFOs". In
about one second flat he looked at me, smiled and said "No" and
carried on discussing the radar. I got the distinct impression that
that was the end of that and any further questions were going to get
me nowhere. What did I expect really. Nothing I suppose.
I know for a fact that most if not all UK ATC's record any strange
situations in a 'log' book. Another colleague who has seen
Birmingham's 'book' but not had access to its contents told me of
its existence but stated "they will never show it to you".
This leads me onto a question. Do any of you out there know of
similar 'books' held by ATC's? Have you ever seen one? Do you know
anyone who has? Send in your comments to us. If we publish your mail
and you wish to remain anonymous please inform us. In the subject
area of you mail put: ATC's SECRET BOOK.
Next Issue
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(UK) Boscombe Down Stealth Crash
United Kingdom News
-------------------
[U1]******
Source: The Sun newspaper
Date: Thursday 20th February 1997
Our girls seduced by aliens says Eric
By Andy Russell
Male nurse Eric Morris has quit his job to help women who say they
were seduced by aliens.
The UFO fan is Britain's first alien abduction counselor.
Eric, 43, says many of his patients claim they had sex with randy
extra-terrestrials.
One woman even told him she had an alien baby after being wooed on a
flying saucer. "I totally believe her," he said. "She had scars on
her body that can't be accounted for."
"I believe there is a crossbreeding program going on."
Eric, a former Royal Navy petty officer, gets 20 letters a week from
abduction "victims."
He went on: "Lots of woman feel impelled to have sex with these
beings and feel ashamed. I help them to deal with it."
The married dad from Winsford, Cheshire, has also dealt with a woman
who says a blue reptile like alien taught her a language called
Sensar.
He insisted: "I am not a nutter."
[U2]******
Source: Computing (UK)
Date: 6th February 1997
Xyratex opens X-File on life on Mars
Staff at UK storage specialist Xyratex are putting in unpaid
overtime searching for extraterrestrial life.
Late last year, Xyratex came into posession of a 1mm fragment of
ALH84001 - the Martian meteorite scientists claim contains traces of
alien bactera.
Xyratex lab staff are now examining the fragment with an atomic
force microscope, whose 10-million-fold magnification is normally
used to map surface flaws on hard disks.
Claims that life on Mars had been proven were based on patterns
found using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). But before an SEM
can be used, samples must be sputtered with a metal coating. Xyratex
believes its experience in sputtering gold and palladium coatings
onto disk drive heads gives it one-up on the biologists.
Xyratex surface specialist David Stapleton said patterns identified
as life may have resulted from the sputtering process. The atomic
force microscope is able to compare patterns to markings in
sputtering coats on silicon wafers.
So is there life on Mars? Stapleton said: 'I can't say . And if that
sounds like a scientist hedging his bets, that's because it is.'
World News
----------
[W1]******
Source: The Times newspaper
Date: Tuesday 18th February 1997
It's ice-crust moon could harbour life on ocean floor
Nigel Hawkes, Science Editor, at the American Association in Seattle,
hears that ocean floor activity on Europa could create an enviroment
similar to the undersea volcanoes on Earth
One of Jupiter's moons may be the best place in the solar system to
search for evidence of life, scientists believe.
The ice-covered moon Europa, visited on Sunday by the spacecraft
Galileo, is believed to possess deep oceans under the crust of ice.
If pictures and other data from Galileo provide confirmation,
pressure will mount for a full scale exploration of the moon by robot
spacecraft early next century.
Dr Eugene Shoemaker, of the US Geological Survey, told the American
Association for the Advancement of Science that he believed Europa's
ocean was between 100km and 200km deep and covered by a layer of ice
10km thick. Volcanic activity at the bottom of the ocean would
provide conditions for life very like those at the hydrothermal vents
at the bottom of the Earht's oceans, where heat and minerals from the
mantle spilt out, creating an enviroment teeming with life.
Research with submersibles over the past 20 years has shown that
these areas, once thought to be oceanic deserts, are inhabited by
colonies of bacteria and by the Earth's fastest-growing
invertebrates, the tube worms. Dr Richard Lutz of Rutgers University,
New Jersey, told the meeting that at one such site on the East
Pacific Rise he had found tube worms that had grown to 5ft in 20
months.
He had first visited the site, 1 and a half miles below the surface
off the west coast of Mexico, in 1991 in the middle of a volcanic
eruption that destroyed all life forms. But on repeat visits over
the next few years, he had seen it recover with dramatic speed. "It
became a lush oasis in less than three years."
His observations have convinced astronomers that Europa is also
likely to harbour life, so long as it possesses an ocean and
volcanic activity. The meeting was told that there are good reasons
for believing it has both.
Dr Steven Squyres, of Cornell University, said that the orbit of
Europa around Jupiter was elliptical, creating alternating stresses
on the moon that caused it to flex as it orbited. This produced heat
that could be enough to keep the water on the moon's surface from
freezing solid.
Dr Shoemaker said that Europa's relatively unpockmarked surface, with
many fewer craters than Io, another Jovian moon, suggests it has been
constantly reshaped by volcanic activity. The combination of liquid
water and volcanoes would reproduce almost exactly the same
enviroment as that visited by Dr Lutz in the Pacific.
Dr John Delaney, of the University of Washington, said: "It is very
difficult to say surely there will be life there but we know you can
drill a hole anywhere on this planet and find bacterial life deep
underground. It is beginning to look at as if any planet with a
reasonable brittle outer portion may have originated life. Life can
start but whether it can evolve is a different matter."
Dr Squyres said that the recent discovery of a huge lake of water
below the ice of Antartica could provide a test bed for the
techniques that will be needed to explore Europa. Lake Vostok, found
by the Russians close to their base, lies under 4km of ice. Its water
is believed to have been undisturbed for millions of years.
Drilling in Lake Vostok would be easy but for the fear of
contaminating it. The drilling fluids needed would mix with the
water, detsroying its scientific value. Scientists are puzzling how
to complete the hole cleanly, in a rehearsal of what may one day be
needed on Europa.
A number of proposals for exploring Europa have already been put to
the American space agency. Nasa, and the money for such a mission is
in the budget. The earliest a probe could leave would be 2002 or
2002.
To find life there, even if it was no more complex than a primitive
bacterium, would be "an absolutely profound event in the history of
human culture", Dr Delaney said.
[W2]******
Source: Daily Mail newspaper
Date: Tuesday 18th February 1997
Dinosaur doomsday
>From David Derbyshire
Science Correspondent in Seattle
It has long been one of science's great unproven theories. Were the
dinosaurs wiped out by a huge asteroid that hit the Earth 65 million
years ago?
After 17 years of speculation, researchers are on the brink of
confirming their hypothesis.
A team drilling for soil samples on the ocean floor 8,500ft beneath
the surface of the Atlantic has uncovered what is believed to be the
first direct proof of the cataclysmic impact. Measuring 12 miles by
6, the asteroid hit the Earth at thousands of miles per hour,
unleashing more energy than is contained in all the nuclear weapons
ever made.
Billions of tons of soil, sulphur and rock vapour were lifted into
the atmosphere, blotting out the sun and causing temperatures to
plummet around the globe in an 'asteroid winter' that lasted 5,000
years.
Up to 70 per cent of all plant and animal species - including the
dinosaurs - perished. Some small mammals survived, however, and
evolved over millions of years into new species, including humans.
Working on a drill ship off the east coast of Florida, a team led by
scientist Richard Norris recovered three cores with a thin brownish
cross section called the 'fireball layer', which is thought to
contain pieces of the asteroid.
"This neat layer of sediment has never been discovered in the sea
before," Mr Norris told an international science conference in
Seattle. "We've found the smoking gun - it is proof positive of the
impact."
He said the deepest layers in the cores contained fossil remains of
many animals and came from the healthy 'happy-go-lucky ocean' that
existed just before the impact.
Directly above that is a layer with small green glass pebbles,
thought to be material from the ocean bottom by the massive energy
release of the impact. Next is a rusty brown level which is believed
to be from the vaporised remains of the asteroid.
Just above the brown layer, is a two-inch band of grey clay - strong
evidence of a planet almost devoid of life.
"It was not a completely dead ocean, but most of the species that
are seen before the asteroid - early in the core sample - are gone,"
said Mr Norris. "There are only a few very minute fossils. These were
the survivors in the ocean."
The dead zone lasted about 5,000 years before new life began to
spring up. "It is amazing how quickly the new species appeared,"
added Norris.
Following the impact, the material thrown up into the atmosphere
'snowed' down in a fine powder, all over the planet.
Brown deposits like those in the samples taken by his team have been
found at various locations. Each had a high content of iridium - a
chemical signature of asteroids.
Although the rock that wiped out the dinosaurs fell to Earth in the
southern Gulf of Mexico, Norris went to the Atlantic near the edge
of the continental shelf because the violence of the impact would
have left little usable evidence at the epicentre.
Norris thought that waves from the impact would have washed across
Florida, depositing debris in the Atlantic. His theory was borne
out.
Robert Corell, assistant director of geosciences for the National
Science Foundation, said the core samples were the strongest
evidence yet that an asteroid impact caused the extinction of the
dinosaurs.
"In my view, this is the most significant discovery in 20 years," he
added.
Geologist Walter Alvarez from the University of California first
proposed the asteroid theory in 1980. His ideas received little
support at the time.
The latest findings come as French scientists believe they have
evidence that dinosaurs were migratory animals which travelled in
packs.
The team claims footprints of 60 dinosaurs of the diplodocus genus -
dating back 145 million years - found in a quarry near Cahors,
South-West France, prove they were heading inland from the sea to
escape a seasonal flood.
[W3]******
Source: Daily Mail newspaper
Date: Tuesday 18th February 1997
Search for life on a frozen moon
Life will be discovered on Jupiter's ice moon within a generation,
the conference was told yesterday.
Scientists are increasingly convinced that the frozen crust of Europa
hides a giant ocean, said John Delaney, an oceanographer at the
University of Washington. Combined with volcanic heat, the presence
of water would appear to make the existence of life on the satellite
a possibility. Nasa will send a probe there within ten years.
"The first discovery of life on another planet is going to be an
absolutely profound event in the history of the human culture," said
Delaney. It's a tremendously exciting thing. It will impact
religion, economics, everything." Europa has been the prime candidate
for life since 1983 when space scientists first began to suspect the
ocean's existence.
Recentpictures of the moon revealed a flat surface but astronomers
claim craters caused by meteors have been plugged up with water from
deep below the surface.
[W4]******
Source: Focus magazine
Date: February 1997
Blame it on the aliens...
If it's unexplainable, bizarre or irritating, some hapless space
being will cop it. So just what are they supposed to be guilty of?
By Robert Ashton
Crop circles aren't caused by hoaxers. That dead cow you saw by the
road didn't die of natural causes. Elvis Presley didn't collapse and
die while having his final dump. That's right: none of these events
is what it seems because they were all the work of aliens. And before
you dismiss this out of hand, consider the follow ing: you are
statistically more likely to see Elvis, a Martian and the Loch Ness
Monster in the same place on the same day as you are to win the
jackpot in the National Lottery. You can get odds on that in any
high street bookies. So, there are plenty of people taking the role
of the alien in modern society seriously, then?
"Oh yes," says Michael Soper, spokesman for the UK's UFO
intelligence gathering operation Contact International. "There is
more than enough good information. We can convince people that aliens
are here, but we don't really want to because they would find it
upsetting. Knowing there are aliens would put us in a reduced role in
the universe. To know this is to know we are controlled like a herd."
Here's where you have to suspend your natural disbelief, because you
are about to enter the twilight zone of the UFO enthusiast. It's a
weird world where nothing appears quite as straightforward as you
might like to think.
Such a baffling miasma of speculation has built up that we thought
we'd at least try to find out what it is the 'little green men' are
being blamed for... even if you can't believe a word of it.
Take the question of whether UFOs are genuine alien space- craft.
While many of us have spent time debating the initial premise of
whether or not alien life even exists, UFO believers seize the topic
and are proposing elab- orate series of beliefs. Not only do aliens
exist, they claim, but they have devised faster- than-light travel
in order to fly to Earth and are here to perform intricate
experiments on the human race in pursuit of some unknown end.
Little green meddlers?
Serious science attributes UFO sightings to natural phenomena that
can be explained easily in 90 per cent of cases. Problem is that
there's that remaining 10 per cent providing fuel for the
unorthodoxies of the UFO spot- ter's fire. This in turn leads them to
assume that unexplained phenomena, from mysterious memory lapses to
the loss of ships and planes, must necessarily be part of some
horribly sinister extraterrestrial conspiracy.
Some go even further. David Jacobs, author of Secret Life:
First-hand Accounts of UFO Abductions, argues that the alien agenda
is to abduct humans in order to produce a hybrid earthling/alien
creature. Christine Florenz, for example, is a celebrated alien
abductee who claims to have had sex with an alien. She couldn't
account for three hours of a journey she was taking in the southern
USA, in the late Eighties, after which she became preg- nant.
Unfortunately this story is hard to con- firm as there is no
earthling/alien offspring and the circumstances in which her
pregnancy was terminated are unclear.
Has anybody seen Elvis recently?
Most people believe that Elvis Presley died, as commonly reported,
in 1977 after years of drug and alcohol abuse. Not so, say the
cohorts of pro-alien experts and doubtless Sunday Sport readers, too.
Elvis was abducted by aliens. Ihe trivial fact that no credible
eyewitness accounts of Presley being beamed aboard the Starship Hound
Dog have yet been offered to UFO associations does not daunt
supporters of the theory. They are equally undeterred by the fact
that secret FBI and CIA files released under the Freedom of
Information Act don't point to anything other than an untimely death
on the John. But reported sightings of the rocker working in
fish'n'chip shops and country'n'western bars lead many UFOlogists to
speculate that aliens removed his memory before returning him 'all
shook up' to earth.
There are certainly a number of spectacular alleged precedents of
alien kidnapping. Budd Hopkins, author of Missing Time, suggests
abductions may actually be more common than sightings. An
influential Close Encounters symposium staged in 1992 heard testimony
from a number of abductees who described medical examinations,
involving extraction of blood, sperm and other bodily fluids, aboard
alien craft. A theme common to all accounts was a poor recollection
of events, often need- ing regression hypnosis to stimulate memory,
and an unaccountable loss of time.
Aliens also appear to be fairly choosy about their victims. Guest
speaker Thomas Bullard reported that of 309 alien abduction cases he
has studied, around two thirds of the victims had been male and
subjects aged between seven and 20 are the category most at risk.
"Abductions are a peril of youth," he claims. " If you manage to
pass 30 without ever being abducted you have little to worry about."
The aliens have stolen all the power!
Car won't start on a January morning? Blame the weather. And why
not? Ice, snow and rain are almost certainly the cause for screwed up
ignition systems? Well, aren't they?
Not according to alien experts. They're convinced there is a causal
link between UFO activity and power failure, blaming many
spluttering engines, blackouts and other elec- trical malfunctions on
the aliens.
There have been several examples of sky- way robbery with satellites
going down or, in some instances, going missing. In 1966 a USAF base
in Montana was crippled follow- ing UFO sightings and in one of the
most dramatic cases on record, New York was plunged into darkness on
9 November 1965 despite the power company insisting there were no
problems on the grid.
Atmospheric physicist James MacDonald later claimed during a House
Committee on Science and Astronautics, that UFOs were responsible
for the power cut. Other leading researchers are convinced aliens can
be blamed for a host of similar blackouts, includ- ing one in London
in November 1965 when no fault at the power plants could be found.
Commonly UFO activity has been reported at the time of the failures,
which leads some people to conclude that aliens can siphon off and
store huge amounts of electricity either to power their spacecraft
or feed their electrical needs at home. A by-product of this may be
the creation of force fields jamming other electrical systems, such
as car ignitions.
Close encounters of the cereal Kind
Following a mass outbreak of asymmetrical patterns on the Wiltshire
landscape in the mid-1980s, the county has become a focus for crop
circle studies. They have been explained variously as complex
hoaxes, the result of the mating habits of hedgehogs or rabbits,
secret weapon testing and fungal growth.
Other unproven theories have been put forward by scientist Terence
Meaden, who proposed a 'plasma vortex' theory based on the
phenomenon of electrohydrodynamics. The Japanese are also undertaking
research into a rotating electrified energy field. "There is strong
evidence that that is what is going on to create the circles,
"comments one scientist, "anything more complex is a hoax."
However, science has failed to adequately back its theories and
despite a number of well- publicised faked circles, alien hunters
still exercise the view that only UFO activity could explain crop
circles. UFO researchers suggest some of the circular and sometimes
triangular pictograms are so complex and so enormous that no hoaxer
with a stick and a piece of string would be able to create them.
One of the leading researchers in this field, George Wingfield,
reports in his paper Circular Conundrums that the connection be-
tween aliens and crop circles is not in doubt.
"UFOs have been observed in proximity to circles and pictograms,"
states Wingfield. "When circles have appeared in completely new
locations, they have often been preceded by sightings of
unidentified luminous objects."
But how are the circles made? Some inves- tigators say they are
created when UFOs land, others believe the elaborate patterns could
be messages from civilisations in outer space. Wingfield proposes the
alien artworks are formed by seeding and claims that "after the
initial visitation by the aerial component of the cir- cle-making
agency, a new site often continues to exhibit circles."
This being the case, it's pretty obvious that the aliens are using
the fields of Wiltshire as an agricultural test bed. Being in
possession of chemicals too noxious to test on their own planet, they
are using ours as a huge lab to per- feet the biological
components...
We may laugh, but there's a lot more where this stuff comes from.
What might loosely be termed 'agricultural' alien stories are a
partic- ularly rich source of humorous anecdote. And sometimes
they're just too silly to take seriously. Take, for example, the
story of the tiny community in Chile that found itself at the centre
of a manhunt in 1988. Dansio and Marcia Fanchez, whose son Pepe had
disap- peared, claimed that it was all the fault of aliens. As they
enjoyed cocktails on their porch one summer evening,
extraterrestrials had descended in a spaceship and maliciously
transformed little Pepe into a green olive - which Dansio had
mistakenly dunked into his Martini, and in doing so drowned his own
son.
A tale of the imagination fine enough to have impressed Roald Dahl,
though one that failed to penetrate the scepticism of the Chilean
judiciary. The Fanchez couple even claimed in court that the officer
investigating the case had destroyed defence evidence by eating the
all-important olive. But it was to no avail: the couple was
convicted of murder ...
On 25th January 1992 a sheriff deputy in Okfuscee County, Oklahoma,
discovered a dead cow by the side of the road.
It had been sinisterly mutilated: its udder had been sliced off with
surgeon-like precision, ruling out any attack by a wild animal.
The Oklahoma deputy filed a report citing satanic ritual as the
probable cause of death. However, this hardly took into account the
absence of blood, footprints or any signs of struggle.
Three dead cow was just one of several thousand severely mutilated
animals whose discovery every year is routinely blamed upon devil
worshippers or vague 'unknown phenomena'. And wherever scientific
gaps like this occur you can be sure that the pro-UFO lobbyists will
be queuing up to provide explanations - and many are convinced that
aliens are to blame.
Linda Howe, author of An alien harvest: further evidence linking
animal mutilations and human abductions to alien life forms, teamed
up with a pathologist in 1989 to find a solution to the mutilation
enigma.
After analysing many tissue samples, Howe concluded that all the
mutilated animals had suffered heat-induced cell changes along the
point of incision. She suggested aliens might be using a laser style
beam at hundreds of degrees to perform their macabre dissections.
Howe was a little less certain as to why aliens should bother to do
this: she put forward the idea that they might be looking for
genetic material in a bid to create a hybrid animal.
One theory could be that this is an alien attempt to clone natural
food supplies...
Hitler bomber mystery
On 24th April 1988 the Sunday Sport (ahem) 'newspaper' baffled
Britain with a front-page picture of a B-52 bomber nestling among
the craters on the moon. Despite the fact that photo montages like
this can be digitally created in minutes there was no shortage of
people believing the picture. Some even came up with unorthodox
'explanations'.
The best of these claims that the Nazis towed the rickety USAF
bomber into space for Adolf Hitler to use as his lunar taxi. Another
assumes a black hole opened over the infamous Bermuda Triangle,
sucking the crew and their plane into outer space.
Even harder to substantiate is the long- running claim that the
Nazis were in league with aliens during WWII. On 13th December 1944,
the Associated Press described mysterious silvery balls flying over
the Western Front as possible German allies from space. American
bomber pilots also spotted strange craft in the Pacific which they
nicknamed 'Foo Fighters'.
Although written off by sceptics as the electrical phenomena known
as St Elmo's fire, these tales lead some UFOlogists to thinking that
Hitler made a pact with aliens in a desperate last bid to win the
war...
A giant leap for alienkind
Superman, devil or alien? Spring-Heeled Jack, a mysterious being who
terrorised Victorian England, was as feared as his contemporary
all-round rotter Jack The Ripper.
Described as a tall, brutish creature with glowing red eyes and ice
cold claws, Spring-Heeled Jack was first reported on Barnes Common
in 1837. Later sightings and attack on the public over the next 60
years placed him as far afield as Lincoln and Devon.
His name derives from the apparent ease with which he was able to
vault walls and fences in a single stride, and by 1838 newspapers
labelled him Public Enemy Number One.
Spring-Heeled Jack was caught by the army in Aldershot in 1870, but
he bounded away seemingly unhurt after being shot at point blank
range. Various other eerie encounters with Jack were reported over
the next 30 years, but his last recorded appearance was in Liverpool
in 1904 when a large mob witnessed evasion from attempts to capture
him by striding away in single hops of more than 30 feet.
Alien supporters say Jack was an UFOnaut making the first giant leap
for alienkind on an exploratory visit to Earth. Because of the
differences in gravity between Jack's home planet and Earth, he was
able to effect a state of weightlessness enabling him to cover
prodigious distances. Er... obviously.
[W9]******
Source: The Toronto Star
Date: Sunday, March 9, 1997
Europa and the 'Hoagland Eccentricity'
by Jay Ingram
Ever since the announcement last summer that there might have been
life in the past on Mars, the extraterrestrial-life bandwagon has
been full speed ahead. Speculation abounds but a recent case
illustrates that there are limits: speculation still has to look and
sound like science.
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science a couple of weeks ago, scientists discussed
the possibility that life might have - and might still exist on
Jupiter's moon Europa.
Europa is by any measure a bizarre solar system object. Its surface
appears to be a huge badly flooded skating rink at the end of a busy
weekend, a vast globe of ice criss-crossed everywhere by cracks.
There are very few craters, suggesting that those that once existed
(almost everything in the solar system is thought to have been
bombarded early on) have been smoothed out by an ever-changing
surface.
Support for this idea comes from recent photos by the Galileo
spacecraft showing what look like knew ice floes covering over old
cracks. Also some of the cracks seem wider and darker than others.
This visual evidence, together with theoretical estimates of the
heat-generating tidal pull on Europa by nearby Jupiter have prompted
speculation that under that crust of ice (possibly very far under)
there is a vast singular ocean of liquid water.
The dark cracks might be Europa's counterpart of shifting ice pans
in the dark Arctic, which sometimes break apart to reveal narrow
channels of darker water between.
At the AAAS meeting, scientists were building on the idea of the
moon-girdling ocean to suggest that undersea volcanoes on Europa,
powered by Jovian tidal forces, once (or still) spewed forth organic
matter into this ocean, just as happens at the hot vents under our
oceans.
On Earth, these upwellings contain micro-organisms. On Europa, who
knows? Maybe this unlikely moon is a reservoir of undersea life.
Or then again, maybe it isn't. The Europa discussion at the AAAS was
partially prompted by yet another close approach that might confirm
or deny some of these ideas.
But there is a more interesting background to the idea. Speculation
about Europa is by no means new. In late 1979, a science writer in
the United States named Richard Hoagland first broached the idea that
there might be life under the ice there. The images that sparked his
imagination had arrived at Earth from the Voyager spacecraft, the
one that gave us our first views of Jupiter, Saturn and their moons.
Hoagland put his ideas on paper in a verbose article in a magazine
called Star and Sky in 1980. It's intriguing to read the article
now, partly because he so clearly anticipates the thinking today and
partly because no one today seems to be acknowledging his priority.
Some of the details are dated (Hoagland leans heavily on electricity
in the early Europan atmosphere to generate the life-forming organic
molecules, while today, as I mentioned above, scientists rely on
undersea volcanoes). But in most respects the two arguments are
absolutely consistent.
So where is Hoagland today and why aren't the Europa theorists
talking about him. Is it perhaps because in the intervening years he
took on a much more notorious cause, the face on Mars? Yes, it is the
same Richard who is the prime mover behind the idea that a Viking
spacecraft photo of a flat-topped mesa on the surface of Mars is a
huge carved face.
Where Hoagland sees physiognomy, scientists see a chance
juxtaposition of geology and shadow. But that hasn't stopped him.
Last time I checked, he'd identified a complex of temples and
pyramids nearby.
So when it comes to Europa, why don't we hear about Richard
Hoagland? I think it's because it's perfectly okay to speculate about
extraterrestrial life; it's even okay to dream about it swimming
under the Europan ice; but it's just not respectable to think about
somebody carving a big face on Mars.
-[continued in part 2]-
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