MadSci Network: Astronomy
Query:

Re: is the rock found in antartica from mars being studied in antartica

Date: Sat Aug 5 19:20:21 2000
Posted By: Tyr Fothergill, Undergraduate, Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder
Area of science: Astronomy
ID: 961897773.As
Message:

The short answer to your question is no.  A slightly longer version: the 
rock found in Antarctica, if you do, in fact, refer to the meteorite 
ALH84001, found by the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Meteorite 
Program in 1984, is being studied in Houston, Texas at the Johnson Space 
Center's Meteorite Processing Lab.  The meteorite itself has been 
tenatively dated at approximately 4.5 billion years, and is thought to 
contain evidence of 3.6 billion year old life from Mars.  We do know that 
it impacted Earth about 13,000 years ago, and was most likely dislodged 
from Mars in a very large impact 16 million years ago.    


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