The Rock From Mars (54 page)

It would generate no
• Author interview with Allan Treiman.

With the first magnetite
• Author interviews with Thomas-Keprta, Simon Clemett, and others in the group.

But she had never fully
• Buseck was Regents’ Professor of Geology and Chemistry at Arizona State University.

In the early 1980s
• Chemist Stephen Mann, of the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

Thomas-Keprta, with major
• Simon Clemett, having fought his way through bouts of psychic gloom over the bile storm surrounding the group’s claims, had left Stanford’s Zarelab and eventually joined the ranks in Building 31, as an employee of contractor Lockheed Martin. Here, he was hard at work on a new, improved laser device and other technologies, to be installed in the microscope complex down the hall. Clemett’s presence on-site certainly made the collaboration easier. He and Thomas-Keprta no longer had to rely on phone and e-mail for their constant communications, which had continued apace even during his rock-climbing vacation.

The answer her team
• All known magnetite (Fe
₃
O
₄
) crystals are octahedral; that is, they have the shape of two four-sided pyramids put together at their bases. Magnetites from the magnet-producing
bacteria
MV-1 are elongated. What the Thomas-Keprta team was proposing was that, in the case of MV-1, this had been accomplished by the addition of six faces.

On February 27, 2001, the
• Kathie L. Thomas-Keprta, Simon J. Clemett, Dennis A. Bazylinski, Joseph L. Kirschvink, David S. McKay, Susan J. Wentworth, Hojatollah Vali, Everett K. Gibson Jr., Mary Fae McKay, and Christopher S. Romanek, “Truncated Hexa-octahedral Magnetite Crystals in ALH84001: Presumptive Biosignatures,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
vol. 98 (2001): pp. 2164–69. (Mary Fae McKay helped edit the paper.)

Joseph L. Kirschvink, a
• Caltech press release Feb. 27, 2001.

MV-1 expert Dennis Bazylinski
• Bazylinski said, after the first of the two magnetite papers was published, “The significance to astrobiology and geobiology is that many scientists have been searching for ‘biomarkers’ for life, that is, chemical, isotopic, and/or mineral indications that life was present, either in extreme habitats or in ancient materials on Earth and, of course, now in extraterrestrial materials. The need for biomarkers is obvious and these magnetite crystals might prove to be an excellent biomarker.” See Teddi Baron, “Research Shows Life May Have Existed on Mars,”
Inside Iowa State,
Jan. 26, 2001; available at: http://www.iastate.edu/Inside/2001/0126/mars.shtml.

Their claims got
• E. Imre Friedmann, Jacek Wierzchos, Carmen Ascaso, and Michael Winklhofer, “Chains of Magnetite Crystals in the Meteorite ALH84001: Evidence of Biological Origin,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
vol. 98 (2001): pp. 2176–81.

One of the first
• Imre Friedmann interview with Steven Dick, NASA archives.

What they saw were
• “Teeny backbones” quote from Kathy Sawyer, “New Findings Energize Case for Life on Mars,”
Washington Post,
Feb. 28, 2001, pp. A3, 24.

This time (in contrast
• Ibid., p. A3, 24. See also Steven J. Dick and James E. Strick,
The Living Universe
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004), p. 198.

Astrogeophysicist Chris
• Author interview with Chris McKay.

He told the Associated Press
• In an author interview with Harvey, he said: “Now, one thing hopefully every party in this will admit is our own ignorance. . . . We don’t have a catalog of all the different minerals that interact with biological organisms at all, so how could we possibly have the same catalog for all the nonbiological interaction? It is just an insurmountable task. . . . People are paying a lot more attention to the specific problem of magnetites, etc., but . . . we’re just going to continue to bracket the possibilities. It’s going to take a long time.”

Harvey, among others, was quite skeptical of Friedmann’s findings, saying Friedmann had rushed to apply a new technique before it had been adequately tested. He also told the author that the publisher of this latest round of magnetite papers had failed to make the best choices of outside referees.

Stanford’s Dick Zare would later tell the author he, too, was skeptical of the Friedmann team’s “choo choo train” interpretation. Another scientist involved in research on magnet-making microbes told the author privately that he saw “serious problems with that paper” and that “many were surprised” when it got published.

Planetary scientist and
• E-mail to author, Mar. 2, 2001.

Several studies soon
• D. J. Barber and E. R. D. Scott, “Origin of Supposedly Biogenic Magnetite in the Martian Meteorite Allan Hills 84001,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
vol. 99 (2002): pp. 6556–61. This analysis suggested that the planes of the atoms in the Martian magnetites were aligned with atomic planes in the surrounding carbonates in which they were embedded, and therefore they must have formed in the rock as the result of impact heating and decomposition of carbonate, not inside microorganisms. Kathie Thomas-Keprta and coworkers responded that, like other groups, this one had studied a different component of the meteorite and was “comparing their apples with our oranges.”

See also M. R. McCartney, U. Lins, M. Farina, P. R. Buseck, and R. B. Frankel, “Magnetic Microstructure of Bacterial Magnetite by Electron Holography,”
European Journal of Mineralogy,
vol. 13 (2001): pp. 685–89, and M. R. McCartney, U. Lins, M. Farina, P. R. Buseck, and R. B. Frankel, R. E. Dunin-Borkowski, et al., “Off-Axis Electron Holography of Magnetotactic Bacteria: Magnetic Microstructure of Strains MV-1 and MS-1,”
European Journal of Mineralogy,
vol. 13 (2001): pp. 671–84. An Arizona State University team, including Buseck, put forth evidence that the sizes of magnets made by various Earth bacteria vary greatly, and do not necessarily match those in the Mars rock. They said there was not yet any reliable way to distinguish biologically produced magnetic crystals from nonbiological ones and recommended further statistical study.

David McKay had envisioned
• Author interviews with David McKay and others in Building 31.

As the principal investigator
• Author interview with Gordon McKay.

The Blue Team contingent
• D. C. Goldin, Douglas W. Ming, Craig S. Schwandt, Howard V. Lauer Jr., Richard A. Socki, Richard V. Morris, Gary E. Lofgren, and Gordon A. McKay, “A Simple Inorganic Process for Formation of Carbonates, Magnetite, and Sulfides in Martian Meteorite ALH84001,”
American Mineralogist,
vol. 86 (2001): pp. 370–75; see also Richard Kerr, “Oddities Both Lunar and Martian,”
Science
(Mar. 31, 2000): pp. 2402–03. To re-create the features seen in the Mars rock, the group cooked up their own carbonate globules by heating a soup of bicarbonates mixed with rock chips. The bicarbonate decomposed, and the resulting carbonates were deposited in cracks in the rock fragments. The researchers changed the composition of the solution four times, to mimic changes in Martian groundwater that might have produced the black-and-white Oreo rims around the carbonate blebs. They delivered a heat shock similar to the asteroid impact or other trauma that had apparently occurred later in the rock’s time on Mars. This caused iron carbonates to decompose into magnetic crystals. In other words, they reported, they had created minerals “quite similar chemically and mineralogically” to those in the Mars meteorite.

Thomas-Keprta was delighted
• At meetings where they would present what they considered compelling evidence on the magnetite, Thomas-Keprta and Clemett told the author, they sometimes encountered complaints from fellow scientists that their explanations of the intricacies of magnet-producing bacteria and the Euclidean nuances of crystallography were impossible to follow. Taking the pleas to heart—at the risk of drawing fire for “dumbing down” or committing “show business”—the two developed a two-dimensional model in red, green, and blue that could be printed out, cut out, and folded into the three-dimensional shape of the magnetite crystals—much like a design from a children’s game book. They put together what they hoped was a more user-friendly presentation for fellow scientists, including a video with little crystals rotating one way and another, shapes emerging and fading.

As the debate wore
• Author interview with Treiman.

For some time, McKay
• Author interviews with McKay.

At home, McKay’s
• Interview with Mary Fae McKay.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
schadenfreude

All this week, Ames
• Regarding the impact of the McKay group announcement, see Steven J. Dick and James E. Strick,
The Living Universe
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004), p. 195.

In competition with
• Author interviews with attendees at the astrobiology conference.

The jousting had erupted
• Martin Brasier et al., “Questioning the Evidence for Earth’s Oldest Fossils,”
Nature
(Mar. 7, 2002): pp. 76–81.

Nature
had published both
• J. William Schopf et al., “Laser-Raman Imagery of Earth’s Earliest Fossils,”
Nature
(Mar. 7, 2002): pp. 73–76. Schopf’s UCLA group was working with a group at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, where the laser-Raman spectroscopy facility was located. In an e-mail to the author, May 6, 2005, Schopf expressed displeasure with the fact that
Nature
had pitted the papers against each other, back-to-back, even though his paper had been accepted first.

Brasier had set out
• Brasier e-mail to author, Mar. 5, 2002.

To some, this turn
• For mention of Schopf’s nickname “Bull,” see Rex Dalton, “Squaring Up Over Ancient Life,”
Nature
(June 20, 2002): p. 784. In an e-mail to the author, May 6, 2005, Schopf took umbrage at the idea that he deserved or had ever been described by such a nickname, adding that he had never heard anyone say it “in my presence.”

In a moment of
• Oliver Morton, “The Secret of a Rock,”
Newsweek International
(Mar. 18, 2002): pp. 42–43.

Bob Hazen, a Washington
• Author interview with Hazen over lunch. Robert M. Hazen was a research scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Geophysical Laboratory and a professor of earth science at George Mason University.

For Steele, the
• Author interviews with Steele and McKay.

In the course of his
• Schopf told the author in an e-mail, May 6, 2005, that he was being “inappropriately tarred” by Steele and others. In his 1992
Science
paper, Schopf noted, he had “named these species as
incertae sedis
(in official taxonomic terminology, of uncertain, undetermined, taxonomic position)” so as not to prejudice others.

Mary Fae admired
• Author interviews with Mary Fae McKay and David McKay.

But some thought
• Author interviews with conference attendees on all sides of the question of biology in the rock. Robert Hazen, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, had accused Schopf (see R. M. Hazen, “Review of
Cradle of Life: The Discovery of Earth’s Earliest Fossils,
J. W. Schopf,”
Physics Today on the Web,
October 1999, at: http://www.aip.org/pt/oct99/) of having been mean-spirited in his treatment of McKay et al.’s work on the meteorite ALH84001. In an e-mail to the author, May 6, 2005, Schopf noted Hazen’s rebuke and related that, in April, Schopf had found himself in the wine-and-beer line with Hazen at an astrobiology conference in Boulder, Colorado. Schopf said he took the occasion to explain to Hazen that he had never intended to be mean-spirited but had structured the chapter based on a lecture he gave to nonscience students, “The point being to show that scientists are human.” Schopf and Hazen both told the author afterward that they were not particularly pleased or satisfied by the exchange, which Hazen remembered slightly differently.

On Tuesday, McKay joined the
• Thomas-Keprta had planned to attend the conference and present her latest data on the magnetic crystals, but she had twisted her leg while skiing. As the Brasier-Schopf show got rolling, Simon Clemett held a cell phone toward the stage. At the other end of the connection was the injured Thomas-Keprta, listening in from her bed of pain back in Houston.

In his book, written
• J. William Schopf,
Cradle of Life
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 76–78.

As Brasier had studied
• Brasier e-mail to author; also Brasier talk at this astrobiology conference (Apr. 2002).

Starting in July 1999
• E-mail from John Lindsay, of the Australian National University, to the author, May 2, 2005. Lindsay explained that the project had started as a cooperative one involving him and his university as well as Oxford and Brasier. (The two men had worked together on UNESCO projects in China and Mongolia in the early 1990s.) The work had begun with younger rocks (circa 800 to 500 million years old) and gradually moved to older and older formations. The 1999 field study plan was disrupted when Lindsay’s wife collapsed with terminal cancer, but somehow the team managed to continue. At this point, the work on the Apex chert “was a side issue,” Lindsay said, “not our main focus.” At first, team members were unable to locate the Schopf sample site. “Schopf had not documented the site properly,” Lindsay said. After his wife’s death, Lindsay returned to the field and joined Martin Van Kranendonk. In the meantime, the Geological Survey of Western Australia had been able to relocate the Schopf sampling site from photos taken there by the Schopf team. Lindsay found the site using that information, did a reconnaissance of the geology, and resampled the chert. “It was quickly apparent that the sampling site was not on the Apex chert but was 90 meters down a hydrothermal black chert dike beneath the Apex chert. There was no way the ‘microfossils’ could have been deposited in a shallow water beach setting, nor could they be cyanobacteria. Whatever they were, they were part of a high-temperature hydrothermal vent setting and formed at depth.” Lindsay noted that the authors of the resulting
Nature
paper “were never all together at one time—thank goodness for e-mail.” Lindsay had since moved to Houston, where he was at the Lunar and Planetary Institute and working with the McKay group. For more information on upcoming work on the Australian microfossils and related matters, see Lindsay’s Web page at: www.lpi.usra.edu.