Archive for April, 2005

Profile of Veerabhadran Ramanathan

Tuesday, April 12th, 2005

A climate scientist discusses our faustian bargain with air pollution
By Regina Nuzzo

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
April 12, 2005

Atmospheric brown clouds–wandering layers of air pollution as wide as a continent and deeper than the Grand Canyon–are enough to dim atmospheric physicist Veerabhadran Ramanathan’s innate optimism. In fact, studying the effect of these clouds on the climate has landed him in the peculiar role of a scientist who wants to be wrong. “The most pessimistic scenario for me would be that what our model is suggesting for the future turns out to be true,” he says.

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Chemical guidebook may help Mars rover track extraterrestrial life

Monday, April 4th, 2005

Another tool in the hunt for life on Mars
By Regina Nuzzo

Idaho National Laboratory
May 25, 2005

Mars -- the red planet

To help a NASA rover eventually hunt for life on Mars, scientists are writing a chemical guidebook to aid the search for extraterrestrial life. Using new imaging tools and earthly parallels of ancient Mars environments, they’re recording the types of subtle chemical changes that Martian microbes may have left on the planet’s rocks.

The researchers hope someday to arm a Mars rover with a suite of tools – a guidebook, precise chemical imagers, and human-like reasoning ability – and let it search for signs of alien life on its own.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, University of Idaho, and University of Montana are developing the chemical guidebook as part of what they hope will be a definitive method to determine whether extraterrestrial rocks have ever harbored life.

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