Canopus56 wrote: > [H]opefully it will speed up the funding process . . . Jim replied: >Ah, we have motive for the announcement...I am largely skeptical. No, I don't think there is funding stumping by NASA going on. It's probably just a researcher who feels they are onto something significant enough - confirmation of life on another planet - to issue a teaser. I share your skepticism and also keep a watchful waiting-outlook based on some of the experiences you mentioned. My skepticism is also based on a saying, often attributed to Carl Sagan that, "I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." (I have never been able to find the exact source of the quote. I assume it was somewhere in Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark" (1997).) If this researcher's claim is that there is a unique biological gas marker in the methane gas mix seen in spectrographs of Mars, analogus to a unique biological marker coming from anaerobic life forms in an iron-polluted stream on Earth - well it had better be a darned unique gas marker and not something explainable by other non-biological geologic processes. - Peace, Canopus56 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com