APRIL/MAY 2001
BIOLOGIST SAW EVIDENCE OF LIFE ON MARS
Reprinted from the Tallahassee Democrat
By Melanie Yeager
Biology Professor E. Imre Friedmann believes the idea of previous life on Mars will one day be as widely accepted as knowledge that the Earth is round.
But for now, the Florida State University professor emeritus understands his compelling evidence of once-living organisms found in a Mars meteorite will draw scrutiny.
"It was not easy to publish it because important journals refused even to consider it, to send it out to reviewers, because it is controversial," Friedmann said .
Friedmann and his international team of researchers kept plugging away, collecting more evidence over the past three years. Their work was finally published in Tuesday's (Feb. 27) edition of the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the academy's official journal.
The researchers found magnetite crystals - each about one-millionth of an inch in diameter - in the meteorite that are arranged in chains that scientists say indicate the crystals once came from a life form. Scientists know some bacteria produce crystals that are used as a compass to direct them to food, among other things. The crystal chains remained embedded in the meteorite long after the bacteria decayed.
Friedmann said the team used an electron microscope to see
the crystals inside the rock - much like an X-ray picture.
Some scientists are not convinced yet. Geologist Ralph P. Harvey,
who has studied the same meteorite called ALH84001, said that
the report by Fried-mann's team should be not be considered proof
of life on Mars.
Extensive proof will take more time, Friedmann said, but he thinks there will be more evidence of life, not less. Conditions on early Mars and early Earth were very similar, he said. To not find life on Mars would be the unusual news, he said.
The martian rock Friedmann studied was found in Antarctica about 17 years ago. NASA distributed portions of the meteorite to scientists such as Friedmann. In his FSU lab, Friedmann chiseled off minute pieces of a nondescript gray stone that was the size of his fingertip.
Friedmann packed up his lab and officially retired in September after a 34-year career with FSU.
As professor emeritus, he still has a small office on campus. He divides his time among Tallahassee, where he and wife Rosali, a former Florida A&M University microbiologist, still have a home; the NASA Ames Research Center in California, where he works as a senior research fellow; and New York, where the couple have an apartment and enjoy opera performances every chance they get.
"I would say that this is probably the most important paper that I ever produced," Friedmann said. But he's not ready to slow down.
"I know people are retired at this age," said the 79-year-old, "but as long as my brain is functioning, I have more to do."
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