Originally published January 18 2005
Ingredients for life on Mars named top scientific discovery
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Evidence of life-sustaining water on the surface of the planet Mars has been cited as breakthrough of the year by Science and its publisher, AAAS. Research has determined that MARS was at one time a water-filled warm place that could have supported life billions of years ago. The environment would have been rough, though, dominated by salty, acidic water.
Evidence for the prolonged presence of potentially-life-supporting, salty, acidic water on the surface of Mars claims top honors as the Breakthrough of the Year, named by Science and its publisher, AAAS, the nonprofit science society.
The findings from 2004 suggest that Mars was once a wet, warm place that could have been capable of cradling life billions of years ago, when life on Earth was getting its start.
With the help of remote-sensing spacecraft, NASA's two hardy little robotic explorers performed the first true geologic field explorations on another planet.
On the other side of the Red Planet, the rover Spirit found evidence of shallow groundwater that may have transformed hundreds of meters of volcanic ash into soft, iron-rich rock.
An international team of scientists outfitted the two identical Rovers with "eyes" that see in color, a magnifying glass, a grinding wheel for exposing fresh rock, an elemental analyzer, and two mineral-identifying instruments.
The Littlest Humans: The startling discovery of a species of small human relatives in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores suggests that modern humans and these small "hominids" shared the Earth just 18,000 years ago.
Banner Year for Condensates: With an understanding of how to chill the two basic types of atoms into a single quantum state or "condensate" under their belts, researchers got down to probing these strange forms of matter in 2004.
Hidden Genome Treasures: The stretches of "junk DNA" that lie within genomes proved this year to be far more important than previously thought.
This DNA, found between genes and between a gene's protein-coding regions, turns out to be essential for helping genes turn on at the right time and in the right place.
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