Life on Mars scientist comes to York
Posted on 15 April 1998
Professor Richard Zare, the scientist who found evidence indicating that there was life on Mars, will give a lecture - Laboratory measurements and extra-terrestrial visitors - on Monday 20 April at the University of York.
In 1996, Professor Zare of Stanford University, along with colleagues from NASA, found the first organic molecules thought to be of Martian origin. They also found mineral features characteristic of biological activity and microscopic fossils of primitive, bacteria-like organisms inside an ancient Martian rock that fell to earth as a meteorite.
The igneous rock in the 4.2lb, potato-sized meteorite, was age-dated to about 4.5 billion years, the period when the planet Mars formed. It is thought that a huge comet or asteroid struck Mars 16 million years ago, ejecting the rock which floated in space for several million years before entering the Earth's atmosphere about 13,000 years ago, falling in Antarctica as a meteorite.
The largest of the fossils found in the meteorite are less than 1/100th the diameter of a human hair. It was the specialist laser mass spectrometry and electron microscopy techniques developed by Professor Zare which enabled the scientists to identify the organic molecules and fossil structures.
Professor Zare's lecture in York is one of only three to be given by him in a Royal Society of Chemistry series. The lecture is free and open to all. It will be held in the University's Chemistry department in Room CA101, at 5.30 pm on Monday 20 April.