Finding life on Mars would excite researchers for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it would just be interesting to know that life did (or does) exist elsewhere in the universe. Humans have been wondering about this question almost as long as we have been in existence. Finding evidence that suggests that we may not be alone, that Earth is not the only planet capable of sustaining life, would be an amazing revelation. As for scientists, many want to know how and why life was created on Earth.

The oldest known fossils are approximately 3.5 billion years old, but some scientists have discovered chemical evidence suggesting that life may have begun even earlier, nearly 4 billion years ago.

This is very unlikely. All US space missions are required to meet planetary protection standards, and these standards are particularly stringent for Mars. As a Mars lander with no life detection experiments, the Mars Polar Lander is categorized as a Category IV A mission. This requires that the spacecraft has to be assembled in a class 100,000 clean room, and that contamination control effectiveness must be monitored and demonstrated by periodic microbiological assays.

There well could be resilient microorganisms. Sword&Spirits makes the wonderful and unfounded suggestion that they could, were they to exist, have come from Earth (could we have come from somewhere else, then?). If microorganisms are ever found on Mars (or elsewhere outside Earth), Creationism is in deep shit. Hence the ancestral fear of NASA.

Seasons are caused by the inclination of a planet's rotational axis relative to the plane of its orbit around the sun. Earth's axis is inclined 23.5 degrees. On the first day of summer in the northern hemisphere, Earth's north pole is tilted 23.5 degrees toward the sun, so the northern hemisphere receives more sunlight. Half a year later, on the first day of winter, Earth's north pole is tilted away from the sun, so the northern hemisphere receives less sunlight.

Essentially, an analemma is the pattern the sun makes in the sky if you plot its position at noon every day in the course of a year. If one had a sextant, a chronometer set to the time and date on the prime meridian, and an analemma chart, one could determine one's position with fairly good accuracy. The shape of the analemma is influenced by the magnitude and phasing of two factors: axial inclination and orbital eccentricity.

Orbiter now includes Duncan Sharpe's TransX MFD mode, which is a great tool for setting up interplanetary routes. You need to activate the TransX module in the Orbiter Launchpad dialog to use this. TransX is quite a complex navigation tool, so to understand the concept and options, make sure you read the TransX manual (in the Doc folder) carefully.

Mars and Earth are like two cars on a racetrack as they journey around the Sun. Earth is on the inside track and travels faster than Mars, which is on the outside. When Earth laps Mars about every two years, it comes as close as 35 million miles (56 million km) or as far away as 63 million miles (101 million km) because of Mars’ highly elongated orbit.

For two reasons, an Earth calendar will not work on Mars. First of all, a Martian sol is nearly forty minutes longer than an Earth day. This may not seem like much, but over the course of a month this difference accumulates to nearly an entire day. So if one tried to use an Earth calendar on Mars, the months that contain 31 days on Earth would generally have only 30 sols on Mars, and most of our 30-day months would be only 29 sols long on Mars.

The Spiders From Mars were David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust's three-piece rock band from 1971 to mid 1973, however they were only officially known by this name following the album's release in June 1972. Bowie has said that the inspiration for the name came when he was writing the song "Ziggy Stardust". The band consisted of: quot;It was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and somehow, along the lines, the Spiders got attached to David Bowie.

ELT is one of the 12 College Park Scholars programs. Its focus is "Natural History": the scientific understanding and appreciation of the natural world, and how that understanding aids us as individuals and as a society.

I want to be a paleontologist when I'm older and I was wondering what is the best university to go to for that career and how long would I have to go to school. See your school councellor, they probably have a lot of books (like the Barron's College guide) in which you can look up the particulars of each college that is within your price and academic range. Try to go to an undergraduate program (usually lasting 4 years) that will give you a decent knowledge of geology and biology.

Yes, the sheriff badge found its way onto a profile for a brief time. We had planned to use it as an award to those who helped us track down duplicate accounts. It was dropped as being too "secret police," but we still appreciate the tip-offs we get about dupes. I still can't believe people would actually go to the effort of "cheating" a system such as this. TIP: Never implement a method of exchanging tokens from one user to the next (or stamps or points, for that matter).

You can also see if the records of that business are maintained in a local archive. Search the Library & Archives at the History Center catalog, read about the holdings at the University of Pittsburgh's Archives Service Center, or search our Historic Pittsburgh Finding Aids Collection for inventories and information about relevant archival collections. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Room maintains an extensive clippings file of articles from local newspapers.

It is estimated that there were over 5,000 historic MGPs in the United States and 250 throughout New York State. Con Edison has identified and is responsible for 50 of the former manufactured gas plants and holder stations in its service area.

We believe that vitiligo has existed at least as long as the recorded history of man, and probably before that, since similar conditions are seen in many other animals. References to vitiligo patches are mentioned in the bible, and in ancient Chinese and Greek writings.

Exception: A form of primitive communism existed within primitive communal societies in prehistoric times

Same as above. Scientific socialism (ie: the rule of society by the working class) has never existed (except in embryonic form such as the Paris Commune of 1871 or the early period of the 1917 revolution in Russia). The words "communism" and "socialism" are commonly mis-used to describe a society in which a popular revolution against the ruling class and foreign imperialism results in a radical transformation of property relations and an improvement in the living conditions of the masses.

Mars is the code name for a project developing an XML-based representation of PDF documents. XML, Extensible Markup Language, is a cross-platform, extensible, and text-based standard for representing data of all kinds. PDF, Portable Document Format, is the global standard to reliably view, print, and share documentation over the web and with other people, regardless of a computer's operating system. PDF preserves all of the fonts, formatting, colors, and graphics of any source document.

Heaven is the bottom line for any Christian. Everything I do here on earth, every godly response to every trial has a direct bearing on my capacity for joy, worship, and service in heaven. I don't want to get to heaven, look in my rear view mirror and think, "Why did I waste my hardships?!" In heaven, we will finally see how our suffering on earth will serve us in eternity, gaining for us an eternal reward that far outweighs the inconvenience of pain. Five minutes in heaven will be worth it all.