The discovery of boron in the Gale Crater on Mars has given scientists a clue to the potential of life having once existed on the Red Planet.
"Because borates may play an important role in making RNA—one of the building blocks of life—finding boron on Mars further opens the possibility that life could have once arisen on the planet," said Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico and lead author of a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters. (Full Story)
The ChemCam instrument, NASA image.Researchers studying Curiosity’s data say the rover has detected boron in the 3.8 billion year-old Gale crater. Boron is an element that can catalyze the formation of RNA—or ribonucleic acid, the single-stranded carbon copy of DNA found in all living cells—when dissolved in water.
“Because borates may play an important role in making RNA—one of the building blocks of life—finding boron on Mars further opens the possibility that life could have once arisen on the planet,” the study’s lead author, Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Full Story)
Also from R&D Magazine, and on YouTube
Machine-learning earthquake prediction in lab shows promise
Simulation that models the buildup and release of stress along an artificial fault, LANL image.By listening to the acoustic signal emitted by a laboratory-created earthquake, a computer science approach using machine learning can predict the time remaining before the fault fails.
“At any given instant, the noise coming from the lab fault zone provides quantitative information on when the fault will slip,” said Paul Johnson, a Los Alamos National Laboratory fellow and lead investigator on the research, which was published Aug. 30 in Geophysical Research Letters. (Full Story)
Carlsten, Nguyen and Sheffield win free-electron laser prize
Bruce Carlsten, Richard Sheffield and Dinh Nguyen receive the 2017 Free Electron Laser Prize, Daily Post image.At an international science conference hosted recently in Santa Fe, Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists Bruce Carlsten, Dinh Nguyen and Richard Sheffield were awarded the 2017 Free-Electron Laser (FEL) Prize.
“The very brightest sources of x-rays are the latest generation of x-ray ‘light sources’ called free electron lasers,” Laboratory physicist Cris Barnes said. “And those free electron lasers would be far less likely to exist and work without the pioneering contributions recognized by this year’s FEL Prize.” (Full Story)
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