IMAGING OF THE BIOLOGICAL CONTAMINATION OF METEORITES: A PRACTICAL

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.489.1984; http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/LPSC99/pdf/1321.pdf

During our investigation we have now imaged fresh fracture surfaces in four Antarctic chondrites, Murchi-son, Nakhla, and ALH84001. These samples represent the two main types of meteorite find sites, ice fields and deserts. On all but two of the Antarctic chondrites we have detected terrestrial fungi and bacteria (1-4). Fre-quently throughout the history of meteoritics, contami-nation has been a serious problem. However, the ice field meteorites were considered to be in a near-natural state. Only since McKay et al (1996) have more detailed investigations of the possible sources of contamination in the Antarctic become important and been undertaken (5). In the particular case of ALH84001, a terrestrial organism went undetected by all the techniques that claim to be able to detect life. Why then had it taken so