Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 11, 2014

THE WORLD AROUND US

B2

Mountain Views-News Saturday, October 11, 2014 


THE SEARCH FOR THE FINGERPRINTS OF LIFE ON MARS BEGINS

NASA’s Astrobiology Institute (NAI) announced 
that the SETI Institute has been selected as a 
new member of the NAI for a 5-year research 
program, “Changing Planetary Environments 
and the Fingerprints of Life.” Led by SETI’s 
planetary geologist and Senior Research Scientist 
Nathalie Cabrol, the team’s work will address key 
questions: How can we identify the signature of 
life not just here on Earth, but on Mars as well? 
How does a planet’s changing environment 
impact the evidence for life? 

 “I am absolutely thrilled that the SETI Institute 
is joining the NAI. In the next five years, along 
with our partner institutions, we will focus 
on decoding the fingerprints of life—the 
biosignatures—in extreme environments here 
on Earth to help us look for life on Mars,” said 
Cabrol.

 “Our goal is to understand the survival of 
biosignatures from an early, wetter Mars to the 
harsh environment of the red planet today,” she 
added. “Understanding the role that the changing 
Martian environment has had on biosignatures 
will inform us on how to recognize these 
signatures, and how to explore them. We bring 
to this ambitious quest new exploration tools 
and, with NASA’s Mars 2020 on the horizon, the 
timing could not be more perfect.”

 To model and test strategies for biosignature 
detection, Cabrol’s team will conduct fieldwork 
in extreme environments on Earth that are 
analogous to sites on Mars where water once 
flowed. 

 Fieldwork will be done at Yellowstone National 
Park, sites in California and Chile, Axel Heiberg 
Island in the high Arctic, and Western Australia. 
Each site is an analog to Mars: volcanic and 
hydrothermal terrain, lake sediments, evaporates, 
and perennial cold springs. Sites will be explored 
from satellites, air, ground, and at the microscopic 
level in the field and laboratory. 

 Understanding how to integrate this multi-
scale information will help scientists learn how to 
select the best sites for discovering biosignatures 
on Mars.

 Cabrol assembled a diverse team of experts 
in planetary science, robotics, laboratory 
experimentation, and exploration to conduct 
fieldwork, analyze samples, and develop a 
biosignature roadmap to guide the search for 
life on Mars. In addition to more than a dozen 
scientists at the SETI Institute, her team brings 
together scientists from universities, government 
agencies and industry partners in the United 
States, Canada, Europe, Australia and South 
America. In the U.S., partners include Arizona 
State University, University of Montana, 
University of Tennessee, Carnegie Mellon, 
Georgia Institute of Technology, Honeybee 
Robotics, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 
and NASA Ames Research Center. Non-U.S. 
partners include McGill University (Canada), 
Centro de Astrobiologia (CAB, Madrid, Spain), 
Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany), Friedrich-
Alexander University (Germany), and Campoalto 
for logistics in Chile. 

 Over the next 5 years, more than twenty 
scientists will work together to help answer the 
question of where and how to search for the right 
rocks on Mars in order to discover the fingerprints 
of life—if it now exists or has ever existed—on the 
red planet.

 “The intellectual scope of astrobiology is vast, 
from understanding how our planet went from 
lifeless to living, to understanding how life has 
adapted to Earth’s harshest environments, to 
exploring other worlds with the most advanced 
technologies to search for signs of life,” noted 
Mary Voytek, director, astrobiology program, 
NASA Headquarters. 

 

You can contact Bob Eklund at: 

b.eklund@MtnViewsNews.com

WATER IN MEXICO By Christopher Nyerges


I’ve heard it 
so long that 
it sounds like 
some religious 
mantra: “Don’t 
drink the water 
in Mexico.” 

 

The meaning is 
that a visitor to 
Mexico should 
not drink the 
water untreated. 
And why is that? 
One explanation that I used to hear back in the 
1970s when I first visited Mexico was that, while 
every place has its own bacteria and organisms 
in their water, one will get used to the organisms 
in their water after a while. And supposedly, this 
also meant that native Mexicans could drink 
their municipal tap from the water without 
concern. When I went to language school in 
Mexico, I always boiled my water or added water 
purification tablet to the tap water, or purchased 
bottled water. Back then, I never thought about 
asking native Mexicans if they drank their water 
out of the tap.

 More recently, having visited the Yucatan region 
several times, I asked some of the natives about 
this. These days bottled water is everywhere, 
and most of the people whose homes I stayed in 
purchased all their water and did not drink from 
the tap. When I asked whether or not they’d get 
sick by drinking water out of their tap without 
purifying it, they shrugged and said they didn’t 
know. They buy their water.

 Finally, I met someone who seemed to know 
a thing about the Mexican water situation. I 
asked Julia, who was an American who married 
a Mexican man and now calls the Yucatan region 
her home where she and her husband run a farmt.

 “Do you drink from the tap directly?” I asked 
Julia.

 “No, though I’m not afraid to,” she responded. 
“If I’m out in the fields and I’m thirsty, I will drink 
from the hose and I don’t get sick. But usually, we 
buy purified and filtered water and they deliver it 
to our home.”

 Julia went on to explain that the tap water is used 
directly for washing, brushing teeth, irrigation, 
etc.

 “When people say not to drink the water in 
Merida (Yucatan), I don’t believe the reason is that 
the water has bad bacteria. I believe it’s because the 
water here is very high in minerals and calcium, 
etc. And it’s those minerals that might cause 
sickness if you’re not used to it,” explained Julia.

 I asked Julia about the people living in all the 
small villages where they could not afford to buy 
water. “I don’t know what they do,” responded 
Julia.

 “However,” added Julia, “I’ve been told that 
in 20 years or so, you won’t be able to drink the 
water in the Yucatan region because it will be so 
polluted.” Julia pointed out that all the water in 
Yucatan comes from underground, and that the 
soil is very porous. She adds that everyone uses 
septic systems in Yucatan, and there is no sewer 
system (like in most parts of the U.S.) where the 
waste water is treated before it is discharged into 
the soil or water. Although the local politicians 
all talk about installing a sewer system after each 
flood, Julia doesn’t think that will ever happen 
because of the immensity of such a project.

 “Because the soil is so porous, when chemicals 
are used, they go directly into the ground water,” 
she says.

 “So, because there is no sewer system, there is 
flooding after every major storm, and everyone 
blames the mayor and they elect a new mayor who 
makes new promises, and then it rains again and 
floods again because nothing was done.”

 I concluded that it was a good thing for me to buy 
my water, or purify it, whenever I travel. And it’s 
not wise to judge the water of such as large country 
as Mexico with one yardstick because the “water 
situation” of any country is vastly more complex 
than what I’ve presented here. Unfortunately, we 
should be suspect of most tap water and most open 
sources of water, wherever we are.

 I asked Julia about the black tanks on nearly 
everyone’s roof in most parts of Mexico. “Those are 
called tinacos,” Julia told me, which my dictionary 
told me simply means “water tank.”

 In the United States, people often let their water 
run a bit so it starts to cool off. However, due to the 
lack of pressurized water in Mexico, most homes 
and buildings have large water tanks – tinacos 
– on their roofs. These then deliver the water by 
gravity as needed. But since these are traditionally 
black, the coolest water comes out first and then 
the water gets hotter as you let the tap run because 
the water was heated by the sun. Now you can find 
tinacos white or light-colored so that the water is 
not heated so much by the sun.

 [Nyerges is the author of “How to Survive 
Anywhere,” and other books. He has led survival 
skills classes since 1974. He can be reached at www.
SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com or Box 41834, Eagle 
Rock, CA 90041.]

A light-colored tinaco on a roof in Merida, Mexico.