Life On Earth

Researchers studying rocks from Greenland announced today that they've uncovered evidence to show when life on earth began. Analysis shows the rocks may have been host to our earliest ancestors: single-celled organisms that lived 3.85 billion years ago. If the dating is accurate, the rocks push back the biological record of life on earth by about 450 million years. Scientists from the University of Chicago reported in today's issue of the journal Science that the rocks may have once been in a prehistoric ocean, but they were cooked at high temperature under pressure, which drastically modified their chemistry.

It's in one of the most isolated and inhospitable places on Earth - and scientists think it contains one of the most pristine ecosystems on the planet, untouched by millenniums of human activity. It's called Lake Vostok, and it's the eighth-largest lake in the world, sealed in darkness beneath miles of Antarctic glacial ice. Scientists who have cautiously begun to sample the lake's microbial life say they're opening what they expect will be a "treasure chest of adaptation." So far, all they've seen are dots in a microscope, probably bacteria, "like little spheres, or little rods, or sometimes like a comma - not a whole lot of shape to them," said Brian Lanoil, the project leader from the University of California, Riverside.

"The Origins of Life on Earth: An African Creation Myth," published last year by Baltimore native Eric Diggs, last week won the prestigious Coretta Scott King Award for best children's book illustration.The book was the first published by Mr. Diggs' Sights Productions, which is based in Mount Airy. He said Friday the firm will publish three more books this spring, including "The Rebellion of Humans," which will continue the story begun in "The Origins of Life on Earth.""The Origins of Life on Earth" earlier was named the Best American Children's Book About Africa by the African Study Association.

When the screen suddenly went blank at the climactic moment of Sunday night's finale of The Sopranos, we imagine that many Americans reacted the way we did. We started panicking, angrily jabbing buttons on the remote control, checking the connections, wondering if somehow the broadcast had been interrupted. But no. That was it. Tony and Carmela and A. J. in a diner, Meadow rushing toward the door, Tony glancing up and then - nothing. Blank screen. No music. After a few seconds, the credits roll.

* ''Defending Your Life'' A comedy starring Albert Brooks as an ad man who dies and must defend his life on Earth before he can move to the next heavenly level. Meryl Streep co-stars.* ''The Marrying Man'' A comedy in which Alec Baldwin is a rich man who marries a cabaret singer, played by Kim Basinger. Neil Simon did the script.* ''1900'' Restored version of the 1975 Bernardo Bertolucci epic that covers 70 years in the history of the Italian north. Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Burt Lancaster and Donald Sutherland are in the cast of the film, which was four hours long and is now five hours and 10 minutes.

Cyril A. Ponnamperuma, an internationally recognized theoretician on the origins of life and professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Maryland College Park, died Tuesday of a heart attack at Washington Adventist Hospital. He was 71.He retired from teaching this year but continued as director of the Laboratory of Chemical Evolution, which he had founded when he arrived at UM in 1971.In November, he was appointed director of the North-South Center For Sustainable Life Development at UM, which studies and supports development of Third World nations.

THE LESSONS of Sept. 11 come from the responses to it as much as from the acts. These lessons have less to do with airport security, intelligence or foreign policy than the two ways in which people generally interpret human events. One reacts to catastrophe by asking questions. The other instantly declares that the problem at hand -- and the solution -- is obvious. Generally, the more spectacular or devastating the event, the more questions are posed by the former group, the more certainty is displayed by the latter.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ON EARTH.Retold byDavid A. Anderson/SANKOFA.Sights Productions.16 pages. $18.95.When it comes to creation myths, it's a question of whether the chicken or the egg came first: Did people hear of the Biblical creation and embellish it, or did the author of Genesis borrow from ancient myths? Such questions may be best left to theologians. Meanwhile, readers may enjoy encountering in "The Origin of Life on Earth" -- published by Sights Productions of Mount Airy, Md. -- an African creation myth that has been told in the author's family for generations.

Twenty-five years ago today men walked on the moon for the first time. It was an epochal event in human history that produced a rich harvest of scientific knowledge.Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and the 10 astronauts who followed them during the Apollo program brought back a total of about 840 lbs. of lunar soil and rocks. The material recovered from those missions helped settle many basic questions about the moon's origin, its composition and even the early conditions that affected life on Earth.

CHICAGO -- Scientists long have been puzzled by "mass extinctions" -- several devastating moments in the history of life on Earth when great numbers of species suddenly died off.Although the riddle of the dinosaur's demise has been plausibly unraveled -- most scientists believe a giant meteor crashed into Earth, upsetting its climate -- other, even more dramatic mass extinctions have remained unexplained.Now comes a new theory: A distant exploding star burned off Earth's protective ozone layer in a virtual flash-fire, allowing the unfiltered sun's light to flood the surface with deadly radiation.

God's Universe Owen Gingerich Belknap/Harvard University Press / 140 pages / $16.95 A lump of uranium seems an unpromising place to look for God. But in this lethal material Owen Gingerich, an emeritus professor of astronomy at Harvard University, detects a signature of divine action in the world. In his slim and elegant new book, God's Universe, Gingerich finds that indeed everywhere he looks he can discern the hand of a benevolent Creator - all without compromising his adherence to a rigorous methodological scientific naturalism.

Uzon Caldera, Russia -- In the unspoiled land of Kamchatka, nearly as far east as one can go in the Russian Far East, in a vast volcano crater reachable only by helicopter, American geologist Christopher Romanek crouches in thigh-high rubber boots and dips an electronic temperature probe into a hot spring's trickling stream. The pool's bubbling source is a steamy 164 degrees. And in it may lie clues to one of the most puzzling conundrums of science: how life on earth began. Romanek is part of a team of American and Russian scientists who, for four years running, have used Kamchatka as a laboratory for the study of extremophiles - organisms which, as their name suggests, live in extreme environments.

Reproduction Sperm less potent as men get older Many women complain that they have decreasing fertility to look forward to as they age, while men keep their reproductive capabilities intact. But it turns out that aging men may have their own biological clock. As they collect years, their sperm collects DNA damage and abnormalities that can contribute to infertility and unsuccessful pregnancies, according to new research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., and at the University of California, Berkeley.

Researchers studying rocks from Greenland announced today that they've uncovered evidence to show when life on earth began. Analysis shows the rocks may have been host to our earliest ancestors: single-celled organisms that lived 3.85 billion years ago. If the dating is accurate, the rocks push back the biological record of life on earth by about 450 million years. Scientists from the University of Chicago reported in today's issue of the journal Science that the rocks may have once been in a prehistoric ocean, but they were cooked at high temperature under pressure, which drastically modified their chemistry.

THE LESSONS of Sept. 11 come from the responses to it as much as from the acts. These lessons have less to do with airport security, intelligence or foreign policy than the two ways in which people generally interpret human events. One reacts to catastrophe by asking questions. The other instantly declares that the problem at hand -- and the solution -- is obvious. Generally, the more spectacular or devastating the event, the more questions are posed by the former group, the more certainty is displayed by the latter.

ORKNEY SPRINGS, Va. - I wish we were as interested in keeping tabs on "Nature's economy" as we are on our specifically human one. By Nature's economy, what's meant are all those flows of the living systems of the earth on which our lives, and the lives of the rest of earth's creatures, depend. We keep track of every conceivable index to gauge the health of our money economy. But we haven't even bothered to create a measure of the health of the biosphere. We've got graphs of how inventories are building up or going down, of first-time applications for unemployment compensation, of consumer confidence and retail sales.

Life on Earth may be doomed, but not for at least a billio years, two scientists suggest.This new estimate gives Earth's creatures a tenfold increase in life expectancy over a span proposed earlier. The latest estimate, by Dr. Ken Caldeira, a geochemist, and Dr. James F. Kasting, an atmospheric scientist, both of Pennsylvania State University, is based on a complex mathematical representation of interactions in the environment.For many reasons, scientists believe that life on Earth cannot survive indefinitely.

New calculations suggest a tiny chance that a large comet that is now nearing the sun may take a swipe at Earth when it returns again in 134 years.Although the chances of comet Swift-Tuttle hitting Earth in the year 2126 are extremely small, a collision could perhaps snuff out much of the life on Earth.The Earth's surface is marked by craters from such collisions. It is thought that such an incident 60 million years ago erased much of the life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.The comet is thought to be a chunk of ice and rock about 6 miles in diameter, moving in an orbit that takes it close to the sun every 130 years.

HAMPTON, Va. - Alien life might look more like Ebola than E.T. That's an understanding a new Hampton University course will focus on and that continued interest in space exploration could depend on. Arthur Bowman and other researchers at Hampton University's Center for Atmospheric Sciences are developing a new course in astrobiology set to be offered this fall. It will be the first offering of the discipline at the university and one of only a handful of programs supported by NASA in the nation.

Aliens are taking over Earth and the only person who can stop it is a smart-aleck prodigal son leading a band of misfits against them and an obstructive military. Wait, cut! This isn't "The X-Files"! It may be a sci-fi project starring David Duchovny, but it's different, really, it is! What distinguishes "Evolution" from the series most is that it proves intelligent life on Earth is a much more precious commodity than we realize. Spoofy sci-fi works best when it zaps audiences with full-on audacity - "Men in Black" comes to mind.