By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance has uncovered rocks in a dry river channel that may hold potential signs of ancient microscopic life, scientists reported Wednesday.

They stressed that in-depth analysis is needed of the sample gathered there by Perseverance — ideally in labs on Earth — before reaching any conclusions.

Roaming Mars since 2021, the rover cannot directly detect life. Instead, it carries a drill to penetrate rocks and tubes to hold the samples gathered from places judged most suitable for hosting life billions of years ago. The samples are awaiting retrieval to Earth — an ambitious plan that’s on hold as NASA seeks cheaper, quicker options.

Calling it an “exciting discovery,” a pair of scientists who were not involved in the study — SETI Institute’s Janice Bishop and the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Mario Parente — were quick to point out that non-biological processes could be responsible.

“That’s part of the reason why we can’t go so far as to say, ‘A-ha, this is proof positive of life,’’’ lead researcher Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University told The Associated Press. “All we can say is one of the possible explanations is microbial life, but there could be other ways to make this set of features that we see.”

This image provided by NASA shows the 360-degree view of a region on Mars called “Bright Angel,” captured on June 12, 2024 by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover and is made up of 346 individual images that were stitched together after being sent back to Earth. (NASA via AP)

Either way, Hurowitz said it’s the best, most compelling candidate yet in the rover’s search for potential signs of long-ago life. It was the 25th sample gathered; the tally is now up to 30, with six more to go.

“It would be amazing to be able to demonstrate conclusively that these features were formed by something that was alive on another planet billions of years ago, right?” Hurowitz said. But even if that’s not the case, it’s “a valuable lesson in all of the ways that nature can conspire to fool us.”

Collected last summer, the sample is from reddish, clay-rich mudstones in Neretva Vallis, a river channel that once carried water into Jezero Crater. This outcrop of sedimentary rock, known as the Bright Angel formation, was surveyed by Perseverance’s science instruments before the drill came out.

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Along with organic carbon, a building block of life, Hurowitz and his team found minuscule specks, dubbed poppy seeds and leopard spots, that were enriched with iron phosphate and iron sulfide. On Earth, these chemical compounds are the byproducts when microorganisms chomp down on organic matter.

The findings appeared in the journal Nature.

Ten of the titanium sample tubes were placed on the Martian surface a few years ago as a backup to the rest aboard the rover, the main target in NASA’s still fuzzy return mission.

When Perseverance launched in 2020, NASA expected the samples back on Earth by the early 2030s. But that date slipped into the 2040s as costs swelled to $11 billion, stalling the retrieval effort.

Until the samples are transported off of Mars by robotic spacecraft or astronauts, scientists will have to rely on Earthly stand-ins and lab experiments to evaluate the feasibility of ancient Martian life, according to Hurowitz.

On Earth, microorganisms commonly interact with minerals in Antarctic lakes.

“There is no evidence of microbes on Mars today, but if any had been present on ancient Mars, they too might have reduced sulfate minerals to form sulfides in such a lake at Jezero Crater,” Bishop and Parente wrote in an accompanying editorial.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from the first chapter of Life in the Time of Hurricanes by Rod Davis, out this month from TCU Press. It is republished here with permission.

“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”—Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Tuesday, August 23

From the fresh gravel path on the Moon Walk atop the ancient city’s levee, Duane McGuane watched the early-morning produce trucks clump around the French Market below. Drunks and derelicts that had survived another night mingled among the rigs like vampires. He wanted them all to go home. They never did. He turned to face the river. A grayish cast to the far horizon meant storm clouds were piling up out in the Gulf, and the Mississippi already had begun to moan. The crescent that gave the city its nickname was full of gambling barges and tankers, and it wouldn’t be long until they were dispatched seaward or secured down on the docks of the river and the bayous. Early wind gusts churned the waters. Flashes of sun sparkled green, purple, and gold on choppy slicks of oil. In them, Duane saw Mardi Gras and king cakes and the tattoo on Maybelle’s back. His focus refixed itself upon one of the ferries that ran back and forth day after day from Algiers Point to Canal Street. He watched it a long time. He felt very serene.

In that moment, that precise, discrete temporal demarcation, Duane saw what was to come—the great movement, the urge of migration he knew was the lot of his species and not just his personal burden. He heard the voice come from inside, and it was that of a great fierce dog atop a jagged boulder in the Himalayas howling of distant chaos. The howl was like a marvelous force inside his entire head and body and no one knew of it. But he did, and it had breached his world and he was going where it led.

A burst of wind blew bits of earth and litter across his cheek. Duane brushed his face and looked out to the southeast. So late in the season, this was likely a bad one, if it came this way. He turned his back to the river to face the city again; the place he loved, hated, exalted, and reviled. He pondered otra vez the aforementioned produce trucks and drunks, and now also from the corner of his vision a Vietnamese waitress in black pants and white shirt at Café du Monde shaking out a tablecloth on the sidewalk below. Also, in that exact second, he watched, from another angle still, his entire being as if viewed from the heavens, poised neatly on the Moon Walk, the impetuous idea of jumping into Old Man River just to see if he could survive the strong current having passed and morphing into something much finer.

Thus now did he see his new life, all at once and stretched out to infinity, and in that spectacle did Duane McGuane join the ranks of the prophets, and he had in mind a certain redoubt in Texas. From there they would begin it all, the fierce, stray, lost dogs of his acquaintance and yet of his fortune to come. They would howl from within that place where they would no longer have to deal with any of this shit.

Maybelle woke up from her nap later than usual, which meant she would be later than usual to work, a bent toward tardiness that disturbed her less than it might in others more inclined to guilt. You could include her boss in that latter conglomerate of sad and desperate clock-watchers. Also she could be cranky. Part of her wanted Arturo to just fire her and be done with it. But the part of her that didn’t—that saw getting fired as the first stage in a domino progression that led to getting bounced from her duplex and sundry other privations of unemployment—made her bolt upright from bed, shake her head once to kick the gears into motion, and proceed with her ablutions.

When that was done and a rice cake and Community coffee in her stomach, she blew out the door and hurried to her old Toyota on the narrow street of small brick houses about a half step ahead of receivership. Most of the houses didn’t have garages, so all the cars were crammed together on the curb, and it took her a good five minutes to wheedle herself free of the cramped space defined in front by an old Caddy and in back by a Dodge van with a bondo-packed fender. Except for the weather, it was looking like “just another day,” as that Paul McCartney song went, for the best waitress at Arturo’s, “the finest restaurant in the Irish Channel,” as Arturo’s ads went, no sense of irony at all in that man.

But she tried not to fault him any more than he deserved. Her own shortcomings were her long-term future, as her mother had put it. Maybelle herself had a sense of irony—but those were hard words nonetheless. We didn’t send you to Tulane to be a waitress or work in a department store or clerk for those communist lawyers in Baton Rouge was the rest of her mother’s verdict. The response—Then what did you send me to Tulane for?—was no longer answered, only sighed upon. But the department store wasn’t bad, the argument usually went, because it was an entry point to becoming a buyer and then a ladder into management, which of course was what a degree from Tulane was for. That and marrying the right boy so she could settle in over by Audubon Park on Henry Clay or maybe even St. Charles. Which scenario her mother always duly denied, thus confirming it as truth. They never even talked about the storefront poverty law center work two years ago and all that had ensued from that. Sometimes Maybelle did think upon it herself, and every so often she drove up the River Road, the slow way, to William’s grave and left some flowers, for him, for them. But that seemed long ago and a certain amount of regrouping was in order.

She went into the back of the restaurant and took off her summer smock and put on the black shift and low-heeled shoes of her station. She didn’t really have a locker, just a hook on the wall on which to hang her stuff. A hooker, she frequently said to herself long after the joke had gone flat. Her purse went under the cash register out front, where she could keep an eye on it. As she disrobed, Benny, the other waiter for the night, unless it got busy, came in. He already had on his white shirt and dark pants, but they had changed in front of each other before and it didn’t matter because he was gay, but in truth Maybelle wouldn’t have cared anyway. Sexual interludes were far from her mind. And her, thirty-three years old!

It wasn’t yet five, and a Tuesday, so nobody had come in, not even the early conventioneers. Benny went around fixing and fussing at the dozen tables in the dining room. Bertie, the creepy guy from New Zealand, cleaned off the marble counter in the long, dark bar and lined up the glasses hanging upside down overhead. He would get the first wave of customers, and he would lubricate them.

Maybelle waited for the onslaught in a high-backed, lacquered wooden chair against the wall, under a print from the South of France. She looked out the window toward the street, and at the parking lot on the other side next to the corner grocery. Two beige sedans with Avis stickers on the back slowed and pulled tentatively into the lot.

Four men got out of one car and four women out of the other, all dressed in suits or the equivalent, and rejoined each other, stiffly, then came across the street.

Seeing them, Bertie yelled to Lisa, the main bar waitress, to get some ice, and in came the people, their convention badges still hanging from cords around their necks. Maybelle had a theory about that, that people kept the name tags not because they had forgotten to remove them but because in an alien city it reminded them who they were. Maybelle knew how easily that could be forgotten. How easily anything could be forgotten if you put your mind to it.

The post Life in the Time of Hurricanes appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday proposed canceling a public land management rule that put conservation on equal footing with development, as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to open more taxpayer-owned tracts to drilling, logging, mining and grazing.

The rule was a key part of efforts under former President Joe Biden to refocus the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees about 10% of land in the U.S. Adopted last year, it allowed public property to be leased for restoration in the same way that oil companies lease land for drilling.

Industry and agriculture groups were bitterly opposed to the Biden rule and lobbied Republicans to reverse it. States including North Dakota, where Burgum served as governor before joining Trump’s Cabinet, pursued a lawsuit hoping to block the rule.

Wednesday’s announcement comes amid a flurry of actions since Trump took office aimed at boosting energy production from the federal government’s vast land holdings, which are concentrated in Western states including Alaska, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Interior officials said the Biden rule had sidelined people who depend on public lands for their livelihoods and imposed unneeded restrictions.

Burgum said in a statement that it would have prevented thousands of acres from being used for energy and mineral productions, grazing and recreation. Overturning it “protects our American way of life and gives our communities a voice in the land that they depend on,” Burgum said.

“The previous administration’s Public Lands Rule had the potential to block access to hundreds of thousands of acres of multiple-use land – preventing energy and mineral production, timber management, grazing and recreation across the West,” Burgum said.

FILE – Cattle graze along a section of the Missouri River that includes the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument near Fort Benton, Mont., on Sept. 19, 2011. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

Environmentalists had largely embraced the rule that was finalized in April 2024. Supporters argued that conservation was a long-neglected facet of the land bureau’s mission under the 1976 Federal Lands Policy Management Act.

“The administration cannot simply overthrow that statutory authority because they would prefer to let drilling and mining companies call the shots,” said Alison Flint, senior legal director at The Wilderness Society.

While the bureau previously issued leases for conservation purposes in limited cases, it never had a dedicated program for it.

Critics said the change under Biden violated the “multiple use” mandate for Interior Department lands, by catapulting the “non-use” of federal lands — meaning restoration leases — to a position of prominence.

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National Mining Association CEO Rich Nolan said Burgum’s proposal would ensure the nation’s natural resources are available to address rising energy demands and supply important minerals.

“This is a welcome change from the prior clear disregard for the legal obligation to balance multiple uses on federal lands,” Nolan said.

The rule also promoted the designation of more “areas of critical environmental concern” — a special status that can restrict development. It’s given to land with historic or cultural significance or that’s important for wildlife conservation.

In addition to its surface land holdings, the land bureau regulates publicly-owned underground mineral reserves — such as coal for power plants and lithium for renewable energy — across more than 1 million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers). The bureau has a history of industry-friendly policies and for more than a century has sold grazing permits and oil and gas leases.

The pending publication of Burgum’s proposal will kick off a 60-day public comment period.

House Republicans last week repealed land management plans adopted in the closing days of former President Joe Biden’s administration that restricted development in large areas of Alaska, Montana and North Dakota. Interior officials also announced a proposal aimed at increasing mining and drilling in Western states with populations of greater sage grouse. Biden administration officials proposed limits on development and prohibitions against mining to help protect the grouse.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate committee on Wednesday approved the nomination of White House economic adviser Stephen Miran to the Fed’s board of governors, setting up a likely approval by the full Senate, which would make Miran the third Trump appointee to the seven-member board.

The White House has pushed for an expedited Senate approval of Miran, who was nominated by President Donald Trump to replace former Fed governor Adriana Kugler, who stepped down Aug. 1. Miran would, if approved, simply finish her term, which expires in January. He may be approved in time for the Fed’s meeting next week, when it is widely expected to reduce its key short-term interest rate.

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The committee voted to approve Miran on partisan lines, 13-11, with all Democrats voting against confirmation.

Miran’s nomination has raised concerns about the Fed’s independence from day-to-day politics, particularly since he said during a hearing last week that he would keep his job as head of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers while on the Fed’s board, a historically unusual arrangement. Presidents have nominated members of their staffs to the Fed’s board before, but the nominees have always given up their White House jobs.

The vote comes a day after a federal court blocked Trump’s effort to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook, who he has accused of mortgage fraud.

“The Federal Reserve was designed to make decisions free from political interference, guided by data and the long-term stability of our economy, not the political agenda of any one president,” Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said in a statement before the vote. “Donald Trump has made clear he wants to tear down that independence, just as he has with so many of the institutions that have kept our democracy and our economy strong.”

Miran said he would step down from his White House position if he is chosen for a longer term. Yet he can remain on the board after Kugler’s term ends in January, if no replacement is named. He has said in that case he would consider keeping his White House job even if he remains on the board after January, sparking fresh criticism from Democrats.