OOL Group Forecasts Phoenix Findings for Life on Mars

Winter Park, CO (PRWEB) June 13, 2008 -- Origin Of Life ("OOL") Group scientists conjecture results of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's experiments: life on Mars. The compounds necessary for life may be as close as a scoop of Phoenix's robot arm used to collect and place the Martian surface samples into a specialized oven for baking and analysis. With the confirmation of water on Mars, OOL Group anticipates finding amino acids on Mars with special interest in aspartic acid. OOL Group scientists established that thermal polyaspartic acid in water forms protocell-like microspheres. These self-ordering thermal polyaspartic acid microspheres could evolve chemically and could bond with other essential compounds leading eventually to primitive cellular life.

In summary, both water and aspartic acid are abundant in the solar system; they just need a favorable environment to start an evolutionary, self-ordering process that may lead to life. Though scientists agree that primordial elements in a primitive environment led to life, they disagree on the order of the steps taken. The late Dr. Sidney Fox stated "...life at the beginning was neither a miracle nor a chance occurrence but was highly determined by physical processes."

OOL Group hopes that data from Phoenix will indicate aspartic acid, other amino acids, water and evidence of a past Martian environment warm and wet enough to permit a self-ordering, evolutionary process to take a footing. If the organic building blocks existed on pre-historic Mars, then figuring out how far along the process might have evolved on Mars will be a next step for OOL Group.

OOL Group's Professor Aristotel Pappelis and Dr. Peter Bahn continue experiments looking for life's first steps. Their theory, the Thermal Protein-First Paradigm, was presented to the 1996 Chemical Evolution Symposium at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, and in 1994 to the Russian Academy of Science - Bach Institute of Biochemistry Centennial Celebration, dedicated to the memory of academician A.I. Oparin. Thereafter, Professor Pappelis and Dr. Fox coauthored a presentation: "Domain Protolife: The Protocell Theory", which, in summary, provides that all life is cellular, that the first biotic cells to emerge from molecular evolution were protocells, and that the proposed Domain Protolife preceded and led to Domains Archea, Bacteria, and Eukarya.

Professor Aristotel Pappelis1, Dr. Peter Bahn2, Dr. John Bozzola3, and Mark A. Rudis4 congratulate all the workers who made Phoenix possible.

1. Southern Illinois U., Prof. Emeritus, Carbondale, Illinois

2. Bahn Biotechnology Co., Mt. Vernon, Illinois

3. Southern Illinois U., Director, Center for Electron Microscopy, Carbondale, IL

4. Attorney for OOL Group, Winter Park, Colorado

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