I'm not catching anything in recent news about odd carbon isotope ratios in some bit of Mars. I must ask vk3ukf
what is looking good? What specifically have you seen sufficient to express your opinion to us that some Martian fossil is looking good? I.e.: cite, please.
Is it instead a conflation of a couple things? There was the very recent news about organic building blocks (NB: building blocks, not what they build). For instance:
Carnegie Institute: Building blocks of life formed on Mars (December 11, 2007)
And, years ago, scientists noticed a carbon isotope ratio in the ALH84001 meteorite different than what one would expect for an Earth rock (and some were identical, indicating contamination). I suppose that's not surprising if the rock came from Mars and spent time on Earth. It's evidence that at least some carbon they looked at in ALH84001 was from Mars and not Earth, and that's good to know. But, like I said, it's not new, for instance
Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology: Martian Organic Matter in ALH84001? (June 1999)
Quote:
Similar kerogen-like material in the Murchison carbonaceous chondrite has similar characteristics, including the same carbon-12/carbon-13 ratio. This similarity leads Becker and coworkers to suggest that the indigenous organic compounds in ALH84001 may be from meteorite bombardment of the surface of Mars. They do not think that the organic compounds in ALH84001 reflect biological processes on Mars.
[...]
Whether the organic compounds in ALH 84001 are biological or not, this work, coupled with Jull's observation that 20% of the organic compounds in ALH84001 could be extraterrestrial, shows that organic compounds are present on Mars. Whether their presence led to life or not remains to be seen.
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Is there some more recent news about the ratios? Some different results or new interpretations?