Here are the results of the poll.
Yes 21 (62%)
No 13 (38%)
I Have No Idea 0 (0%)
Total No. Of Votes: 34
A pretty clear cut vote suggesting we may just be a little ahead of ourselves on the impact of AI.
Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!
A fair voting turnout.
0 of 34 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!
Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted!
David.
This appeared last week:
GPs can now use the tool to undertake a personalised assessment for patients’ risk of developing long COVID-19 six months after infection.
01 Aug 2024
Globally, at least 65 million people are thought to suffer from long COVID-19.
Healthcare
professionals are set to be aided in their assessments of long COVID-19 after a
popular risk calculator was updated to include the condition.
The online COVID-19
Risk Calculator’s (CoRiCal) expansion was announced on Thursday and now
includes a personalised risk assessment of developing long COVID-19 six months
after infection.
The calculator takes into account a range of personal factors including age,
sex, comorbidities, vaccination status, number of previous infections and use
of antiviral medications.
CoRiCal
was developed early in the pandemic to provide clinicians, and patients,
with a shared decision-making tool to help determine the possible risks and
benefits of having a COVID-19 vaccine and booster.
In its latest update, the long COVID-19 calculator was specifically designed to
assess the risks of going to hospital or an intensive care unit with the
condition, and of having it six months after catching COVID-19.
And the impact of living with long COVID-19 is something Kylie Trounson knows
all too well.
A busy Melbourne lawyer, Ms Trounson was struck down with the illness more than
two years ago and its impacts continue to be devastating.
‘I started having really extreme symptoms that I couldn’t explain – I woke up
in the middle of the night with my heart racing, I had a heart monitor, and it
was at 190 beats per minute while I was lying down,’ she told newsGP.
‘I had a such a severe form of it that I lost my identity, so I wasn’t a mum, I
wasn’t a lawyer, I wasn’t a partner, I wasn’t a daughter, I was just someone
who could lie in bed.
‘My GP was my anchor at that point … now that most of the long COVID clinics
are not available, the importance of GPs is huge.’
The project’s co-lead, and former RACGP Expert Committee – Quality Care Deputy
Chair, Associate Professor John Litt said the expanded tool will help GPs to
introduce earlier interventions to mitigate the disease’s severity and
duration.
‘While the median duration is about four months or so, that means 50% of people
will have symptoms for longer than four months,’ he told newsGP.
‘The GP feedback is it’s even quite complex for them to understand and their
time is really precious.
‘What we’ve done with this one is we’ve actually brought in the comorbidities,
and there are quite a few comorbidities that increase the risk of the severity
of COVID, and they increase your risk of long COVID.’
University of Queensland Associate Professor Kirsty Short said at least 65
million people globally are thought to suffer from long COVID-19, which can
cause more than 200 symptoms across 10 different organ systems.
‘Incomplete vaccination, missed drug treatment during acute infection, and
repeat infections are the greatest controllable influencers that increase risk,
so there are actions you can take right now to reduce that,’ she said.
‘Health managers and individuals in conjunction with clinicians can use the
risk assessment tool for shared decision making on vaccination,
infection-avoidant behaviours and pursuing early treatment during acute
infection.’
Associate Professor Litt said while many adults do not see COVID as a big
issue, many remain concerned about getting long COVID.
‘The chance of suffering long COVID increases with every bout of COVID-19 a
person catches,’ he said.
‘The vaccines are continuing to provide benefit, but it’d be great if they
provided a longer-term benefit against getting infected or passing it on to
people who are vulnerable.
‘Clearly vaccination has largely been the primary cause which has led to a
substantive reduction in long COVID, so that’s the good news, the bad news is
we don’t have a definitive treatment.’
The tool was designed by a team of experts from Flinders University, the
Queensland University of Technology, the University of Sydney and the
Immunisation Coalition, and included input from GPs and clinicians.
Here is the link:
https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/covid-19-risk-calculator-expanded
This may be useful to know about to ask your GP for an assessment if you are concerned!
David.
This appeared last week:
Friday, 02 August, 2024
The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) has welcomed the inaugural annual report of the Council for Connected Care.
The council is a multi-stakeholder advisory group that provides strategic guidance and direction on how to improve health outcomes for Australians through a more interoperable digital health system.
ADHA CEO Amanda Cattermole PSM said, “The Council for Connected Care has been a catalyst for change and a champion for healthcare interoperability. It has brought together an outstanding group of leaders who share a common vision of a more connected and integrated healthcare system.
“All Australians expect a healthcare system where information is shared safely, securely and seamlessly with the right people at the right time to deliver the best clinical outcomes.”
The ADHA said that the Council for Connected Care Annual Review shows progress has been made in advancing the interoperability agenda, with collaboration and knowledge building resources shared centrally on the agency’s website, including:
Council Chairperson Conjoint Professor Anne Duggan said having a more connected healthcare system was an important pillar of consumer safety and puts Australians firmly at the centre of their care.
“It has been a privilege to work with senior leaders across the healthcare system, united by the common purpose of realising fully optimised and interoperable digital health records, which remain foundational to safe and high-quality care.”
The council was established in June 2023 as part of the Connecting Australian Healthcare – National Healthcare Interoperability Plan 2023–2028, which was auspiced by all governments to significantly reduce fragmentation and increase information sharing across the healthcare system.
Here is the link:
This is a new grouping for me so I had a look:
Providing strategic advice on interoperability and supporting the implementation of the National Healthcare Interoperability Plan.
Contact us
Phone: 1300
901 001
8am - 5pm (AEST/AEDT) Monday - Friday
Email: help@digitalhealth.gov.au
Role of Council
The Council for Connected Care will:
Here is the link:
There are 33 members of the council, and they have held six meetings to date.
Here are the members:
|
Conjoint Professor Anne Duggan (Chairperson) |
Chief Executive Officer |
Australian Commission on Safety & Quality in Health Care |
|
Professor Peter Sprivulis (Deputy Chairperson) |
Chief Clinical Information Officer |
WA Health |
|
Dr Jason Agostino |
Senior Medical Advisor |
National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation |
|
Mr Simon Bush |
Chief Executive Officer |
Australian Information Industry Association |
|
Ms Annie Butler |
Federal Secretary |
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation |
|
Ms Amanda Cattermole PSM |
Chief Executive Officer |
Australian Digital Health Agency |
|
Professor Wendy Chapman |
Associate Dean of Digital Health and Informatics |
University of Melbourne |
|
Mr Simon Cleverley |
Assistant Secretary |
Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care |
|
Dr Elizabeth Deveny |
Chief Executive Officer |
Consumer Health Forum |
|
Ms Kirsty Faichney |
Deputy Chief Executive Officer |
Services Australia |
|
Mr Michael Frost |
Group Head, Primary Healthcare, Information Standards & Communications Group |
Australian Institute of Health & Welfare |
|
Ms Mary Ann Baquero Geronimo |
Chief Executive Officer |
Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia |
|
Dr David Hansen |
Chief Executive Officer |
Australian e-Health Research Centre, CSIRO |
|
Dr Rob Hosking |
Chair Expert Committee on Practice Technology and Management |
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners |
|
Ms Emma Hossack |
Chief Executive Officer |
Medical Software Industry Association |
|
Dr John Lambert |
Chief Clinical Information Officer |
NT Health |
|
Mr Chris Leahy |
Chief Operating Officer |
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care |
|
Ms Laurie Leigh |
Chief Executive Officer |
National Disability Services |
|
Mr Keith McDonald |
Chief Executive Officer |
South Western Sydney, Primary Health Network |
|
Ms Bettina McMahon |
Chief Executive Officer |
Healthdirect |
|
Dr Danielle McMullen |
Vice President |
Australian Medical Association |
|
Adjunct Associate Professor Steven Morris |
Chief Executive Officer |
Pharmaceutical Society of Australia |
|
Ms Anja Nikolic |
Chief Executive Officer |
Australasian Institute of Digital Health |
|
Ms Jackie O’Connor |
Policy Lead |
Allied Health Professions Association |
|
Mr Peter O’Halloran |
Chief Digital Officer |
Australian Digital Health Agency |
|
Dr Christopher Pearce |
Chair Digital Health Committee |
Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine |
|
Mr Michael Roff |
Chief Executive Officer |
Australian Private Hospitals Association |
|
Mr Richard Skimin |
Corporate Member Representative |
Australian Patients Association |
|
Adj. Professor Ruth Stewart |
National Rural Health Commissioner |
|
|
Mr Tom Symondson |
Chief Executive Officer |
Aged & Community Care Providers Association |
|
Ms Lisa Todd |
Economics, PBS and Data Director |
Pharmacy Guild of Australia |
|
Mr Mark Upton |
Director, Strategy, Information Management and Governance Office |
Tasmanian Department of Health |
|
Professor Trish Williams |
Digital Health Expert |
Flinders University |
We have a meeting on August 8 – so if you wish to raise a matter contact one of those listed above.
It is very hard to tell just what this august membership has delivered for the Australian people.
Perhaps we could have an email – explaining in a page or so – the value that has been added and the difference that has been made? I would love to publish such a summary!
What do you think this Council will deliver other than attendance fees for the members?
David.
This appeared last week:
1 August, 2024
Australia’s health system is at a tipping point, with patients unable to afford basic care, hospitals critically overloaded, and a tide of chronic disease threatening to overwhelm all parts of the system.
The Australian Medical Association’s new 10-year vision for the future of the nation’s health paints a grim picture if the country is not able to structurally reform primary healthcare and the hospital system, with life expectancy threatening to head into reverse. The manifesto calls for urgent progress on further reforming Medicare and shifting funding towards preventive care.
The doctors’ group has described the state of healthcare in Australia as being locked in a “system-wide struggle”, with millions of Australians unable to access or afford to see a GP, growing logjams in public hospitals and a private system in need of reform.
The federal government is examining the viability of private hospitals and bureaucrats have for the past month been pouring over the books of operators. A recent meeting of private hospital bosses and private insurers was told the majority of private hospitals were operating at wafer-thin margins of less than 1.5 per cent and were in danger of bankruptcy.
The crisis in private hospitals is threatening to have severe knock-on effects for a public system already on its knees and beset by a system-wide staffing crisis, most acutely in psychiatry.
The AMA’s new vision for Australia’s health lays out a blueprint to transform the health system into one that values prevention as much as treatment, and views healthcare as an investment to be made, as opposed to a cost to be managed.
“While governments recognise the pervasive impact of poor health, healthcare is still viewed as a cost rather than a strategic investment,” said AMA president Steve Robson. “This creates a system that responds to poor health outcomes rather than preventing them. We need to change this thinking.”
Professor Robson will launch the new vision for Australia’s health at the AMA’s national conference at the Gold Coast on Friday. Danielle McMullen, a GP, former AMA (NSW) president and for the past two years vice-president of the federal AMA, was recently elected the next AMA president and will take over from Professor Robson in October.
She has said this is a pivotal time in health in which the system faced unprecedented pressures and has named the proper funding of general practice, reducing surgery waiting lists in public hospitals, ensuring private health insurance provides value and addressing the workforce crisis as pressing issues to be confronted.
As part of the AMA’s healthcare vision, members of the organisation named factors that were impeding timely and equitable access to care as the biggest issues of concern. These included long waiting lists for appointments, workforce shortages, public hospitals that are over capacity, the increasing costs of healthcare, and inadequate supply of services in many areas of Australia.
Widespread burnout among doctors following the pandemic was also highlighted. This was exacerbated by heavy administrative burdens, poor professional development, the impact of inadequate Medicare rebates and increasing cost of delivering care on practice viability, and the challenges navigating the labyrinth of regulatory and compliance requirements.
Professor Robson, under whose presidency the AMA advocated for significant increases in commonwealth investment in general practice and extra funding public hospitals, said the past two years had seen the beginning of important breakdowns in the silos in the health system and deeper collaboration across governments but enormous pressures remain.
Australia currently spends $9,365 per person and over 10 per cent of GDP on health. The country has a high number of years spent in ill-health compared to other OECD countries and is lagging in the prevention of chronic disease.
“Now is the time for innovative policies and measures to address the issues facing our healthcare system and ensure all Australians … have access to good healthcare.”
Here is the link:
We have all heard these sort of calls a zillion times in the past and we always seem to have muddled through. The hard thing to discern just how severe the problems actually are and how they have changed in the last few years.
I have to say I don’t get the sense of looming catastrophe at present but I fear I may be out of touch with those as the coal face.
It would be good to hear from some who ae working down to pit as to how good or bad things overall are at present!
Let us all know how it is actually going!
David.
This popped up a few says ago:
August 2, 2024 — 6.13pm
An alternative therapy clinic in Sydney’s north-west has been forced to close its doors as part of the state healthcare watchdog’s crackdown on a controversial medical procedure banned by regulators in the United States.
The NSW Health Care Complaints Commission issued an interim prohibition order against the Ozone Clinic in Castle Hill while it investigates a complaint made about it by a member of the public.
Some of the services advertised on the Ozone Clinic website, which has since been deleted but is available through an internet archive. Credit: WayBack Machine
A commission spokesperson said the order was necessary “to protect public health and safety” but said they could not comment on the specifics of the complaint during the investigation.
“This action follows the execution of a search warrant on July 25, 2024 as part of an ongoing investigation into ozone therapy practices, specifically intravenous and skin puncture procedures,” the spokesperson said. “Public safety is paramount when seeking alternative health treatments.”
The commission said no person working for the Ozone Clinic should deliver medication intravenously or through skin puncture to any member of the public while the ban was in place.
An Ozone Clinic spokeswoman said it was “regretful” that the HCCC had levelled allegations against the clinic, and said she stood by the safety of ozone therapy.
“The Ozone Clinic has operated in the community with a strong commitment to improving the lives of those who come through our doors,” she said. “We are hopeful that the process that ensues will be of educational value for the HCCC and anyone interested in this type of therapy.”
Ozone therapy involves introducing ozone, a form of oxygen, into the patient’s body. When administered intravenously, the gas is usually dissolved into blood taken from the patient and then delivered back into the body.
The clinic’s website, since deleted but accessible through internet archives, claims to have treated more than 7000 patients. It promotes ozone as a natural detoxifier, antiviral, antibiotic, antifungal and antiparasitic which “resets the mitochondria” and is a “natural immune system booster”.
This is despite the US Food and Drug Administration noting that, in order to be effective as a germ-killer, ozone “must be present in a concentration far greater than that which can be safely tolerated by man and animals”.
The agency updated its guidance in 2019 to outlaw the use of ozone gas to treat “any medical condition for which there is no proof of safety and effectiveness”.
Only two medical devices containing or producing ozone are approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for legal sale in Australia.
One is a commercial-grade cleaning product and the other is an ozone-generating device used in dentistry as a disinfectant and treatment for tooth decay.
Another Sydney ozone practitioner, Linh Tuan Phan, was stung with an interim order last month preventing him from providing any health services, “including ozone therapy or any procedures involving skin penetration”, until the end of August.
Here is the link:
There really are too many crooks out there that are so ready to seek to exploit the ignorant, vulnerable or desperate!
I hope they lose a lot of money with all this nonsense and that the TGA makes sure no one uses their useless services!
It would be funny if there were not innocent and probably desperate innocents being exploited.
David.
This appeared a day or so ago.
By David Swan
August 3, 2024 — 5.00am
The artificial intelligence sector is on a precipice. Already shaping as the defining technology of at least the last 20 years, generative AI and its frothy company valuations are now either booming or are a bubble about to burst, depending on who you ask.
The arms race kicked off in earnest in November 2022 when OpenAI released ChatGPT, leading to a scramble in Silicon Valley – and Australia – to engineer AI products and put them into users’ hands. Tech giants and investors alike have splashed billions of dollars into AI software companies and their suppliers, such as chipmaker Nvidia.
Canva this week acquired Australia’s most-hyped AI start-up, Leonardo.ai, for a reported $320 million. Leonardo AI offers a free tool for creating AI-generated art, and has produced more than a billion images over the past 18 months.
Yet until this week, Australia was by all accounts getting left behind. The nation was shaping as a relative minnow, eclipsed by the likes of the US and China, which have moved full steam ahead in developing large language models and deploying them to the masses.
One deal has likely altered Australia’s trajectory in one fell swoop, however.
Canva this week acquired Australia’s most-hyped AI start-up, Leonardo.ai, for a reported $320 million. Leonardo AI offers a free tool for creating AI-generated art, and has produced more than a billion images over the past 18 months.
Viewed bullishly, the tie-up finally makes Australia relevant on the world stage when it comes to AI, and positions a combined Canva-Leonardo.ai as a likely AI powerhouse that could eventually rival the likes of Nvidia and even ChatGPT maker OpenAI in terms of relevance, and valuation. Canva is currently worth some $40 billion – a valuation rivalling that of Telstra and Qantas – and employs thousands of Australians, most of whom are in Sydney. It’s continuing to grow at a rapid clip even amid a tepid broader economy.
Nearly 200 million people globally use Canva’s software every month to create designs, and adding Leonardo.ai’s customer-base of 19 million people to that mix should instantly create a globally significant AI software maker.
The acquisition will help Canva remain on par with AI heavyweights Microsoft and Adobe, according to eToro market analyst Josh Gilbert.
“Every developer is scrambling right now to integrate AI into their products and Canva is one company that arguably needs the biggest boost here to stay ahead of Adobe and Microsoft’s monumental AI push,” Gilbert said.
“The response to Canva’s AI text generator ‘Magic Write’ seems underwhelming, so acquiring an established, dedicated generative AI platform makes more sense than developing one from scratch. It really all depends on how innovative Canva’s integration of Leonardo’s image generation capabilities winds up being.”
Former Boston Consulting Group strategist Barb Hyman leads one of Australia’s other most successful AI start-ups, Sapia.ai, which has raised $17 million from Woolworths and Macquarie and whose software is dubbed an “AI career coach in your back pocket”.
“I love the story of one amazing Australian tech company buying another one, there’s a beautiful symmetry in that. I’m delighted for them,” she said.
For Hyman, Australian AI companies shouldn’t even try to directly compete with the likes of Google, which employs thousands of workers who have PhDs in artificial intelligence.
“There is a different way to be competitive ... that’s when you have a data set that is unique. We have a proprietary data set that took us two years to build initially,” she said.
“The ones with the unique data are the ones who are going to see the exponential value, rather than just trying to compete with Google or Meta using all the same open-source data that everyone else has.”
For the local economy and investors, there’s now much riding on the success of Canva and Sapia.ai, as well as the degree to which other businesses can adopt AI technologies.
Australia’s productivity has been flat for the past decade and AI adoption will be crucial to the growth of Australia’s healthcare and education industries in particular, according to Dr Stephen King, who serves on Australia’s Productivity Commission.
“AI could be the way that the developed world gets out of its current productivity malaise,” King said.
“AI is the first general purpose technology likely to radically improve productivity in service-dominated areas.
“Australia doesn’t do a lot of inventing of new technology. Ninety-eight per cent of our business productivity improvement comes from the adoption, not creating the new stuff. So the big advancements that AI will make to Australian productivity will occur through its adoption.”
Kim Oosthuizen, head of artificial intelligence for software giant SAP, agreed and said that it’s important for businesses to keep humans in the loop when it comes to AI usage, to reduce error rates and “hallucinations”, the term used to describe incorrect or misleading results generated by AI models.
“Most people think that AI is just ChatGPT. But in a business context, people don’t realise that these tools are here today, we’re just not aware necessarily that they’re AI,” she said. “And I don’t think most people know or care which technology sits in the back end, or which vendor is responsible for it, it’s more about, is it really useful?”
That question over usefulness is critical for US investors who are weighing AI’s potential, and are preparing for the first interest rate cuts since 2020. Shares in Apple, Microsoft, Google parent company Alphabet and Nvidia have all taken a hit over the past week, leading some to question whether the AI hype train is over.
Stocks in Nvidia have been particularly volatile, falling more than 25 per cent from their June peaks of over $US140 ($215) a share before on Thursday bouncing back to record the biggest daily jump in market value in Wall Street history. The company dominates the market for the chips underpinning generative AI programs, and is widely seen as a proxy for the heady opportunities – and what others perceive as excessive hype – in the sector. Nvidia commands roughly 80 per cent of the AI chip market.
Meanwhile, infrastructure costs are skyrocketing across the board. The AI sector has similar traits to the cryptocurrency sector, in that it relies on heavy computing power for its calculations.
In announcing Meta’s quarterly earnings this week, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the computing resources required to train its large language model, Llama 4, would likely be almost 10-times as much as Meta used to train Llama 3. Future models will grow beyond that, he said.
“Meta AI is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of the year,” Zuckerberg told investors and analysts on a conference call.
“At this point, I’d rather risk building capacity before it is needed rather than too late given the long lead times for spinning up new inference projects.”
Meta is spending billions in a bid for AI dominance. To meet its AI needs, the company would buy 350,000 Nvidia H100 graphics cards by the end of 2024, he said.
Google parent company Alphabet meanwhile last week reported that capital expenditure was $US13.2 billion in the second quarter, up 91.4 per cent from a year ago. Microsoft this week reported capital expenditure of $US19 billion for the quarter, up nearly 77.6 per cent from $US10.7 billion a year prior.
Not everyone is convinced the price tag will be worth it.
Goldman Sachs’ top stock analyst, Jim Covello, believes most generative AI technology is not ready for prime time. He said tech giants and others were set to spend more than $US1 trillion on AI capex in coming years, with so far little to show for it.
“Despite its expensive price tag, the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to be useful,” Covello said in a recent AI report.
“Overbuilding things the world doesn’t have use for, or is not ready for, typically ends badly.”
For Covello, most technological transformations in history have replaced very expensive solutions with very cheap solutions. He said that replacing jobs with extremely expensive technology was basically the opposite of how things should be done.
“We estimate that the Al infrastructure build-out will cost over $US1 trillion in the next several years alone, which includes spending on data centres, utilities, and applications,” Covello said.
“So, the crucial question is: what $US1 trillion problem will Al solve? Replacing low-wage jobs with tremendously costly technology is basically the polar opposite of the prior technology transitions I’ve witnessed in my 30 years of closely following the tech industry.”
Some analysts see the lofty valuations as justified, however. Rhys Davis, InvestorHub chief and co-founder, said the average value multiplier for AI companies sat at around 25-times, in comparison to the estimated 40-times of Canva and mining companies trading at 70-times.
“To say AI is ‘overhyped’ ignores the fact that tech and non-tech businesses are exceeding those valuations,” he said.
“AI’s transformative nature cannot be understated. It’s a driving force that’s enabling companies to scale and operate at an unprecedented efficiency level, previously thought unimaginable. Of course, what’s crucially important is the proprietary and defensible nature of the technology ‘under the hood’.”
For Covello, the AI bubble could take a long time to burst. In the meantime, it’s AI infrastructure providers who will likely continue to benefit.
“While the question of whether AI technology will ever deliver on the promise many people are excited about today is certainly debatable,” he said.
“The less debatable point is that AI technology is exceptionally expensive, and to justify those costs, the technology must be able to solve complex problems, which it isn’t designed to do.”
Here is the link:
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/is-the-ai-bubble-about-to-burst-20240731-p5jxxa.html
I really do find this a fascinating article but have to confess I have absolutely no idea where it is all going to land and how long it will be until we see real and sustainable profits being booked by these companies. Given the rate of “cash-burn” they all incur it surely won’t be long until we see the “wheat sorted from the chaff”
I give it about six months before we
are all pretty clear just who the winners and losers are. It really does, however, have the feeling of a classic hype-cycle and I am confident we will all see who the winners are soon!
How long do you think it will take?
David.
Here are the results of the poll.
Yes 19 (63%)
No 11 (37%)
I Have No Idea 0 (0%)
Total No. Of Votes: 30
A pretty clear cut vote suggesting a touch more work on the pharmaceutical supply chains may not go amiss!
Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!
A fair voting turnout.
0 of 30 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!
Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted!
David.
This appeared a few days ago….
A 3ft by 2ft rock marked with off-white spots may offer fossilised record of microbes dating back billions of years
Ian Sample Science editor
Fri 26 Jul 2024 22.23 AEST Last modified on Sat 27 Jul 2024 04.22 AEST
A spotty, vein-filled rock found by a Nasa rover on Mars contains features that suggest it may have hosted microbial life billions of years ago.
The arrowhead-shaped rock, named Cheyava Falls, was discovered by Nasa’s Perseverance rover on 21 July as it trundled along the northern edge of Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley carved by water flowing into the red planet’s Jezero crater.
Analysis of the 3ft by 2ft rock revealed signs of organic material, intriguing surface spots similar to those associated with fossilised microbes on Earth and evidence that water once passed through the rock, the agency said.
Ken Farley, the project scientist on the mission at the California Institute of Technology, said Cheyava Falls was “the most puzzling, complex and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance”, though the team make clear that non-biological processes may have given rise to the features.
“On the one hand, we have our first compelling detection of organic material, distinctive colourful spots indicative of chemical reactions that microbial life could use as an energy source, and clear evidence that water, necessary for life, once passed through the rock,” Farley said.
“On the other hand, we have been unable to determine exactly how the rock formed and to what extent nearby rocks may have heated Cheyava Falls and contributed to these features.”
In the ancient past, Mars was a warmer, wetter planet. If life ever evolved there, researchers believe traces should remain within its rocks, in the form of organic material and potentially fossilised remnants.
Scans of the Cheyava Falls rock by Perseverance’s Sherloc instrument suggest it contains organic compounds. Such carbon-based molecules are regarded as the building blocks of life, but can also be produced by non-biological processes.
Large white veins of calcium phosphate run along the rock. Between them are bands of reddish material, likely haematite, one of the iron oxide compounds that gives Mars its rusty colour. Closer inspection of the bands revealed dozens of little leopard spot-like features. Each of the off-white spots is surrounded by a black ring containing iron and phosphate.
David Flannery, an astrobiologist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia and a member of the mission, called the spots “a big surprise”, because on Earth similar features “are often associated with the fossilised record of microbes”.
White spots can form on rocks through chemical reactions involving haematite, producing iron and phosphate, as well as energy that microbes could live on. While the features are intriguing, nothing seen yet appears to be an actual fossilised microbe.
Researchers are desperate to get their hands on samples for more thorough investigation, but Nasa’s plans to return the Mars rocks to Earth have run into difficulties.
The agency’s Mars sample return mission is over budget at $11bn (£8.5bn) and badly delayed with no prospect of bringing rocks back before 2040. Nasa is looking for companies to return Mars samples sooner and at lower cost.
“This is what Mars Sample Return is all about. We have never seen anything like this from Mars before, not in our Martian meteorite collections, not with Mars Science Laboratory or other landers,” said Prof John Bridges, a participating scientist on Nasa’s Mars Science Laboratory mission at the University of Leicester.
“The reality is we need to get these samples back on Earth to do the detailed electron microscopy and isotope analyses to check if these formed with ancient microbial action or abiotically,” Bridges said.
Prof Charles Cockell, an astrobiologist at the University of Edinburgh, said: “Although these features don’t provide unambiguous evidence of life, they do confirm that Mars was a very dynamic planet with all the ingredients for life, including organic carbon.
“We need to bring back samples, or in my view, even better, send humans, to find if we are seeing the signatures of life.”
Prof Monica Grady, a planetary and space scientist at The Open University, said: “This is a really amazing-looking rock. It makes my mouth water just to look at it. The combination of different types of minerals arranged the way they are reminds me of some of the textures found in ancient terrestrial rocks, where tracks of burrowing worms are preserved. Obviously, I’m not saying that there were burrowing worms on Mars – but I can’t wait to see what else Perseverance uncovers in this part of its exploration.”
Here is the link:
The tone of this article seems to suggest I may not be around to see some samples actually returned. It also seems that, while the odd microbe may be found, real ‘Martians’ are pretty much not happening!
Oh well I will just have to stick to Star Trek Star Wars and Babylon 5 for now! Have any of you noticed it seems to be years since we have had any decent new SF in this genre? Time for some new stuff I reckon!
David.
