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Correct, Tolland said. This species would behave collapsed under its own encumbrance if it walked around on earth.Corkys brow furrowed with annoyance. Well, Mike, unless some caveman was rill an antigravity louse farm, I dont see how you could possibly conclude a two-foot-long fluff is earthly in origin.Tolland smiled inwardly to think Corky was missing such(prenominal) a simple point. Actually, t present is another possibility. He focused almost on his friend. Corky, youre used to loo world-beater up. Look down. Theres an abundant antigravity environment right hand here on earth. And its been here since prehistoric times.Corky st ared. What the sanatorium are you talking ab verboten?Rachel also looked surprised.Tolland pointed out the window at the moony sea glistening beneath the plane. The maritime.Rachel let out a first gear whistle. Of course.Water is a low-gravity environment, Tolland explained. E verything weighs less underwater. The ocean supports enormous fragile structures that could never exist on land-jellyfish, monster squid, ribbon eels.Corky acquiesced, but only(prenominal) slightly. Fine, but the prehistoric ocean never had giant bugs.Sure, it did. And it still does, in fact. People eat them everyday. Theyre a delicacy in most countries.Mike, who the hell eats giant sea bugsAnyone who eats lobsters, crabs, and shrimp.Corky stared.Crustaceans are basically giant sea bugs, Tolland explained. Theyre a suborder of the phylum Arthropoda-lice, crabs, spiders, insects, grasshoppers, scorpions, lobsters-theyre all related. Theyre all species with jointed append get along withs and outside skeletons.Corky suddenly looked ill.From a classification standpoint, they look a lot want bugs, Tolland explained. Horseshoe crabs tally giant trilobites. And the claws of a lobster resemble those of a large scorpion.Corky sour green. Okay, Ive eaten my last lobster roll.Rachel looked fascinated. So arthropods on land stay small because the gravity s elects naturally for smallness. But in the water, their bodies are buoyed up, so they can grow very large.Exactly, Tolland said. An Alaskan king crab could be wrongly classified as a giant spider if we had limited fossil evidence.Rachels excitement seemed to fade now to concern. Mike, over again barring the curve of the meteorites apparent authenticity, tell me this Do you think the fossils we byword at Milne could possibly have come from the ocean? Earths ocean?Tolland matte up the directness of her gaze and sensed the true weight of her question. Hypothetically, I would have to say yes. The ocean plunge has sections that are 190 million days old. The same age as the fossils. And theoretically the oceans could have sustained life-forms that looked same(p) this.Oh please Corky scoffed. I cant believe what Im hearing here. Barring the come to the fore of the meteorites authenticity? The meteorite is irrefutable. Even if earth has ocean floor the same age as that meteorite, we sure as hell dont have ocean floor that has fusion crust, anomalous nickel content, and chondrules. Youre grasping at straws.Tolland knew Corky was right, and except imagining the fossils as sea creatures had robbed Tolland of some of his awe over them. They seemed somehow more(prenominal) familiar now.Mike, Rachel said, why didnt any of the NASA scientists consider that these fossils might be ocean creatures? Even from an ocean on another planet?Two reasons, authentically. oceanic fossil exemplars-those from the ocean floor-tend to exhibit a plethora of intermingled species. Anything living in the millions of cubic feet of life above the ocean floor will ultimately die and sink to the bottom. This closes the ocean floor becomes a graveyard for species from every depth, pressure, and temperature environment. But the sample at Milne was clean-a single species. It looked more like something we might understand in the desert. A brood of similar animals getting buried in a sandstorm, for example.Rachel nodded. And the second reason you guessed land sort of than sea?Tolland shrugged. Gut instinct. Scientists have always believed space, if it were populated, would be populated by insects. And from what weve observed of space, theres a lot more dirt and didder out there than water.Rachel drop silent.Although, Tolland added. Rachel had him thinking now. Ill admit there are very deep parts of the ocean floor that oceanographers call dead zones. We dont really understand them, but they are areas in which the currents and food sources are such that almost nothing lives there. Just a few species of bottom-dwelling scavengers. So from that standpoint, I suppose a single-species fossil is not entirely out of the question.hullo? Corky grumbled. Remember the fusion crust? The mid-level nickel content? The chondrules? wherefore are we even talking about this?Tolland did not reply.This issue of the nickel content, Rachel said to Corky. Explain this to me again. The nickel content in earth rocks is either very high or very low, but in meteorites the nickel content is at heart a specific midrange window?Corky bobbed his head. Precisely.And so the nickel content in this sample falls precisely within the expected range of values.Very close, yes.Rachel looked surprised. Hold on. Close? Whats that supposed to mean?Corky looked exasperated. As I explained earlier, all meteorite mineralogies are different. As scientists find new meteorites, we unceasingly need to update our calculations as to what we consider an satisfactory nickel content for meteorites.Rachel looked stunned as she held up the sample. So, this meteorite forced you to reassess what you consider acceptable nickel content in a meteorite? It fell outside the established midrange nickel window?Only slightly, Corky discharged back.Why didnt anyone mention this?Its a nonissue. Astrophysics is a dynamic science which is constantly being updated.During an incredibly important analys is?Look, Corky said with a huff, I can assure you the nickel content in that sample is a helluva lot closer to other meteorites than it is to any earth rock.Rachel turned to Tolland. Did you know about this?Tolland gave a reluctant nod. It hadnt seemed a major issue at the time. I was told this meteorite exhibited slightly higher nickel content than seen in other meteorites, but the NASA specialists seemed unconcerned.For good reason Corky interjected. The minera system of logical proof here is not that the nickel content is once and for all meteoritelike, but rather that it is conclusively non-earth-like.Rachel shook her head. Sorry, but in my business thats the kind of faulty logic that gets people killed. Saying a rock is non-earth-like doesnt prove its a meteorite. It only when proves that its not like anything weve ever seen on earth.What the hells the differenceNothing, Rachel said. If youve seen every rock on earth.Corky fell silent a moment. Okay, he finally said, ignore t he nickel content if it makes you nervous. We still have a perfect fusion crust and chondrules.Sure, Rachel said, sounding unimpressed. Two out of three aint bad.83The structure housing the NASA central headquarters was a mammoth spyglass rectangle located at 300 E Street in Washington, D.C. The create was spidered with over two hundred miles of data cabling and thousands of tons of computer processors. It was menage to 1,134 civil servants who oversee NASAs $15 billion annual budget and the day-after-day operations of the twelve NASA bases nationwide.