Meteor in Wisconsin: Allen Hills meteorite 840001, from Mars and
discovered in an expedition to Antarctica in 1984, became world
famous twelve years later, when NASA and the White House
announced jointly that the rock might contain traces of
extraterrestrial life. The discovery sparked an intense debate
that still stands today. A few months ago, a study published in
the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta pointing back to
this possibility and some websites specialized scientific
information spread a rumor that the U.S. space agency would soon
new data that confirm the presence of biological traces of
microscopic creatures in the rock. The truth is that, until now,
scientists involved in research have adhered to the strictest
silence. However, researchers at the University of Houston in
Texas (USA) have released another new data on the meteor: it is
much younger than previously thought. It has 4.091 million
years, 400 less than initially estimated, as published in the
journal Science. And what does this me