Russian Scientist's Claim of Life on Venus Proven False

A respected Russian scientist claims to have found signs of life on Venus in photographs taken by a Soviet probe 30 years ago. However, outside analysis suggests he is breathing life into an assortment of camera lens covers and image blurs.

According to the Russian news service Ria Novosti, Leonid Ksanfomaliti, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences who worked on unmanned Soviet missions to Venus during the 1970s and '80s, has written a new article in the journal Solar System Research. In the article, he calls attention to several objects photographed by the Venera-13 landing probe, a spacecraft that landed on Venus in 1982. The objects — including features described as a disc and a scorpion — appear to change locations from one photo to the next. "Let's boldly suggest that the objects' morphological features would allow us to say that they are living," Ksanfomaliti stated, according to Ria Novosti.

Whether the scientist really has suggested that the old photographs contain living creatures that were somehow overlooked previously, or whether his words have been mistranslated, misconstrued or should have been quietly ignored, the claim has made headlines around the globe.

In one image,the Venera-13 landing probe is seen parked on the rocky Venusian foreground, and an object shaped somewhat like a crab stands inches from the probe. In another image, also taken by Venera-13, this crab-like object appears to be in a different location. [NASA Debunks Mysterious UFO Near Venus]

According to Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, who processes many of the images taken during NASA's Mars missions, higher-resolution versions of the Venera-13 images show that the crab-like object is actually a mechanical component, not a living creature. The same object shows up in a photograph taken by an identical landing probe, Venera-14, which landed nearby on Venus.

"If those objects were already on the surface of Venus, what are the chances that Venera 13 and 14, which landed nearly 1,000 kilometers apart, would both land inches away from the only ones in sight and they would be in the same positions relative to the spacecraft? It makes much more sense that it's a piece of the lander designed to break off during the deployment of one of the scientific instruments," Hill told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to SPACE.com.

According to NASA, the half-circle components are camera lens covers that popped off the Venera probes after they landed. As for why they appear to be in different places in the two Venera-13 photos, "Venera-13 had two cameras, one in front and one in back. The one image shows the front camera lens cap and the other shows the rear camera lens cap, not one lens cap that moved," said Ted Stryk, a photo editor who reprocesses and enhances many NASA and Soviet space program images.

In fact, the half-circle objects are famous for being lens caps, because the one that popped off Venera-14's camera landed exactly where a spring-loaded arm was meant to touch the Venusian surface in order to measure its compressibility. The lander ended up measuring properties of the cap.

The other photograph highlighted by Ksanfomaliti, which supposedly shows a scorpion-like creature, contains a blur. "The features that Ksanfomaliti shows are nothing more than processed noise, at best, in some particularly bad versions of the images. They are not in the original data," Stryk said.

Or, as Hill put it, the image is an example of "letting your mind see patterns in low-resolution data that simply aren't real."

Toyota finds way to avoid using rare earth: report

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp has developed a way to make hybrid and electric vehicles without the use of expensive rare earth metals, in which China has a near-monopoly, Japan's Kyodo News reported.

Toyota, the world's top producer of fuel-saving hybrid cars such as the Prius, could bring the technology to market in two years if the price of rare earths does not come down, Kyodo said, citing a source familiar with the matter.

A Toyota spokeswoman said the company continues to research ways to reduce rare earth usage and has no time frame yet for commercialization.

Rare earth metals like neodymium and dysprosium are used in the powerful magnets in motors that power hybrid and electric cars, and demand is expected to surge as more of the environmentally friendly cars hit the market.

China produces more than 95 percent of the world's rare earth metals. Its efforts to limit exports, citing resource depletion and environmental degradation, have alarmed its customers and trading partners and have sent prices soaring.

Japan accounts for a third of global rare earth demand and is aiming to cut consumption, providing subsidies for recycling and investing in new ways to limit their use.

Space Wine is Aged with a 4.5 Billion Year Old Meteorite

Ian Hutcheon has always loved wines and astronomy, and "wanted to find some way of combining the two." Thus, Meteorito was created - a red wine made out of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes...and a bit of space.

A 4.5 billion year old meteorite rests at the bottom of the wine barrel for 12 months while it's undergoing malolactic fermentation, which is a process that softens the wine's tarty flavors. The 3" meteorite that actually belongs to an anonymous American collector came from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. "When you drink this wine, you are drinking elements from the birth of the solar system," Hutcheon said.

It's believed that the tiny space stone fell to earth some 6,000 years ago at the Atacama Desert in Chile. The idea behind Meteorito's creation, according to Hutcheon, is to give people the opportunity to be in contact with something from outside our planet. When asked how the meteorite actually affects the wine, he vaguely answered that it gives the liquor a "livelier taste."

Unfortunately for space liquor enthusiasts out there, Meteorito is only available at an observatory Hutchen launched in 2007 called Centro Astronomico Tagua Tagua in Chile. However, he plans to export it around the world in the future.

Meteorito, the space-aged wine