Popular Science Reportage and Neologisms

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

Subscribers to a NASA news service receive periodic email on
popular topics.
 Looking over a recent note, I was struck by the number of recent
 coinages it contained. I snipped some of them for your inspection.

> NASA Space Science News for December 14, 1999
>
> Meet Conan the Bacterium: A radiation-resistant microbe could play a
> major role in Martian exploration...

> <http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast14dec99_1.htm >

> ... D. radiodurans growing on a nutrient agar plate. The red
> color is due to carotenoid pigment.

There's that -oid ending tacked onto 'carotene', popularly held to be
an oxidative damage fixer, and part of the advice we get to increase the
orange and green components of our diet.

> "Deinococcus radiodurans beats most of the constraints for survival of
> life on Mars - radiation, cold, vacuum, dormancy, oxidative damage, and
> other factors," said Dr. Robert Richmond, a research biologist at NASA's
> Marshall Space Flight Center. With other scientists, he is investigating the
> possible utility of extremophiles to serve human exploration to inhospitable
> locations.

"Extremophile" - evocative of 'extreme sports' to my mind.

> The Sojourner Mars Rover nuzzles up to Yogi.

'Sojourner' has been around for a while in this context. I suspect
NASA single-handedly saved the word from falling into disuse.

> D. radiodurans has been dubbed a polyextremophile by Richmond,
> Sridhar, and Daly.

Not just an extremophile, but a polyextremophile!


> Extremophiles have been known to scientists for decades but often were
> regarded a laboratory oddity. The discovery of what appears to be
> nanobacteria (or nanobes, smaller than microbes) in a meteorite
> from Mars (Alan Hills 84001, or ALH84001) catapulted
> extremophiles into the spotlight as a model for possible
> lifeforms on Mars.

The words nanobacteria or nanobes fall fresh on my ears.


> "Daly has been active in developing D. radiodurans as a special model
> for bioremediation to clean radioactive supersites left over from the
> Cold War,"

'Bioremediation' is a word that sits well with another recent
coinage, 'supersite'.

> Extremophile habitats on Earth cover a range of conditions:
> temperatures near boiling or below freezing; a nearly total lack
> of water, or water that ranges from alkaline to acidic or salty;
> non-carbon foods; and a lack of oxygen....
>  The best hope is that life got started some billions
> of years ago when conditions were more hospitable, and that
> a few microbes adapted to extreme conditions or learned how to
>  hibernate below the surface.
> "But if they wake up too late, they run into the ultimate
> restriction, too much radiation damage that has accumulated
> if it's not repaired," Richmond said.
>    "At that point, the population is dead."

There's a vivid paragraph - about waking up dead.

> "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink."
> Mars Pathfinder landed in what was once a flood plain

Full marks for a poetic quote - but much better to quote it accurately.
 'Pathfinder' is another very evocative label for a roamer.

> The ultimate step would be the popular notion of terraforming,
> reshaping the environment of Mars to make it more hospitable
> to humans....
> ... a Seabee's motto is, "The difficult we do now.
> The impossible takes a little longer."

This editor has something for everybody, it seems to me.

Credits go to ....

> NASA's Space Science News mail server. This is a free service.
>     http://science.nasa.gov/news/subscribe.htm
> Linda Porter  Code SD23
> Science Systems Department
> NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center
> Huntsville AL  35812
>
> linda.porter@msfc.nasa.gov
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brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK