Jockstrip: The world as we know it

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND

The European Space Agency, on its esa.int Web Site, asks the ultimate question: "Is life a highly improbable event or is it rather the inevitable consequence of a rich chemical soup available everywhere in the cosmos?"

ESA says scientists have new signs amino acids, the so-called building-blocks of life, can form not only in comets and asteroids but also in the interstellar space. That goes along with the theory the main ingredients for life came from outer space so chemical processes leading to life likely occurred elsewhere.

ESA says it hopes its upcoming missions, Rosetta and Herschel, will provide a wealth of new information. The Rosetta spacecraft, to be launched next year, will be the first mission ever to orbit and land on a comet -- Comet 46P/Wirtanen. Beginning in 2011, Rosetta will get two years to dig deep for details of the chemical composition of the comet.

If amino acids can form in the space amid the stars, as the new evidence suggests, ESA says research also must focus on the chemistry in the interstellar space, which is the main goal of astronomers preparing for ESA's space telescope Herschel.

Herschel, with the largest mirror of any imaging space telescope, is to be launched in 2007. It will be able to see a type of radiation never been detected before -- far-infrared and submillimetre light -- precisely what you need to detect if you are searching for complex chemical compounds, such as the organic molecules.

NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS

Water and warmth are key in the search for life and NASA says using instruments on its 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft surprised scientists have found enormous quantities of buried treasure lying just under the surface of the Red Planet.

They say they've found enough water ice to fill Lake Michigan twice over and that may be only the tip of the iceberg.

"This is really amazing," says William Boynton of the University of Arizona. "This is the best direct evidence we have of subsurface water ice on Mars. What we have found is much more ice than we ever expected."

NASA Mars Program scientist Jim Gavin says they've suspected for some time Mars once had huge quantities of water. But where did all the water go? What are the implications for life on Mars?

"Measuring and mapping the icy soils in the polar regions of Mars as the Odyssey team has done is an important piece of this puzzle, but we need to continue searching, perhaps much deeper underground, for what happened to the rest of the water we think Mars once had," Gavin said.

TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING

The U.S. economic empire -- which now looks fairly rosy to the casual viewer -- may soon be on the verge of decline, according to one financial prognosticator. A telltale sign to watch for is higher interest rates.

Marc Faber, managing director of Marc Faber Ltd. and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, writes for Forbes all great empires -- over history he talks about Rome and Britain -- come to a point of accelerating inflation, rising interest rates and a sharp depreciation of the currency -- the brink at which the United States finds itself.

"In the long run, empire maintenance proves to be far too costly and inevitably leads to inflation, rising interest rates and a depreciating currency," he writes. "This is not to say that there are no good investment opportunities in empires, but better opportunities arise elsewhere."

For investments, he says, translate that into a move toward Asian stocks or commodities such as gold and grain.

Backing up his claim, Faber notes Sydney Homer, in "History of Interest Rates," wrote interest rates repeat themselves over centuries, declining as nations develop and thrive and rising as nations decline and fall.

AND FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY

It's been a decade since a nasty little Hurricane named Andrew blew the daylights out of South Florida and the good news is weather forecasters have made dramatic improvements in their ability to forecast Mother Nature's worst events.

Martin Merzer writes in the Miami Herald better computers and tracking equipment will make a difference when the 2002 hurricane season begins on Saturday.

James Franklin, of the National Hurricane Center in Miami-Dade County says the science of hurricanes has made "remarkable progress" in the decade since Andrew. "Track forecasts are 20 to 30 percent better than they were 10 years ago," he said.

When Andrew struck the morning of Aug. 24, 1992, the two-day forecast had an average error of nearly 200 miles. Now, it's down to 145 miles and shrinking yearly.

Today's more powerful computers create models that can distill order from the chaos of the atmosphere and ocean, Merzer reports. Four times daily, meteorologists can bring up models with the latest storm data and survey surrounding atmospheric conditions to predict what will happen to the storm.

Older statistical models compared current data to historical records of other storms to predict the future.

"It's getting pretty hard to outthink these models," Franklin said. "The computer power available to them over the last 10 years has increased tremendously."