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To this day, I feel this was a violation of the pre-launch protocols for the biological experiments. If the mass spectrometer trumped all, why fly the biologicals? If the biological experiments were worth doing, why were they not worth investigating further? Gilbert Levin (the Labeled Release experiment PI), for example, has always felt that the LR experiment detected biology. Is that not worthy of a followup ?

Instead, this was announced in such a fashion as to make it as uninteresting as possible and the Mars science budget was cut to the point that, in the early 1980's, it was almost impossible for a student to get a job in the field. The JPL Mars crew was broken up, let go or reassigned (I was at JPL at the time, I saw it happen). Basically, a generation was lost (Viking Lander 1 died, from a lack of funding, in 1982; the next successful US mission to Mars was 1997).

Because of the way this was handled, this problem has never been investigated further on Mars. We have had successful 4 lander / rovers since then, but no biological tests whatsoever. I must say that, since then, I have not had a lot of respect for the "conventional wisdom" of the Mars science community. In my book, this was blown, and blown badly, with serious damage to the course of science.

This a very interesting account. Do you have any opinion as to why the findings were presented the way they were?

Each Viking Lander had 3 biological experiments, for a total of 6.

I worked on Viking (but not on the biological experiments), and before the mission landed I received a bunch of NASA PR type hype, including the protocols for the biological experiments. These were each (at a very high level) of the same form -

- collect a soil sample
- add something to it (such as water or nutrients)
- see what happens

and, as a control, repeat this with another sample after "sterilizing" it (by heating it).

At the one bit level, a successful biological result would be something positive happens to the active sample, the same something doesn't happen to the control.

The biological experimental protocols did not mention the mass spectrometer at all.

In the actual case, each biological experiment (all 6) returned a positive result for biology "at the one bit level." The Labeled Release (LR) experiment was more or less what they were expecting, the other 2 experiments (in each case) did something, just not what was expected. In every case, the control runs had a much smaller or no reaction.

I, following this, actually expected the Viking project to announce that life had probably been found, with positive (if not fully understood) results from the 6 biological trials. Instead, they announced a negative result, based on not finding organic matter with the mass spectrometer. The conclusion was that the positive results were due to some (unknown, and still unknown) inorganic chemistry of the surface, which went over like a wet balloon.

To this day, I feel this was a violation of the pre-launch protocols for the biological experiments. If the mass spectrometer trumped all, why fly the biologicals? If the biological experiments were worth doing, why were they not worth investigating further? Gilbert Levin (the Labeled Release experiment PI), for example, has always felt that the LR experiment detected biology. Is that not worthy of a followup ?

Instead, this was announced in such a fashion as to make it as uninteresting as possible and the Mars science budget was cut to the point that, in the early 1980's, it was almost impossible for a student to get a job in the field. The JPL Mars crew was broken up, let go or reassigned (I was at JPL at the time, I saw it happen). Basically, a generation was lost (Viking Lander 1 died, from a lack of funding, in 1982; the next successful US mission to Mars was 1997).

Because of the way this was handled, this problem has never been investigated further on Mars. We have had successful 4 lander / rovers since then, but no biological tests whatsoever. I must say that, since then, I have not had a lot of respect for the "conventional wisdom" of the Mars science community. In my book, this was blown, and blown badly, with serious damage to the course of science.

The Viking lander checked for microscopic life on Mars back in 1971. It wasn't a very sensitive test; the lander shot out some "sticky strings" and wound them back in. The lander had a unit which tested whether anything collected assimilated any of a few simple compounds. It didn't.

This established that Mars isn't teeming with microorganisms, like Earth. That doesn't eliminate all possibility of life, or something like it, but it did establish that there's no pervasive ecosystem there.

I could never understand why one of the biological researchers didn't just say, "we have detected life, by our published criteria, but we don't understand it." However, none did.

Dr. Gilbert Levin leader of the labeled release experiment did just that:

http://mars.spherix.com/

http://mars.spherix.com/

In 1997 he presented a paper showing that after 21 years of study of the data he felt that:

Objective application of the scientific process to 21 years of continued research and to new developments on Mars and Earth forced this conclusion. Of all the many hypotheses offered over the years to explain the LR Mars results, the only possibility fitting all the relevant data is that microbial life exists in the top layer of the Martian surface.

The main argument against Levin's conclusions was that the Viking lander's Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) experiment showed no evidence for the presence of organic compounds in the Martian soil. As an analytical chemist who has worked in the field of GCMS since before the time of the Viking probes, I have my doubts about the Viking GCMS experiment having enough sensitivity and reliability to exclude the low level presence of organic material in the Martian soil.

In 2000, Dr. Steven A. Benner published a paper concluding that the Viking GCMS was insensitive to certain organic molecules including those left behind by any microbial life that might have been on Mars. At the same time Dr Joseph Miller reanalyzed the original Viking labelled release experiment data and concluded that it showed circadian rhythms thus supporting the case for Martian life.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-00g.html

Now Joop Houtkooper proposes further evidence that Levin was right. I think Levin will go down in scientific history like Wigner the proposer of the continental drift theory in the 1920's, as a researcher whose ideas were scorned by large sections of the scientific community at the time, but that were eventually proved right.

Plain water can't stay liquid for very long at Mar's near vacuum. So the question is what water solutions can stay liquid at that temperature and pressure and for how long?

The triple point of water is around 0.01 C and 0.006 atm, which tells you that even plain water can be liquid at surface conditions that can exist on Mars. Salt solutions can exist in liquid form over a much wider range of conditions.

See also here:

http://mars.spherix.com/spie2/spie98.htm

Klaus Biemann was a famous and respected chemist and mass-spectrometrist who had done much of the original work in developing GC-MS, While Gilbert Levine was a relative unknown who had run a start company that sold environmental testing equipment based on the LR technology Levine had invented. Bieman to it as an affront to himself the chemists and mass spectrometry as a technique that a biology experiment could detect life when his chemistry experiment could not. So he took it upon himself to launch an unremitting campaign to prove that the LR results were a false positive. The claimed to have proved this to be so but this was specious as no one had proposed a chemical model that would reproduce the Martian LR results in the laboratory.

Meanwhile experimental tests helped show the reliability of the LR experiments. Samples of Lunar rock from the Apollo missions tested negative, while Antarctic ice cores, which had been shown to contain micro-organisms at a very low level, gave positive results. However Biemann and other chemists, together with those that just simply refused to believe life on Mars is possible, had more or less silenced the debate.

I write this as a chemist who had just started work on GC-MS (and to me Biemann was something of a hero) at the time of the Viking landings (yes I am ancient). However I am convinced now after looking at the evidence that there is a strong case to argue that the LR experiments on the Viking landers provided strong evidence for the presence of microbial life in Martian soil.

"[...] go to Mars and stop doing experiments about where life would grow in Earth even if we think it is not possible."

Unfortunately, first you actually have to develop the technology to find the little buggers. That's probably more easily done on Earth than it is on Mars. Thus, we build the "life detector" here on Earth, test it out to make sure it will work in an environment where we expect that life might form, and "qualify" the device. Then we'll ship it to Mars.

Remember the "life detectors" on the Viking probes? The results were inconclusive (ie, life or "exotic chemistry"). We don't really want to send these devices and then have more debates. Let's get the device working here on Earth in such a way that nobody can really argue it's effectiveness. Then we'll ship it to Mars.

The rovers up there now are really only designed to study geology, and have no life detection capability. In the absence of giraffes on the horizon (which in Mars' case we have not got), they could be running over living microbes all the time and never know it.

In a few years there should be rovers on Mars that can do real sample analysis and look for evidence of life.

BTW, Gilbert Levin still thinks his Viking Experiment detected life.

It should be noted that the claim about whether life on Mars exists is not without contrevery. Levin contends that the Viking probes did detect evidence of life on Mars based on biochemical signatures. This past evidence is now supported by the belief that Mars might have an organic methane source. There is also some evidence that Viking detected a circadian rhythm, but like all conclusions draw on such a limited data set, there are a lot of interpretations.

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Wired article as proof

For some years now, the principle investigator for the 1976 Viking Lander Labeled Release Experiment has claimed that his experiment did find evidence of life on Mars. The problem is that the results from the other Viking experiments was inconsistent with this, so NASA decided that the LRE detected a non-biological chemical reaction.

Is this new data about methane consistent with the Viking LRE data?

Dr. Gilbert V. Levin's company Spherics does all three.

To follow up what I mentioned above, I was reading some of the other posts and down near the bottom, some folks mentioned that there are some objections to the peroxide interpretation of the Viking data, including the maker of the original instrument.

A link is here.

I'd never read the primary sources refuting the peroxide argument before and now that I've read them a bit, I think that the stance I take in the message above should be softened a bit. I'm still dubious that surface conditions on Mars are hospitable to organic life but there's more wiggle room on that than I had thought previously.

Agreed! I don't know about any ancient Mars civilizations, but it doesn't seem at all farfetched that simple life forms could thrive on Mars. Life finds a way to live. That's its job.

Concerning your comment on personal beliefs and religion in science, check out the "Religion, Philosophy. Society, and Science" section of this paper. Crazy stuff.

After reading this paper and several others by Dr. Levin, I have to wonder why the general public has no idea about these findings. Don't they merit public discussion? Why don't *any* of NASA's planned Mars missions contain direct life-detection experiments? IANACT (Conspiracy Theorist), but something smells fishy to me.

After reading this paper and several others by Dr. Levin, I have to wonder why the general public has no idea about these findings. Don't they merit public discussion? Why don't *any* of NASA's planned Mars missions contain direct life-detection experiments? IANACT (Conspiracy Theorist), but something smells fishy to me.