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Viking Soil Data Points to Life on Mars?
Ross Finlayson writes: "According to this upcoming news release, a University of Southern California has re-analyzed the data from the 1976 Viking Mars lander's soil experiments, and has discovered evidence (including circadian rhythms) that he concludes strengthens the case for life being present on Mars. The scientist also noted the difficulty in gathering the experiment's original data: 'The data were on magnetic tapes, and written in a format so old that the programmers who knew it had died.'"
the uk and esa are doing just that. the mars express/beagle2 mission has a microscope on board. check it out: http://www.beagle2.com/science/cameras.htm
Because it it is an open format and anyone can make the readers, writers, and discs without paying expen$ive royalties to anyone. Note this applies to DVD too. (Only CSS crypto and region coding require royalty payment). This is why there are so many mfgs for CDROM discs and equipment. How many companies make zip drives and disks besides Iomega? And the trend now seems to ne that new CD style (shape/size) disc formats will read older formats. e.g., DVD players do CDs. So I expect CDs to be readable for as long as 3.5in floppies have been.
'All the people that knew the format had died' So what IS the life expectancy of programmers these days?!?
If no one had figured out their format until now they had some serious job security :P
I'm sure they have a copy of those protocol docs right there on the tape. Just in case somebody forgot.
It probably was properly documented. The problem is that there are many ways that documentation can be lost or destroyed. Budgets get cut, contractors change, programs are cancelled, organizations are eliminated, moved or reorganized, people leave, retire or die. There are also the cost and space requirements of storing large volumes of documents for years or decades. Even if the documents still exist, you have to find someone who knows that they exist and where they can be found.
There is a high probability that the computers, software and tape drives used to write the tapes no longer exist. When is the last time that you saw a 7-track, 556 bpi, 1/2 inch, digital tape drive? This was a common data format in the 1970s. Do you have an IBM 360 or UNIVAC computer along with the appropriate operating system and applications software?
I was around when Skylab was reactivated in the late 1970s. NASA had a difficult time finding the needed documentation and software for the reactivation, even though Skylab had been shutdown for less than ten years. They were saved by the "pack rats" that had kept copies of obsolete software and documentation, even though the material should have been destroyed. They were also lucky that the necessary hardware still existed, as it was still in use for the support of newer spacecraft.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Speaking as someone who has done a bit of biological circadian research, I suppose that it could be bacteria or unicellular organisms, but one would have to be convinced that they did not hitch a ride on Viking from Earth to Mars. However, that said, I would be more inclined to believe that the observation of a simple change in levels of radioactivity due to addition of a "nutrient solution" (whatever solution that may be) could not prove the presence of circadian rhythms in a supposed life form. In order to prove that this was indeed a circadian rhythm possibly caused by a life form, one would have to remove the sample from the environment and any external time cues, temperature cues, magnetic cues etc... and demonstrate that whatever phenomenon you were observing persisted in the absence of those cues. This is one of the fundamental requirements for a description of a circadian rhythm. If that were to happen, then I would be VERY interested.
Since, there were still temperature fluctuations in the Viking lander as well as possible influences from the lander itself like the addition of the "nutrient solution" that could have influenced the data, I am not inclined to buy this one. Don't get me wrong here, I am not just naysaying this, as I would love to have definitive proof that alien life exists. I just think that good science will point the way to the truth that is out there and reveal what is also not the truth.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
But... remember this thing called the ozone layer, here on earth? Well it's generated in sunlight at high altitudes, and could very well be generated down on the martian surface. This is all that would be required to create the superoxide effect seen in the "circadian rhythms" activity found in those petri dishes. Careful with that axe, Eugene.
I'm not saying the report is wrong, just that it doesn't suggest any alternative, life-negative, scenarios that are also plausible, more probable even. According to this page, oxygen makes up 0.13% of the martian atmosphere, so I think there might be an appreciable level of ozone as well.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
First, were life to be found on Mars, it would provide strong evidence for what is currently only a theory: That life is as common as dirt, or more properly, nebulae.
It would lend concrete data to the Drake equation. This is the concept of attempting to guess just how many other intelligent species are in our own galaxy. Unfortunately, because of some rather gaping holes in our knowledge, it could be anywhere from 1 to 1 million. This would lend support to the one million end of the scale.
Now, philosophy and metaphysics: Many people of a religious bent seem to be of the notion that this planet is special and unique, that we are THE (as in, the only) children of God, and that the idea of intelligent life out there is just so much poppycock. Were life to be discovered "out there", it would become rather more difficult to hold that position.
I would like to point out a bad assumption that you've made: Just because there is life on this planet, it does NOT follow that there is life elsewhere, and the reason is that our world is so totally unlike any other in our system.
We have liquid water, we have strong seasonal change, our cloud cover is thick enough to block some of the more destructive radiations yet still allows ample energy to reach the surface, etc, etc.
This would be evidence that life can evolve under radically different conditions from our own, which is another thing which we only suspect but couldn't prove, until now... providing that the data is accurate, that is.
So I would say that this is a very, very important discovery.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
Yeah, that search came up with this page, which thoroughly debunked the story of the 25-hour day.
Say no to software patents.
> Either of these formats will be much easier to read decades in the future than zip disks or other proprietary/closed formats.
Aren't we confusing high-level formats (i.e. filesystem layout) with low-level formats here (i.e. how each single bit is represented)? The reason why I ask this is because, errmm, in most cases, Zip disks use a plain old FAT MS-DOS filesystem! The only pecularity is that for some weird reason they use partition number 4 rather than 1.
However, what is different is the low level encoding, i.e. which magnetic patterns represent ones, and which represent zeroes. Many people are not aware of those issues, because they are handled transparently by the drive controller, whereas the OS only has to worry about high-level formatting. And those pecularities are far from trivial, even for a floppy disk or a CD-Rom.
And this might also be the reason why they aren't just posting the tapes to a web site: they may have no way to read those tape into any digital form!
Say no to software patents.
You missed the bit about the hormal cycles versus the sleep/wake pattern (third last paragraph; yes, you do have to read it to the bottom...).
If the externally imposed cycle is sufficiently far from the "natural" 24 hours, only the sleep/wake pattern adjusts to the external stimulus, whereas the more fundamental cycle of body temperature and hormone levels ignores the external stimulus and goes to 24 hours "precisely".
The explanation for the 25 hour cycle was that in the first tests, the subjects controlled their own lights, and accidentally imposed a 25 hour "external" cycle on themselves. This was sufficiently close to the natural cycle of 24 hours that both the sleep/wake and the temperature&hormones cycle could keep up with it.
The point of the 28 hour cycle was to get so far away from the natural cycle that some body functions could no longer follow.
Say no to software patents.
This sounds like a movie ripe for MST3K... they get the results, only the people who record the findings are infested with a Martian thing... oh, let's call him "Eegah" who makes the people use a really silly (oh like ROT 13 let's say) scheme that no one would think of later so the true findings will go un-noticed...
Wheeeee
As bad as they usually are, that's correct. The noun "data" can be used with a singular or plural verb. The word data is the plural of datum.
data (dt, dt, dät)
pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb)
No one documented the file format of the data? We should send out a probe to determine whether intelligent life forms exist at NASA.
Dr. Levin, the guy behind the Viking Labeled Release Experiment, has been a lone voice in the wind the past few years about Viking discovering life, even before this latest interest. Check out his data here.
...where eventually all /. stories are about life on Mars.
--
-- SIGFPE
I could mod this up, but I'd prefer to add my agreement to it. Sorry, karma whores:)
One of the things people have done a little too often in the past is assume that an exported species will be similar in activity in its new environment. Not true. Look at the opossum prolem in New Zealand: they've devastated native forests and contributed to the death of many indigenous species of flaura and fauna. Here in Australia, they're protected, I believe. Over there, they've reproduced like there's no tomorrow. They were introduced for an early fur trade which never really made it.
Now, on Mars, if there's something alive (I doubt it) then we have a specialised organism used to living in low atmospheric density and cold. The possibilities are that it's either going to thrive in a warmer, more rewarding and oxygenated environment or it will die out. Of course, anyone that's tested for antibiotic resistance on a plate knows how fast mutations occur and how easily bacteria can evolve to suit their environs. So which is more likely? Given a large enough sample, I'm pretty sure there would be enough mutants that a population would make it through the bottleneck. And there's no telling what they might do. Remember, small organisms are not just the bottom of the food chain, they're also the base upon which everything else is founded. They also draw from the top of the chain for food.
toeslikefingers.com - because
____________________
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
NASA's true goal is to discover the most strange and useless facts in the universe. Next up:
Study the eye movements of dogs when exposed to the effects of twinkies shot out of cannons.
Either that or the scientists just thought the idea of monkeys floating around in zero G would be really funny to watch (which would really be funny actually...)
Should be plenty of UV to generate ozone, right down to the surface, I guess. And low partial pressure might mean that tri-atomic oxygen is less likely to form? Anyway, this was apparently inside the lander, so who knows what it was exposed to. If you're right, it's another good story down the tubes. Darn.
See what I've been reading.
For when this gets slashdotted, the gist of the story is that the petri dishes shows signs of activity for nine weeks, far too long to be explained by the chemical story. The bacteria's activity was cycling with the temperature, and we know today but didn't know then that that sort of cycle points to cellular activity (so say the reporters at the EurekaAlert!).
I guess the only quibble left to be hashed out is: "Could this be earth bacteria which hitched a ride and survived the trip?" I seem to recall that NASA tried to prevent that from happening, but I was only 15 that year, and easily distracted.
One other thing springs to mind after reading this: DOCUMENT YOUR CODE! The article says:
If they had documented their work properly, someone could have figured out how to read that tape, even after they kicked the bucket.See what I've been reading.
The last time slashdot carried an article about this same Viking 'life on Mars' experient, it was suggested the Gilbert V. Levin (the guy who created this experient) wasn't a member of the NASA religion (cult). The accusation was that NASA scientists believe they are THE special and unique group to discover life, and Levin is an outsider to this community. Specifically, here's the quote that appeared in the Washington Post story:
This Washington Post story obviously takes a slant towards Levin, but there are some interesting comments from NASA... that other experiments onboard Viking failed to confirm life, problems with Levin's approach, etc.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Ha! Can't you see? This is just shameless XML propaganda by NASA. Don't believe them though, obscure binary formats that only you know are just harmless job insurence.
Monkey sense
Dont You Remember, Fortran wasnt Y2K compatable
Heh. You don't do much computation, do you? Call us a bunch of nerds, but our hpcc group was pretty happy when SGI sent us the latest update to their f77/f90/f95 compilers about a momnth ago. "Yay, compiling with -o3 will shave an extra day off this run!"
Fortan is still alive and works like a charm, especially for tried and true atmospheric model algorithms. Heck, the SGI Origin 3400 machine we run most of our jobs on was announced by SGI in July of 2000 and our latest CPU cards were announced in April of 2001.
Ppl will say same of zip disks 30 years from now.
Proprietary disk formats are bad, mkay?
Which "open" disk format do you prefer? MSDOS floppy?
*Sigh*
Would have it been too hard to actually publish the formatting protocol at the time the data was recorded to tape?? My goodness, Viking wasn't even that long ago. I would like to see NASA somehow extract the data from the tape (in any form) and post a huge tarball on their website. Let the community try to make heads or tails of it.
I get the feeling I am feeding a troll, but...
I think the fact that we developed intelligent life on this hunk of rock is proof enough that micro-organisms can exist on other planets.
Have you ever taken a science course? That's pure intellectual laziness. I tend to believe the same thing but I'd never say we have proof.
Just because many of us share a collective "well, no DUH" moment doesn't mean there is proof of jack squat. Proof requires evidence. For further illumination, refer to the dictionary.
I worked for Dr Levin for 10 years in the 80's. In fact he got me started on my IS career (sys36's and 38's, PRG II - God am I that old?). He has always beleived in his experiment and that the results were positive. Just think, I may have worked directly for the first human to discover extraterrestrial life!
I have a little society that grew in a glass of milk that I left on my desk for too long. They built a little city and they almost succeeded in space travel, that is getting out of the glass. If I let them evolve, they just might reach Mars before Nasa does.
--- Worst tagline ever.
They didn't die. They violated some obscure NDA and a large media company *cough* RIAA *cough* had them terminated.
If you're right, it's another good story down the tubes. Darn.
... cuz if there is life, what do you think we are going to do?
Hardly down the tubes. Good science is as much (more?) about disproving "neat" theories than about proving them...
MORE TO THE POINT I know I'll get flamed for saying it, but I'll be glad if we find there is no other life on Mars
We'll do what we always do:
We'll investigate.
We'll take "precautions"
We'll be "careful"
We'll bring BACK sample to analyze
We'll see how the stuff interacts with OUR stuff
And all this being done by an agency that can't even read its own data 25 years later? Nope, sorry folk, but if there is any sort of life that is hardy enough to survive the Martian elements, we'd be better off leaving it ON Mars... buried.
Before it gets the chance to "interact with our stuff"
(Ever seen a lake/river infested by an exotic species? If so, then you know what I'm talking about...)
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
I suspect ease of reading and parsing took second chair to being able to stuff as much data into very limited storage and bandwidth. Limit your storage to a couple k or less, and lets see you make it easy to read meaningful amounds of info. This was spacecraft, after all.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
data standards.
You'd think that NASA, of all people, would store important data in a format thats easy to use later. Or at least keep a copy of the protocol specs around.
However, if we want to keep data stored in a digital format over the long run, how do we do it? Right now, you'd say CDR. But 20 years down the line, how many people will have a CDROM drive? They've only been around about 6 years!
Perhaps we should go back to paper???!?!?
-MR
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
Maybe we should end the debate forever and have a mission to collect soil and bring it back to Earth for actual analysis. It would be hard to dispute physical evidence.
Nevermind the difficulties, but in order to proove it to some people I assume we would need actual evidence, especially to those who think life is unique to Earth (e.g. religious sector).
Otherwise, it's just going to be another debate.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
The data were on magnetic tapes, and written in a format so old that the programmers who knew it had died.
Bah! Programmers never die, they just go sub and don't return().
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
I'm a Mormon and I don't agree with either position. Oh wait, you said moron. Nevermind.
when we can read ancient mars dirt, but not magnetic tape and fortran
--rock me like a huricane? NO rock you
They could have saved a self-describing character stream, a kind of "printout", on the tapes, but what would the point have been? Magnetic tapes are not an archival medium--they get unreliable after a few years on the shelf.
The data format can't be read by any of the newbies, so they need to get the old guys, who they claim to be dead, but are just retired. Not saying the plot was bad, I kinda like movies with Clint, so I tried to put it off, but anyone notice writers are never appreciated in movies or video games anymore?
God spoke to me
If they want to answer this burning question, why don't they just send a probe that's equipped with a microscope? Or am I missing something here?