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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.'"
'All the people that knew the format had died' So what IS the life expectancy of programmers these days?!?
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.
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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.."
No one documented the file format of the data? We should send out a probe to determine whether intelligent life forms exist at NASA.
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.
*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 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.