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Little Green Plants on Mars?

Posted by michael on from the body-snatchers dept.

moorhens writes "The BBC is reporting the first evidence for chlorophyll on Mars. Without chlorophyll, plants' green pigment, and photosynthesis, life on Earth would be limited to deep ocean volcanic vents and politicians."

13 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Scientific press releases by nucal · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Given the controversial nature of their findings and the early stage of the research, the scientists want to hold back any claims about what they may have found until they have done more work and prepared a detailed paper for submission in a scientific journal.

    But they are happy to use a non-peer reviewed press release to publicize their findings. The potential of plant life on Mars is amazing, but the way this news was released is pretty irresponsible.

    1. Re:Scientific press releases by DeadVulcan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But they are happy to use a non-peer reviewed press release to publicize their findings. [...] the way this news was released is pretty irresponsible.

      I have to say, I'm a little tired of hearing the same kind of comments over and over, bemoaning irresponsibility and "bad science."

      I can't find any evidence that these people prepared a press release (if you can show me one, then I might agree with your position). A "press release," remember, is written up and handed to the press. If a journalist comes knocking and you answer some questions, that's not a press release. It seems to me likely that the latter is what happened here.

      And if an eager journalist does come knocking, I would prefer to talk to them myself, rather than leaving them to get their information from people who might not know what they're talking about. Nor do I think it's a really good idea to be doing scientific work in secrecy (yes, even secrecy from journalists). I, personally, would want to be able to impress on them what's certain and what's not. If they ignore me, then they are the ones being irresponsible, not me.

      Now, the whole cold fusion story was poorly handled precisely because the scientists didn't merely talk to the press, they themselves took it to the press before they took it to a peer-reviewed journal. There's a very, very big difference, IMHO.

      This BBC article wasn't even that poorly written, either. There was a bit of poor word choice ("two areas close to Pathfinder [...] have the spectral signature of chlorophyll." - I think "a spectral signature consistent with that of chlorophyll" would have been more accurate); but it wasn't all that bad, I think.

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    2. Re:Scientific press releases by nucal · · Score: 3, Informative
      This is an abstract of a poster that Dr. Stoker is presenting Search for Spectral Signatures of Life at the Pathfinder Landing Site at the Astrobiology Conference next week - presumably sent in a while ago.

      The Superpan, an image product from the Pathfinder lander camera, is a multispectral panorama of the Pathfinder landing site acquired in 15 wavelengths in the spectral range 440 - 1100 nm. We have performed an automated search of the Superpan image cubes for the spectral signature associated with chlorophyll. First, images were calibrated to radiance values and then the multispectral images were co-registered to subpixel accuracy. An automated pixel-to-pixel search was performed on a 3-filter set of images (530 nm, 670 nm, 980 nm) to identify pixels where the following condition was met: 530 nm > 670 nm, and 980nm > 670 nm. Thus, we searched for the spectral signature associated with red light absorption by chlorophyll. When this case was met by the search routine, we plotted a full spectrum for the involved pixels and carefully examined the images. The condition was met for small areas in six image cases. All of these cases occur in near field images, where resolution is highest. Four of the cases occur on the spacecraft and appear to be associated with spacecraft structure. Two intriguing cases occur in small areas on the ground near the spacecraft.

      So it was an abstract, not a press release. And partially cmpleted studis are certainly fair game for a scientific meeting. But, if it is not ready for publicaton in a scientific journal, than why is it ready for the popular press? Obviously Dr. Stoker's call ... granted, getting BBC-caliber press is tough to turn down.

  2. We need to go to Mars by jspey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Dammit, can we just send some people to Mars already? All this work with robots going around and looking at Mars and analyzing the soil and air and whatever is impressive but we'd learn a lot more if we could just send some people out there and have them do the collection and analyze everything and bring some of it back with them. People can travel a lot farther than the little robot rovers can and they can do it a lot more dependably and there's a lot more that can be done to analyze Martian soil and air here on earth rather than on site. Argh! Stupid polititians not giving stupid NASA enough money to build a stupid spaceship to go to stupid Mars. Well, hopefully this discovery will spur someone to go to Mars. Well, unless they end up not finding conclusive data.

    Mr. Spey

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  3. You forgot lawyers... by swillden · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... but maybe you were just oversimplifying, since lawyers are larval politicians.

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  4. Hey, what a groovy color, that looks just like... by aldarion · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Close examination revealed that four of the cases occurred on the Pathfinder spacecraft itself. But two regions showed a chlorophyll signature in the soil around Pathfinder.

    The fact that four out of six possible matches are on the spacecraft makes me really skeptical about the whole thing. Moreover, from reading the article, one might think they took just "any old picture" from the mission and ran it through some simple filter algorithms, to see if they found something interesting. Of course, such methods can be very valuable tools, especially at large scales, but this looks like a bit of overinterpretation to me. Plus chlorophylls?!? Come on, shouldn't we be able to detect those from orbital images or even Hubble, especially if they are so abundant in the soil?

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  5. Piss-poor science.... by Doctor+Fishboy · · Score: 3, Flamebait

    I'd be extremely interested to see their 'spectra' of the chlorophyll patches. I've worked with broadband astronomical imaging for a few years, and even straight forward accurate photometry can be fraught with subtle systematic effects due to the nature of the camera and the filters. My money is on scattered light from a combination of the sun-camera-rock position causing the measured colours to go skew, or an inorganic mineral with a similiar response curve to chlorophyll.

    Of course, I can't go and look at the paper for myself because there is no refereed and accepted paper - releasing it as a press release when the work hasn't been peer-reviewed is just fucking stupid.

    Sloppy. Damn sloppy.

    Dr Fish

  6. Re:Hey, what a groovy color, that looks just like. by SIGFPE · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Looking for a particular spectral signature probably just means looking for pixels with RGB in a certain domain. Maybe they have some other channels too: IR and UV from detectors alongside the camera (that might explain the 'image registration' issues), so they're looking at multispectral images. Either way: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and pixels of a particular colour are barely even interesting - let alone extraordinary. Sounds like yet another scam to get funding to me.

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    -- SIGFPE
  7. Indeed by JeremyYoung · · Score: 2
    From a Space.com article:
    "Stoker has said they did not find evidence of chlorophyll or any evidence of life on Mars," the spokesperson said. "There's really nothing to report. I think they [the BBC] read more into the abstract than is really there."
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  8. Re-edit for brevity and clarity by Alsee · · Score: 2

    The editor clearly did a poor job. The corrected version is below. In order to avoid introducing any editorial bias that might twist the author's intent, paragraphs where either included or deleted in their entirety. The only changes I made [in brackets] are three corrections of fact fully supported by later statements.

    An analysis of data obtained by the Pathfinder mission to the Red Planet in 1997 suggests there could be chlorophyll - the molecule used by plants and other organisms on Earth to extract energy from sunlight - in the [Pathfinder spacecraft].

    Researchers stress their work is in a very preliminary state and they are far from making definite claims.

    A detailed analysis of the images of the landing site now reveals     [four areas of the] Pathfinder that have the spectral signature of chlorophyll.

    According to experts it might be highly significant - or could be just a patch of coloured     [paint].

    In Dr Stoker's study six regions of the Superpan matched positive for the chlorophyll signature.

    Close examination revealed that four of the cases occurred on the Pathfinder spacecraft itself. But two regions showed a chlorophyll signature in the soil around Pathfinder.

    -

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  9. I take it back by SIGFPE · · Score: 2

    I take back what I said about a scam. I had a look at the abstract of the poster on the web site. This is just a poster. This is no giant research project, it's just someone who's had the initiative to do a nice little analysis of old data and put up a poster about it at a conference. They're not making wild claims and all that's available online is an abstract. This is about as far from publication as you can get. This is truly terrible reporting by the news agencies.

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    -- SIGFPE
  10. Re:Last time I checked.... by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Since we don't have a real sample of the plant life form, if there it is indeed there, we can't say how it differs to what we find on Earth. Since there are bacteria that can withstand amazing amounts of radiation, and others that can withstand other extreme conditions, what is there to say that no plants have cells adapted to this sort of environment. Heck, what even says that the source of the chlorophyll signature are plants, it could just as well be from bacteria that uses cholophyll for its soucrce of energy.

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  11. go taikonauts! by fantomas · · Score: 2

    It would be quite funny if the Chinese hacked together a solution on this one, or maybe did a combined effort with the Russians.


    Seems like the USA is the place everybody is holding back on the possibilities of space, it is the Russians who are up for opening up to tourism, the Chinese who have the big dream for their country, Europeans doing a solid commercial job of launching satellites down Guyana way.


    Oh, Don't forget it is Yuri's night this Friday...