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Autonomous Robot Finds Life in Atacama Desert
Neil Halelamien writes "Nature and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report that a NASA-funded "robotic astrobiologist" named Zoë (a successor to the Hyperion rover) has found life in Chile's Atacama desert. The Atacama is the Earth's driest desert, with steep slopes and rugged terrain. This is the first robot to remotely detect life, finding bacteria (and lichens, in the less dry areas) by using a fluorescent imager. The robot could also spray special dyes to detect life signatures like DNA, protein, lipids, and carbohydrates. Zoë's next assignment will be to autonomously sample soil over 50 kilometers of the Atacama. The Atacama desert is thought to be similar to Mars; instruments similar to those used on the 1970s Viking missions have previously failed to detect life there."
Most likely, the researchers who put the robot in the desert didn't wash their feet properly.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
A lot of the serious speculation that I have read is that life may exist well under the surface.
Just an interesting tidbit, it has not rained in the Atacama desert for 100s of years.
http://www.extremescience.com/DriestPlace.htm
E = m c^3 Don't drink and derive E = m c^3
Why would life on mars necessarily be DNA-based, and why would protiens and lipids nessarily evolve if life evolves? Certainly, other methods of reproduction may have evolved.
This sig is false.
The big question is will they find life on Earth?
...we can start looking for intelligent beings.
I can't believe it.. must be a software error...
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how much was spent to create this robot? Or, how big is it (the pictures make it look small, but they can be deceiving)? I'm just curious about the likelihood of devices like this going to Mars any time soon.
"Folks bent on reinventing the wheel should understand that if it's not round, it ain't a wheel." - Jonah Goldberg
They're sending mars landers to a desert now?
Yeah, thats cheap... I guess NASA's budget has been cut again.
...demands pay rise and more more holidays.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Autonomous Robot Finds Life in Atacama Desert
"The robot, named Zoe, escaped from a Palo Alto robotics research laboratory earlier this year. Scientists assumed it was lost until tourists photographed it in a remote part of the Atacama desert this week. In a statement to the police the robot said "I'm not going back to the lab. I've made friends out here, why would I leave?"
Whatever happened with that study about the chemical reactions they found on Mars - and thought was life at first - following the day-cycle (the 25 hours of sunlight on Mars or something similar)? I thought the verdict was still out on this?
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
This is Slashdot, where everyone has played NetHack at least once. We all know what lichens are.
Good thing they didn't demo the device before Congress: there's certainly no intelligent life to detect there.
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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
Moisture is probably more than enough to sustain lichen and bacteria colony. Especially that this does not get that hot (link from article say it all) and part are even snowy due to altitude. Actually it may be the driest desert but not the hotest. So getting water might be a problem but eveaporation mightnot be the biggest problem. Heck, even in sahara, where you have mostly sand, you have life.
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Because they went out on a Saturday night.
During the week, the Atacama desert is really dead.
We should send Google to search for life on Mars.
"...The robot could also spray special dyes to detect life signatures like DNA, protein, lipids, and carbohydrates..."
In related news, Atacama tribe sues NASA for building spray-painting robot, spoiling natural habitat of ancient desert. NASA plans bigger robot equipped with boom box and head scarf to verify once and for all that life does not exist there. "Instead of trying to find life, we figured we just keep making our robots more and more annoying until some alien shows up with a ray gun."
"The robot could also spray special dyes to detect life signatures like DNA, protein, lipids, and carbohydrates."
Hopefully they are non-toxic. Otherwise "Good news: we found life. Bad news: we just killed it". Especially if you are looking for life in difficult landscapes you don't know how endangered something is.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
So the Atacama is similar to Mars? Well both may be dry, but the Atacama temperature range is 0..25'C, and Mars is, well, a lot colder?
Don't just assume this robot will function correctly on Mars at Martian temperatures (or even after the space travel at inter-stellar temperatures (let a alone the radiation)), or that its various detection methods that function happily in the -10..+35'C zone will work happily at Martian temperatures and atmospheric pressures.
Interesting that the article didn't mention either of these, and a quick scan of the Slashdot replies missed these relatively obvious problems.
If you're anywhere near habitation, it's not unusual to see bits of garbage and bits of toilet paper from campers blowing around -- without moisture to break it down it hangs around forever. Archaeologists have found Inca textiles that had been dropped in the Atacama desert that after 500 year were in nearly perfect condition.
When I was there, it had been over five years since the last rainfall. Yet the following year, they had a small rain storm. My relatives, who were doing research there, said that within days the desert was completely covered with tiny, colorful flowers. My sister in law said that if you walked among them, the fragence was so overpoweringly sweet it made you retch. And of couse this display wasn't intended for humans -- it was for the vast clouds of insects that emerged from the apparently sterile soil to pollinate the flowers.
Obviously, there is a tremendous amount of life latent in the soil. There is a huge difference between a few inches of rain per decade and no rain at all.
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I thought the idea of a fog collector was cool, so I did a little more research into the indigenous people. They wear face masks while outside to protect themselves from the elements. Here's a picture.