Slashdot Mirror
Viking Mars Mission Might Have Missed Life
Johan Louwers writes "The Viking mars mission in 1976 might have missed signs of life due to not completely working analysis equipment. GC-MS on the Viking 1976 Mars missions did not detect organic molecules on the Martian surface, even those expected from meteorite bombardment. This result suggested that the Martian regolith might hold a potent oxidant that converts all organic molecules to carbon dioxide rapidly relative to the rate at which they arrive. This conclusion is influencing the design of Mars missions. We reexamine this conclusion in light of what is known about the oxidation of organic compounds generally and the nature of organics likely to come to Mars via meteorite."
Is this about non-working equipement or harsh environment capable of destroying organic molecules before they can be detected?
It seems a little silly to base 2006 missions on results from a 30 year old set of space technology. Sure, we were in our heyday of space exploration during the 70's, but our analytical equipment was light years behind where we are now. The largest computes had fractions of the computing power of today's Blackberry's, and we couldn't transmit data faster than ~300 bps back then. Both of these limitations (which don't exist today), would seriously impede the ability to detect signs of life.
Rather than try to deduce why the analyses of 1976 didn't show signs of organic compounds on the surface, why not just perform better tests now with the next Mars mission?
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Wrong. The Viking mission detected microbial life. I was a 12 year old paper boy at the time. I remember, this made front page headline news. The Viking mission detected microbial life. The following day it was retracted. I kind of believed that the retraction was false. I always did. Perhaps manipulation from the right wing of our government thinking that we were not ready for the information. hey , if microbes can survive deep in the permafrost in the Antartic, then hey, microbes can survive on mars
deep in the martian soil.
As far as advanced life, well think about how many stars there are, followed by how many solar systems, and the expanse of the universe, heck... an alien life form may be so far out there that we'd never make contact, but heck, it's possible that there's life
out there.
I still vividly remember watching the BBC 'April Fool' documentary 'Alternative 3' in the 70's which scared the hell out of me. For those that never heard of it, it was a documentry about the various scientists that were going missing at the time (for real, in the UK) and claimed they had found out the Earth was dying and the governments of the world had drawn up 3 solutions. 1 & 2 were something like reducing population growth, killing excess/useless members of the population etc. but 3 was to go to Mars, seed the atmosphere and start to collonise it. They had a thread running through of an encrypted video tape they'd been given. When they managed to get a decoder it showed a clip taken by Voyager of the now familiar rock strewn red surface but as the camera panned, the soil started to move and something was clearly alive there and burrowing about under the surface. The point being Mars wasn't as dead as we first thought.
Oh, and the 'missing' scientists were all on Mars working on the terraforming.
Trouble was, it was supposed to be an April fool joke but got showed about a week later causing Orson Wells/War of the Worlds chaos for a few days until the BBC issued a release saying it was all a joke. A book came out about ten years later saying it was all real and the BBC had been forced to cover it up.
To be clear, it was a spoof - it had lots of people in it who are now well known actors but at the time were unknowns.
Alas, apart from a few very grainy clips, it has never been reshown and is almost impossible to find.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
As a molecular biologist, I've learned that whenever I say "this can't/shouldn't happen", nature makes a fool of me. Life can find a niche anywhere.
1. Hard radiation on surface - Deinococcus radiodurans.
2. Virtually zero atmosphere - anaerobes (in general).
3. No (or little water) - I forget the genus.
4. Highly oxidising compounds on surface - cyanobacteria.
Granted, it would be complex, but the features we want of each bacteria could be merged (as I said, not an easy of quick process, but in principle possible) to give a bacteria that could fit the bill. And if we can design one to, the natuer can evolve one to (in fact, nature has evolved things that we couldn't even begin to think about builing).
I agree with previous poster, study the past; but a new mission focused on this is nessicary. We have better devises and methods for analysing samples.
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
If biological molecules are available they can facultatively use them for growth as in the case of Levine's Labelled Release experiment. This means that there could be very low levels of organic material in the Martian soil yet living potentially active micro-organisms could be present. This would explain the negative result found by the Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry experiment.
James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis works well when applied to Earth (no doubt somebody will challenge this). The self-regulating web of life has emerged over billions of years. But Earth and Mars have had very different geological/areological histories. In this context, how might Mars look if life were interrupted by a huge meteor strike? Even a significant degree of life could be obliterated after a billion years of storms and strikes IMHO (not a planetary scientist). Looking back to early Earth, what traces of life are left from before the planet was flooded with oxygen? Certainly none visible from orbit. It's possibly true that life as we know it doesn't behave like that ... but we only have this one sample. I think it's more reasonable to assume that the process of life may take different paths, some resulting in a deep global change such as we have, and some just barely hanging on. Or even dying out. But a good hypothesis deserves a test, don't you think?
This login name for sale.