NASA May Have Killed The Martians

Sneakernets writes "CNN reports that NASA may have found life on Mars via the Viking space probes in 1976-77, but failed to recognize it and killed it by accident. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a geology professor at Washington State University, says that Mars microbes that the space probes had found were possibly drowned and baked by accident. Other experts said the new concept is plausible, but more work is needed before they are convinced. From the article: 'A new NASA Mars mission called Phoenix is set for launch this summer, and one of the scientists involved said he is eager to test the new theory about life on Mars. However, scientists must come up with a way to do that using the mission's existing scientific instruments, said NASA astrobiologist and Phoenix co-investigator Chris McKay.'"

Comments

That would explain...

[LiquidCoooled]

That would explain why we haven't heard from K'breel or the Council of the Elders for a while :(

Dilbert had a similar problem...

[Dr. Eggman]

(To intelligent life under his microscope)

We come in peace!

*Adjusts lens to get a better view*

*Squish*

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

"We're here to bring democracy to...oops."

[Eternal Vigilance]

Well, at least we can learn from this sad lesson in our future missions to other sandy, desolate places. Right?

Right?


Lenny at NASA: "I used to have a little friend, but he don't move no more."

Re:"We're here to bring democracy to...oops."

[markana]

Right - we've found an effective method of killing off the natives before we colonize the place.... :-)

old video

[Hennell]

This is rather similar to what I thought when I was watching a video at school once. The video claimed their was no life on Mars (Or any other planet for that matter) because they lacked the key conditions life needs. The lack of water, or stable temperature or decent atmosphere etc were all touted as being proof that life couldn't exist on these planets.

My immediate thought was Why are we deciding all life is the same here? There are different species on the earth who need different amounts of things, Just because we all need water and a regular-ish temperature doesn't make potential alien life follow that rule. This scientist seems to be agreeing with me. Which is more then my teacher did at the time.

Re:old video

[Nasarius]

There are fundamental chemistry issues (energy, stability, etc.) that limits the likely composition and needs of any kind of life. There is a Wikipedia article that does a decent job of describing why even the more plausible forms of non-carbon based life are unlikely. Yes, there are many possibilities for life, but the laws of physics still apply.

Carl Sagan wrote some great material on the topic as well. I particularly like his reasoning on why it makes sense that any alien life would have developed the ability to sense a similar portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can.

Re:old video

[lawpoop]

There are two things here.

First, there is an 'energy' definition of life. That is to say, alien life may not be carbon-based, may not use water, may not be composed of cells, and may not have DNA inside of it. However, one of the defining characteristics of life is that it uses energy. It metabolizes, grows, and reproduces. It eats something, somehow. It makes a waste product.

So, if we look at a planet's chemical composition, we can make a good guess as to whether there is life there by looking at its chemistry. If there are living things there, they will be making reactive chemicals. From outer space, we could tell that the Earth has a lot of metabolic activity in it, because the sky is mostly highly reactive oxygen that is a result of plant respiration. Mars, on the other hand, is mostly chemically inert. There is very little metabolism going on there, if there is any at all. Either life there has already eaten up the planet, or else there wasn't enough resource to really get started, or there was never life at all.

Secondly, let's talk about a scenario where life can really only happen with water and organic ( meaning carbon-containing ) compounds. What conditions are necessary for life? What conditions does life thrive in? Take the Earth as an example. Where do we find the greatest mass and biodiversity? In the oceans. Ocean water is practically alive itself, there is so much life in it. On land, the places with the greatest biomass and biodiversity are the rainforests, where they have near 100% humidity. So water as a medium seem to really grow and reproduce. What temperature range do we find the most life in? About 70-90 degrees F -- I'm talking about the *most* life. So the metabolism of life forms seems to function optimally at 70-90 F.

The point I'm trying to make is that yes, we do find life in weird places on Earth -- inside solid rock, in 200 degree sulfuric vents on the ocean floor, inside nuclear reactor cores. However, there isn't very much of it in terms of biomass, and there's not much diversity of forms. My guess is that those 'extremophiles' are descendants of creatures who lived in more hospital environments and became adapted to increasingly extreme environments. I don't think that life originated in rocks or in ocean vents. I think life originated in an environment that is most like where we find the greatest biomass and biodiversity -- water in sunlight at about 60-120 F.

If we're not talking about the above scenarios, we are getting away from materialism, and thus science. This might include "Imagine beings of pure energy" (hey, atoms are 'pure energy') or "What if the sun is conscious?" ( well, we can't measure consciousness *yet* so we can't tell scientifically ) These are fun to think about, but scientifically they are kind of a non-starter.

I understand what you're saying about thinking outside the box, expecting the unexpected, and not limiting our minds or our past experiences. But science puts some serious restraints on what we can imagine or postulate *scientifically*.

Re:old video

[scottv67]

Was that the rock monster episode?

Rock monster? Rock monster??? Jeeeeesus!!! Every geek knows that the creatures were called "Hortas".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horta_(Star_Trek)

This is the Star Trek episode where we got to hear McCoy complain to Capt Kirk, "Damn-it Jim, I'm a doctor not a bricklayer!" as he was patching the wounds on the Horta.
That quote is mentioned on the bottom of the Wikipedia page.

Rock monster? Please turn in your geek card at the door. ;^)
Just for grins, what is your name for the furry creatures in "The Trouble with Tribbles?" :^)

Re:old video

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Just for grins, what is your name for the furry creatures in "The Trouble with Tribbles?

Flatcats.

Well

[jaymzru]

I've seen "Mars Attacks!" Better them than us.

OMG The title is soooo misleading...

[Anonymous Coward]

This same article was on digg a while back, so I've read it already.

The title implies that NASA killed off all of the martians, while the article says that if Viking had found a few martian microbes in its sample, it would have killed those.

There's no need for the sensationalism.

Well,

[ampathee]

I for one, welcome our new Martian- oops.. Nevermind.

Obligatory Star Wars Quote

[bmo]

"I feel a great disturbanc in the Force, as if billions of microbes cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced"

--
BMO

Earth

[reset_button]

Mostly harmless

Re:Marvin will get angry

[Axe]

..not Martians - Sea-men

Kyle: Wow! That's a lot of seamen, Cartman.
Cartman: Yeah, I bought all that I could at this bank, and then I got the rest from this guy Ralph in an alley.
Stan: That's cool.
Cartman: Yeah, and the sweet thing is, the stupid asshole didn't even charge me money for it. He just made me close my eyes and suck on a hose.

Point is we might have missed detecting life

[davros-too]

From TFA: "Given the cold dry conditions of Mars, life could have evolved on Mars with the key internal fluid consisting of a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide, said Schulze-Makuch."

The important point is that a new possibility for the nature of life on Mars has been suggested. If there is any life in this form it would not have been detected by previous experiements. This is interesting because it keeps open the possibility of what would be the greatest discovery ever - life on another planet. The minor point that the testing process could have killed the specific bacteria it sampled is - apart from the obligatory jokes - totally irellevant.

This is basically a retread...

[jpellino]

... of old objections with a slight new twist about peroxides.

Back in the 70's the results of the "chicken soup" (gas exchange) experiment on board the Vikings were frustratingly inconclusive - the resulting single release of gas when combining martian soil with a mixture of likely nutrients could have been produced by several mechanisms: (1) a simple chemical reaction between the soil sample and the "soup", or (2) the death rattles of an organism poisoned by the "soup" or (3) the initial metabolic release of (an) organism(s) that ate itself to death like a goldfish on the nutrient "soup".

Well, that explains it

[djupedal]

"..failed to recognize it and killed it by accident"

I seem to recall Cheney using a similar excuse when he shotgunned a hunting partner in his ass...

It's a win/win situation for Schulze-Makuch

[MavEtJu]

From the article:

Good reporting:

The Viking space probes of 1976-77 were looking for the wrong kind of life, so they didn't recognize it, a geology professor at Washington State University said.

Sensationatilism:

Two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years ago may have found alien microbes on the Red Planet and inadvertently killed them, a scientist is theorizing.

To show how full of crap it is:

Schulze-Makuch acknowledges he can't prove that Martian microbes exist, but given the Martian environment and how evolution works, "it makes sense."

So if there are microbes left, NASA was lucky, and if there are none, NASA has killed them all.
And if there are microbes, Schulze-Makuch is happy because NASA didn't kill them all and his name is in history again, while if there are none, it would be exactly how Schulze-Makuch had predicted it!

Comedian pointed this out in the 1970's

[starfire-1]

In the 1970's, comedian Don Novello (of Father Guido Sarducci fame) wrote a book called the "Lazlo Lettets" where he would write tongue in cheek letters to a wide variety of people and places like the President, Hotels, and of course NASA. His alter ego Lazlo Toth observered that if NASA were to scoop up martian soil and burn it to find life, that NASA would have more appropriately found life, but killed it so they wouldn't be able to actually prove that life still existed. I don't recall the content what NASA's response letter.

I love it when comedians get these things right ahead of time.

P.S. Another example at the Onion. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930 saw the new Fusion with six blades coming way back in Feb 2004!

Re:Can't you read?

[MrShaggy]

They're not dead, they're just pining for the fjords.

It's life Jim

[TapeCutter]

We have found many new and oddball extremophiles over the last few decades living right here on Earth in places that were once considered impossibly "hostile to life". This has resulted in a tree of life with many more branches than the animal, plant and fungi ones I was taught at high school.

The three "essential ingredients" for life now seem to be carbon, water and energy but we haven't finished searching the planet yet, let alone our solar system and beyond.

To summerize: "It's life Jim, but not as we know it".

WMD

[Malfourmed]

Weapons of Mars Destruction?

30-year-old news

[moosesocks]

Debate over the validity of the biological experiments on the Viking probes has been going on since the probes landed.

You see.... several of the biological experiments on Viking turned up positive. However, this result contradicted other components of the same experiment, which indicated that there were no organic molecules in the soil, among other factors, making the possibility of life existing in those soil samples remotely minute.

It was largely agreed upon that the experiments were inconclusive and poorly designed all the way back in the 80s. The fact that this guy is making this argument about an experiment that yielded a false-positive is somewhat absurd. The bits of the experiment that turned up negative would have hypothetically yielded the same result on a living organism as a dead one.

The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe was supposed to repeat/confirm several of the Viking experiments.

Of course, that's not to say that we shouldn't be reproducing these experiments to figure out what went wrong, and what produced the false positive, as I'm sure there's plenty of interesting science to be explored there as well. I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of life on mars either -- as mentioned earlier, the experiments were inconclusive.