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NASA's Instrument For Detecting Life On Mars
Roland Piquepaille writes "With the financial help of NASA, American and European researchers have developed a new sensor to check for life on Mars. It should also be able to determine if traces of life's molecular building blocks have been produced by anything that was once alive. The device has been tested in the Atacama Desert in Chile. It should be part of the science payload for the ExoMars rover planned for launch in 2013."
The cruise phase and orbiter operations sound quite a bit like Cassini, so I have a good feeling about that. But the Europeans have never landed a vehicle on Mars. The Russians pulled it off once or twice but NASA is the only organisation which could deliver a payload to the surface with any certanty.
I would be happier to see the science payload come from the ESA, and the vehicle from NASA. Seems a lot safer that way.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
We know a lot about chemistry here on Earth but I think we make a lot of assumptions about what is considered proof of life or liquid water. Unless we see cells dividing under a microscope we won't know anything for sure.
Based on the past record, I tend to agree. Mars keeps surprising us. Viking showed that soil chemistry makes life-detection difficult. Then questions popped up about Opportunity's seemingly strong "lake" evidence. And don't forget the "iron worms" in the Mars meteorite.
Table-ized A.I.
Actually Mars is a lot like Antarctica. The air temperature is sometimes above zero C, but mostly below.
Never the less, life survives there. At one stage one of the experiments which flew to mars on Viking was tried out in Antarctia and failed to detect life.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Silicon-based life was considered by science fiction writers at one point because of the obvious chemical similarities between silicon and carbon, but it turns out that silicon is just enough unlike carbon that silicon-based life could never be a direct approximation of carbon-based life. In other words, the chemical similarities between carbon and silicon aren't enough to make silicon-based life any more feasible than life based around some other element.
;) Maybe all the galactic civilizations will be machine ones by the time we (or our machine-based successors) ever meet up with them.
Which isn't to say that life couldn't be based on non-carbon chemistries, but I'd find it exceedingly unlikely, and it's probably futile to try and develop an experiment that could detect it. I'll even go so far as to predict that any life we find in the future will be carbon-based, simply because carbon-based life will generally out-compete other kinds of life under the laws of physics of this universe. The odds of other chemistries beating carbon will be exceedingly low.
On the other hand, the machines might overthrow humanity, proving the superiority of silicon-based life once and for all.
$750,000 seems to be trying to get by on the cheep to me. I recently read an article labeling a $1,000,000 grant to the Allen Telescope Array as "pork barrel." Never mind most of its funds come from private sources, the fact that some (not all) of its science is for SETI makes it a target.
Religious types would explain its all about not wasting sources because it is a self-evidently pointless search. I would have to suspect there is an element of not-wanting-to-know because ignorance will make religious dogma true in some magical way.
It costs hundreds of millions to send these crafts to Mars. I would rate the possibility of finding life or past life on Mars as one of the most important things they could do, and thus deserving of a reasonably share of the cost in a mission, say 10%-20%, not the less than point-2-percent I reckon this is. Granted there are probably other life related experiments, but I'm betting they are feeble in scope in compared to the original Viking missions. They may be more effective with improved technology and decades to review Vikings' data, but they are pitifully small compared to what we could be doing I'll wager. Our little shop that works on Government contracts nets 5 million a year for a staff of about 70 people, and that's every year. I almost feel guilty getting a pay check when this kind of science appears to be starving.
Letter To Iran
Chirality is the main thing to look for. For a molecule like Carbon, there are four binding sites (which are arranged like a pyramid, if each is bonded to different atom.) So, there is one degree of freedom, whereby a carbon-based molecule can be D-chiral or L-chiral. When synthesized abiotically, half are D- and half are L-. But on earth, living things' proteins are all L-chiral and their sugars are almost all D-chiral. There is no reason why one is L- or D-, just that's how our biology works. On Mars maybe there are no proteins or sugars, but rather some other biomolecules. But whatever there is, if it is from living things, it surely will be a specific chirality.
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