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Study: Martian Soil Has Signs of Life
geoffrobinson writes "Reuters is reporting that a scientist from Germany believes Viking probe data shows signs of life. From the article: "Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, said on Friday the spacecraft may in fact have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin.""
Who are we kidding, he's gotta have privileged information. With a name like Joop Houtkooper, he has *got* to be an alien. :-)
(Just kidding there Joop)
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I for one welcome our hydrogen-peroxide breathing overlords...
Viking probe data shows signs of life.
So the Viking probe data is ALIVE?!!!
This isn't anything new... A lot of scientists at NASA thought the same thing 30 years ago.
When one experiment says yes, and one says no and you can't run them again there will be a lot of debate about what it all means.
Imagine what people might learn from data we're getting now from the two rovers on mars.
...am I going to have to read before I die that say that a researcher has found evidence of life of extraterrestrial origin.
Is there life or not? Come to a consensus, science.
Mars is one big beach, so peroxided organisms are to be expected.
Far as I know he's still playing and cutting jazz records, with no dropoff to speak of.
He what? *confers with bystander*
Ohhhh. *NEVER MIND*
If this is proven to be fact ( and i dont think this really *proves* anything. Its still theory ), how is this going to sit with the religions of the world that truly think we are the only ones 'god' created?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Our friend Joop has also published a lot of work on ESP and paranormal activity: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Joop+Houtkoope r&hl=en&lr=&btnG=Search.
I call BS.
I react very badly with them.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Seriously, if one said yes, and the other said no, and we can send rovers to mars, then why the heck not send a rover and land it next to viking to repeat the tests?
I mean WTH.. is it not worth an astronomical version of a confirm/deny dialogue?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I am not an expert in space-related fields in any way, but I always thought, if life was discovered somewhere else in the universe, who's to say it remotely resembles anything we have here on Earth? Just as humans are a result of adaptation and evolution to Earth's atmosphere and chemical makeup, I bet the first form of life found outside of Earth is wacky and customized to its home planet's conditions.
/end speculation :p
Of course, if the alien being's stage of life is infantile upon discovery, little microbes aren't very exciting. But imagine finding some race that walks on 5 legs with two tails, that is smarter than humans, but dies upon contact with oxygen or something......
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Here's an article with some counter-points to this theory.
It is clear that we must promptly launch an investigation on whether this "life" believes in a democratic system of government. If not, we should immediately impose sanctions, inform the public their WMDs, and begin planning a military invasion to begin approximately 18 months from now. If the terrorists possess oil and make attempts to trade it under the Euro currency, we must accelerate this plan, using any means possible to defeat this threat to America. It is clear this life poses a terrorist threat to America. We must preemptively strike against us before they bring their War on Terror to our soil.
If Marvin finds out we know where he lives, he's going to be very angry...
Very angry, indeed...
This is my signature. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Is an ongoing chemical reaction life? Is a self replicating chemical reaction life?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Killer Blondes from Outer Space!
Suggestions that the Viking experiments were positive for life have been around for many years, and the conclusion has been... that the data is inconclusive. We won't know until we send more probes with more experiments.
Note that hydrogen peroxide is interesting not only for its oxygen content, but also because it greatly lowers the freezing point of water, which would be useful on Mars. Furthermore, hydrogen peroxide does occur naturally in cells, sometimes in significant concentrations and volumes (relative to the whole cell), so the suggestion isn't completely far-fetched.
Universe -- creator. The physical universe must have had something that caused it. An un-caused cause doesn't make sense logically. To get around the problem, some people have argued that if you go back far enough, the laws of physics break down. Maybe, but you still have the problem of fleeting infinity. How did we get to this point?
Conscious -- why do we have it? Why do we believe in justice? We should be eliminating competition whenever we encounter it unless we can use it to our advantage. Instead we have this nagging sense of morality or unfairness if we don't feel we were treated right. Why is this there? Why does every culture have a sense of it?
So what is this thing? I say, it's God. Now I fervently dispute that acknowledging a God should stop scientific discovery. I feel, like many early scientists, that scientific exploration is a form of pulling back the curtain of the mind of God and should absolutely be encouraged.
Now you might disagree with my points, but I hope that you can see that it is not completely irrational. We *all* have presumptions. What presumption is more rational? I would argue that time plus nothing becoming something (or an eternal universe) is way more irrational than believing in something outside the physical universe.
The article mentions that life on Mars could be from Earth originally.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Fine, as long as I don't have to mow it.
Actually, the cute girl from marketing made eye contact and winked so this is conclusive evidence that sex may have or will happen at some point in the fullness of time. Or not.
Sheesh, could we give the sensationalist headlines some rest?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I worked on the Viking Lander project (but not on the biology side). Before the landing, NASA published and sent around little promo phamplets describing what a positive (biological) response would be from each of the 3 biological experiments. (Along the lines of, add nutrients to a soil sample, get CO2 out, sterilize the next soil sample, add nutrients, get no CO2, that is evidence for life. No CO2, or CO2 with a sterlized sample, not evidence for life.) I still have mine in my basement.
Each of the two landers had 3 biological experiements. All six worked fine. All six had a positive response based on the criteria published before landing.
However, because the mass spectrometer detected no organic molecules (not one of the pre-published tests), these results were ascribed to non-biological causes.
I could never understand why one of the biological researchers didn't just say, "we have detected life, by our published criteria, but we don't understand it." However, none did.
Science doesn't always move in the nice linear fashion described in the text books...
Those Americans that went to Mars in the 1960s in flying saucers should have been more careful not to contaminate the planet. But I guess they weren't so environmentally aware back then.
http://mars.spherix.com/
In 1997 he presented a paper showing that after 21 years of study of the data he felt that:
The main argument against Levin's conclusions was that the Viking lander's Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) experiment showed no evidence for the presence of organic compounds in the Martian soil. As an analytical chemist who has worked in the field of GCMS since before the time of the Viking probes, I have my doubts about the Viking GCMS experiment having enough sensitivity and reliability to exclude the low level presence of organic material in the Martian soil.
In 2000, Dr. Steven A. Benner published a paper concluding that the Viking GCMS was insensitive to certain organic molecules including those left behind by any microbial life that might have been on Mars. At the same time Dr Joseph Miller reanalyzed the original Viking labelled release experiment data and concluded that it showed circadian rhythms thus supporting the case for Martian life.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-00g.html
Now Joop Houtkooper proposes further evidence that Levin was right. I think Levin will go down in scientific history like Wigner the proposer of the continental drift theory in the 1920's, as a researcher whose ideas were scorned by large sections of the scientific community at the time, but that were eventually proved right.
Cut that out - it's not Friday yet...
- T
So, you think science is something like democracy, if enough people believe in something then it must be true?
To me, credibility is pretty much linked to repeatability. In order for something to be credible it must be either replicated or shown by a well-reasoned chain of evidence to be possible. If you report a phenomenon that (a) no one can repeat and (b) negates facts that we know both from the labs and from day-to-day experience, then you are in trouble.
Reliability of evidence does not determine likelyhood
Yes, it does. Ask any judge, any lawyer, any juror. Would you like to be convicted of a crime based solely on unreliable evidence presented by the DA?
There is no evidence of a tooth fairy credible or otherwise
Yes, there is. Millions of children have put a tooth under their pillows and found a bicycle in the porch next morning. What more evidence do you need? There's *more* evidence for the tooth fairy than for any other ESP phenomena.
just as a side note.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
If his prior behavior is any indicator, I'm sure that Marvin will be very depressed.
At the same time, if God does exists, then faith should be consistent with creation. Orderly universe -- orderly God. Sense if justice -- a God that is just. etc, etc.
There is a lot more going on with the whole "Life On Mars" thing than you will see really published anywhere. I'm not saying there are little green men on mars, but it seems like every article I read, this one included, downplays the significance of finding Life Outside Earth. That is a Big Deal.
If you're interested, there is quite a bit of background material surrounding Life on Mars and the really famous '76 Viking Lander experiments that were completely glossed over in the article.
One absolutely interesting bit of research (that I'm surprised wasn't mentioned in the article) has to do with circadian rhythms.
IIRC the '76 viking lander had 3 types of experiments on board that would conduct various kinds of tests to determine if there was life on mars. One of those was cell respiration.. another a test for known organic compounds or organic materials. Two of the three tests showed signs for life in at least one of the experimental runs.. but the test for "organic material" consistently failed. I met one of the folks at a conference that claimed to have worked on this and he made it very clear that NASA's usual policy was 2/3 experiments w/positive results == Strong Indications for Life. Yet for some reason NASA announced something to the effect of "No Organics, No Life" . He was very bitter about it because he was absolutely convinced there was life on Mars.
In 2000 someone thought to analyze the cell respiration study that already indicated there was life or at least a life-like biological process. SURPRISE! The cell respiration data seemed to indicate cell respiration with circadian rhythms. Could not possibly be a simple chemical reaction. The whole idea of Circadian rhytms did not even exist in 1976! But the data fits. Not only that, but the rhythm itself was tuned to a martian day! I quietly decided there was life on mars at that moment. See this or here.
This new article is interesting, but it is Yet Another Analysis of 30 year old data!! I'd love to see what would happen if NASA (or CNN. I'd take CNN) would announce, in big bold letters, "HEY! We found very conclusive signs of life on another planet! Short of going there and looking at the soil under a microscope ourselves, we're 95% sure the planet is not quite dead and has new and unique life!" Maybe I'm cynical but it seems like we should be actually doing modern experiments to compare with the '76 experiments. It seems more like a pissing contest to see which person/group/agency is right more than The Search for Truth and Knowledge. "Why do we need to search for life on mars? We already found out there isn't life, right?"
That's where mankind came from before he destroyed Mars and landed on Earth.
The Bible doesn't say anything at all about life forms on other planets. Intelligent life I might have issues with, but microbes? No problem there.
Do you mean the Bible of the Jews and Christians or the Koran? The Tongva people's creation myth? Or what about the Hopi? And who are we to ignore the Hindu world creation epos?
Essentially the same story broke in January. Variations of the hydrogen peroxide theory have been around for half a year now. A quick Google search for "Viking probe hydrogen peroxide" (no quotes) will come up with quite a few results.
Science is an excuse; Christian bashing is the sport. You must be new here.
Kurt Vonnegut's martian soldiers in Sirens of Titan got their oxygen from Tang mixed with hydrogen peroxide. Rented a tent! Rented a tent! Rented a tent, a tent, a tent!
"why the heck not send a rover and land it next to viking to repeat the tests?"
Because the test itself is not sufficient to draw a robust conclusion, that's why we get a summary with the words "a scientist believes" rather than "scientists believe".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Ye gods, a planet populated exclusively by blondes!
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
"Greater than ourselves?" That presupposes that "greatness" can be quantified. Are crocodiles greater than we are because they are relatively unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs? Does greater mean most common or most successful? Ants make up far greater biomass on this planet than humans do.
As for supernatural, that's bunk. If someone actually saw a real ghost, it would not be supernatural. You can see it. It's interacting with you. It is therefore following natural laws, just laws that may be unknown to us currently. It is therefore natural, not supernatural.
If the supernatural existed, we would have no way of detecting it let alone interacting with it. If it cannot be perceived, it might as well not exist to us. If it can be perceived, it is natural. It's that simple. "The supernatural" is simply a logical dodge to say that one believes in magic -- in other words, the unreal.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Subject applies to both the analysis and the conclusion.
Analysis at the time for one test showed negative, the other was inconclusive (not "yes").
At that point (as Sagan announced) they were cautiously hopeful, since the tests looked at different things, and some forms of life could appear negative to one and not the other. The negative test was replicated in Antarctica and showed negative there too, making that Mars analysis also inconclusive. No idea what Sagan had to say about it then.
It's unlikely life as we know it could be "based on" H2O2. It'd be far more likely to be based on water and highly tolerant of H2O2. The peroxide would come from ultraviolet from the sun hitting exposed water. I expect pretty much any exposed water (even ice, though the reaction would be slow) would have a fairly high percentage. But the water wouldn't be pure and so the peroxide would break down, keeping it at a low equilibrium. Life as we don't know it might use H2O2 for energy catalyzing it to break it down, pulling in more selectively from the environment or creating its own via an ultraviolet driven photosynthesis-like process.
To exist in H2O2 living things have to be able to break it down, such as we do using superoxide dismutase. If we didn't, the peroxide would eat (among other things) the walls off our cells because it destroys the lipids that the walls are made of. Germs don't have this mechanism, and that's why peroxide is a good antiseptic. However, with nothing like lipids or their precursors to work with, any Martian life is not likely to have lipid shells. That makes it unlikely the have any similarity to Earth life. Even the (theoretically) first living things on Earth, cyanobacteria, have lipid-based shells.
So, the news here is that someone's projecting a specific form Martian life might take based on the Viking data. The implication is that if correct, the Panspermia hypothesis probably doesn't hold. On the other hand, there can be a highly complex collection of compounds collecting ultraviolet, making and/or using H2O2, and developing more of itself via an endothremic self-organization process. Life as we don't know it might not be confined to a small, protected, self-contained module, but might be spread over large areas. It stretches the definition of life, but it's about time we do so, so we know it when we find it because "The thing about aliens is, they're alien".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Based on your sarcasm, I am extremely happy that neither yourself or anyone like you is currently running the country. Anyone who doesn't realize that economy, resources, and safety of citizens are all base needs for a nation to survive should never lead.
Our economy, and your daily life depend on oil. It is far more desirable for a nation that holds a vital resource to be democratic than dictatorial. A democratic nation has the benefit of rational discussion, and the meshing of differing opinions while a tyranny can fly off the handle at any moment.
Your attitude seems to be that other nations holding vital resources, and weapons of mass destruction have no bearing on our welfare. You are completely wrong, and you should be embarrassed for it.
I am not sure where people like yourself were educated, but I have a feeling it was in a glass bubble where cause and effect were non existent.
Mbone, sorry I'm posting AC, but I hope you see this...
o r_Space_Studies) in the late 1970s/early 1980s. He was an interesting guy (I could tell some stories...) but a little embittered, (a) because he claimed that he was second choice and just missed out on hosting the PBS TV special Cosmos that made Dr. Carl Sagan famous, and (b) because of the conclusion after Viking that there wasn't life on Mars.
I took a course with Dr. Robert Jastrow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jastrow) of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddard_Institute_f
He frequently exclaimed in class that he was absolutely convinced that Martian life had been found, citing the fact that every single Viking experiment had returned positive results. He said that those who evaluated the results were so surprised to find a complete unanimity of positive results that they assumed that there MUST have been something wrong with the tests, and, proceeding from that premise, drew their faulty "no life" conclusions from there.
I find it very gratifying to read your post almost 30 years later. I always wondered whether Dr. Jastrow was blowing hot air or if he was really on to something. Thank you for filling in another piece of the puzzle.
The truth is out there.
Your life detection protocol was to invite the possible life form in and give it a meal.
Then invite another possible life form in and kill it all
And then look at the differences?
Two points - That sounds like a typically American way of looking at the problem, and if an alien probe comes here with the same idea I hope it lands in America!
The Brits sent James Lovelock over to the Viking life detection team to give you a much better non-lethal way of detecting life by chemical imbalance over the whole planet - why didn't you listen to him?
Read the Iliad.
When I studied soil science many years ago, I was told that soil, by definition, has to have undergone biological modification (see "What is Soil"). So there is no Martian soil unless there are, or have been, organisms on Mars.
I know the definition of faith, and of reason for that matter. The question was: do you hold that they are mutually exclusive - i.e., does someone who employs reason necessarily have to eschew faith, and vice versa?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
This study did not claim to show signs of life, it just claims to of found away that life could produce such results.
Help me become the most spamed person on earth! sign up qw_xd@yahoo.com to what ever
Can you see how that applies to morality? "Is something moral simply and only because God says so, or does God say so because it's moral?"
If you choose the former, it's just the ultimate case of "Might Makes Right". There's no difference at all between "Keep Off The Grass" and "Thou Shalt Not Kill" except that one has a bigger cop behind it. It also means that the people who collaborated with the Nazis had the right principle in mind, they just picked the wrong bully to suck up to.
If you choose the latter, then hey, there's something about morality that exists apart from God. To give you some hints if you don't follow my previous links, let's set up a thought experiment. Could God have created a universe exactly like this one in every physical detail, except that harming innocents was good and righteous?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Look around you. There's life you can see and life you can't see but indirectly. Leave a moistened piece of bread out in the open air for a few days and some of that invisible life makes itself known.
The same is probably true of Mars. I'm more interested in finding out what data the rovers that recently died have sent to us. I know it'll take years to analyze all the data but I suspect they'll find signs of life too.
... can you reason your way to the conclusion "Faith is the crutch of the weak-minded and/or lazy."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The Milky Way is an overall dead galaxy whose planets are deserted by previous inhabitants, often littered with fossils and dead machinery. Most planets are lightly colonized by species from the more livable neighboring galaxies, but it's a few small factions. Even Earth was a barely-livable place a while back.
NASA could at least be more entertaining. How long did this discovery take? Life on Mars? Wow. Have they discovered fire yet?
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
I think that the Viking landers landed at a location that doesn't get enough sunlight for the current generation of rovers. I would love to land a probe the size and power of the Vikings but with modern sensors and electronics.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The fact of the matter is if God doesn't exist, then there's no basis for morality other than "because I said so."
... an act near the absolute bottom end of the moral scale. And Christianity does not get a pass either after centuries of justifying wars, invasions, persecutions and inquisitions: a million times over, people's innate moral sense was perverted by their religion. Even today, so called "Christian Morals" (most of which are in reality brand new creations that exist only to provide a wedge issue for political purposes) can easily be shown to generate boatloads of human suffering by blocking medical research and helping to entrench cycles of poverty, unwanted children, etc.
This is not just false, it is one of the most intellectually and morally bankrupt arguments in existence. (Despite the depressing frequency with which it pops up.) You repeat it only because some authority figure told you this is so, not because you have any rational support for the statement. I challenge you to provide a coherent argument exactly why God is the only possible basis for morality. Because that's exactly what you've claimed.
Research has repeatedly shown that the basic moral sense of humanity is remarkably consistent across all cultures and peoples, regardless of their particular religion or the lack thereof: to wit, morality is an innate and biological sense. The argument for why it is an evolved biological function that exists to help community-oriented organisms survive is at this point quite well fleshed out and supported by plenty of research and evidence.
Meanwhile, if you want a well supported argument for morality out of reason, you only need to learn the basics of the field of bioethics, which can develop a moral code far more consistent than anything that has come out of religion. (It starts from "I don't enjoy suffering, therefore other sentient being also likely don't enjoy suffering, so I should not inflict it upon them" and builds from there.)
Furthermore, plenty of philosophers and ethicists over the millennia have developed more-or-less internally consistent moral systems, many of which do not require the existence of a deity. The fact that you do not know of them means nothing.
Moreover, religion's effect on morality can be shown frequently to be a subversion of it: most religions deeply hate outsiders or "sinners" and find reasons to justify killing or otherwise harming them even when the act is counterproductive to one's own welfare. Religion gives young Muslims justification for blowing themselves and others up in the name of an imaginary entity
No religious text in the world provides a particularly consistent moral picture, and yours (I'm assuming yours is the Christian Bible) does a particularly horrendous job of it. Killing is justified - indeed lauded - in some passages and uncategorically banned in others. "Holy" men are praised for offering their virgin daughters to a threatening mob. Eating shellfish and working on Sunday are sometimes listed as capital crimes, yet the proper fate of a raped woman is to be compelled to marry the rapist. A couple dozen little children are killed by God for taunting an old man's baldness. (Oh, won't somebody think of the children?) Instructions to kill sinners are prolific in one testament, yet another provides us with "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".
If that book were actually the source of your morality - or anyone's - we'd all be in pretty deep manure piles. Fortunately, it isn't. Morality is primarily innate and people cherry pick the parts of their particular text that correspond to their pre-existing morality (or political agenda).
The fact that your pastor (or whoever) told you that "only God can give a basis for morality" doesn't make it it so. Your blind repetition of the statement merely exposes your own ignorance (and his/hers), lack of intellectual rigor, unwillingness to seek out new information, and inability to rationally analyze your own belief structure. You have accepted what has been delivered to you as true without any attempt to question, verify, or support.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
If I had a 100-200 million dollar windfall, like winning at Powerball, my first call would be to Gilbert Levin to find out if this money could put a life-science payload on the surface of Mars, so I could go down in history as the co-discoverer of Life on Mars. Of course, Gilbert Levin would become famous, and I would go down in the history as the lame person who parted with the 100 million. Seriously folks, there is some kind of "deal" going on in NASA that they don't want to run another life-sciences payload. I call it a deal because I don't know if it is a proper conspiracy, but something is going on. Levin has fought with NASA to repeat the experiment, but the closest he has come was the Russians had a Mars probe that had it but ended up in the Pacific Ocean when an upper stage of a Proton rocket launcher failed, and the other was I believe the British has a life-science payload on their Polar Lander that most probably crash landed. The official word of NASA is that Viking as much as settled the issue that there is no life on Mars (scientific consensus, you see), and they are not going to beat a dead horse by running more life-science payloads. The other way to view it is that there was so much hype for so long about sending a life-detection payload to Mars, that by the time Viking came out with its ambiguous findings along with the peroxide explanation for the tentative life findings, that NASA didn't want to come near the Life on Mars issue anymore. Kinda like Comet Kohoutek to astronomy community cautious about telling people well in advance about a possible big comet. NASA seems to be nibbling around the edges, sending geology probes to find signs of ancient water but being very cautious about being out front about claims about current water, and so on. It is like they are hoping by looking for everything but life, they hope to stumble on it. The real conspiratorial view is that NASA doesn't want there to be life on Mars because 1) they want to do a sample return mission, and returning a piece of Mars with Martian life in it raises all kinds of Andromeda Strain worries among people, and 2) they want to land people on Mars, and finding life there may make it off limits. Suppose a very simple but ecologically delicate life form were discovered on Mars? Wouldn't that make Mars off limits to humans until we could figure out how to go to Mars without wiping it out? Some years ago, we didn't worry about such things (Asimov's Foundation series and follow-on novels posit a galaxy where the Earth was unique to have evolved complex life, and as mankind moved out into the galaxy, simple life forms were discovered but they weren't given much heed as humans brought their own food crops and other organisms with them and didn't have an ethic about disturbing pristine ecologies). I know that the environmental ethic is not universally accepted in Earth society, but I think people's sensibilities have changed that if life were discovered on Mars that Mars be left as a kind of wilderness sanctuary for it.
Just about every other Web site that takes outside comments recognizes blank lines as paragraph tags.
I had enough of being alienated, let's move to the second planet to the right!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..