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.""

Comments

Space.com article offering counter-point

[Mundocani]

Here's an article with some counter-points to this theory.

Re:Space.com article offering counter-point

[CODiNE]

So I read the article and found mainly this counter-point :

But Pace, the University of Colorado microbiologist, thinks there is one very important reason why hydrogen peroxide life is unlikely. "Hydrogen peroxide inside cells is deadly in terrestrial kinds of cells," Pace said. "In fact, that's one way that our cells combat bacteria, by producing hydrogen peroxide locally."

I'm no scientist, but his reasoning doesn't seem very convincing. There's lots of chemicals that are deadly in our own bodies. He even says we make hydrogen peroxide in limited amounts. Why would that fact alone make a lifeform that depends on it unlikely?

Re:Data

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding right? The Viking data is often held up as a prime example of data loss through format and equiment obsolecense. I'm surprised you hadn't heard that one.

Around 1999, Dr.J.Miller wanted to have a look through the data and found it couldn't be accessed anymore. Most of what he did get was reassembled from old paper printouts that other reseacher hadn't got around to throwing out yet.

Coincidentally, his research was another case of finding signs of Martian life in the old data.

Here's one version.
http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/50/502.html

Re:Alien!

[Junior J. Junior III]

If Buckaroo Bonzai taught us anything, it's that all aliens are named John. Not Joop.

Re:Alien!

[Traa]

The name "Joop Houtkooper" is most likely Dutch in origin. Houtkoper means "wood buyer", the double 'o' in Houtkooper is likely an old style spelling (1600's).

note: this information is worth less then $0.02

Re:I worked on the Viking Lander project...

[Chemicalscum]

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.

Dr. Gilbert Levin leader of the labeled release experiment did just that:

http://mars.spherix.com/

Re:I worked on the Viking Lander project...

[Chemicalscum]

Yes I am a analytical chemist who had just started working with GCMS systems then, at that time Professor Klaus Bieman was regarded as an almost god like figure by those of us involved in gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, the hyphenated technique he founded and he was a figure of great stature in the chemistry community overall. Dr. Gilbert Levin on the other hand was a scientist/entrepreneur little known outside the specialist area of environmental engineering where he developed the labeled release technique.

The chemists were determined to prove that if their experiment couldn't show the existence of life on Mars no-one else's experiment could and they used their considerable pull in the academic community to influence the outcome of the debate.

Also I believe Levin has suggested that there may have been fundamentalist Christians in positions of influence in NASA at the time who held deep theological opinions against the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

He certainly seemed to be fighting against heavy odds. It not only

has to be viewed as a huge strategic failure of the US space effort but also as a failure of the science community to work in the objective manner it is supposed to.

Re:IF its proven..

[Dr. Manhattan]

if God doesn't exist, then there's no basis for morality

Nope. Wrong.