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

A lot of scientists thought so at NASA, too

[tgd]

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.

Data

[jshriverWVU]

Didn't the viking probes reach Mars in the 70's/80's? I find it fascinating that we can still data mine and extract information from a probes dataset from 20-30 years ago. It would be interesting to see how much data (TB? EB?) that was recorded from the Viking mission.

Imagine what people might learn from data we're getting now from the two rovers on mars.

Re:Data

[mbone]

Lander 1 was supposed to land on July 4, 1976, but was delayed a few weeks. Lander 2 was just a little later.

The Viking lander bit rate was low, and there was only comminucation when the Earth was above the horizon, and the radio bandwidth was only 2 MHz, so the data return was pretty tiny by modern standards (from the Landers - the orbiter data rate was consderably larger). My back of the envelope calculations says that the total Lander data return was on the order of a few hundred GB. (Also, in the extended mission, the data collection was slowed, I believe to once per week.)

Of course, these data are still being mined, and are absolutely crucial to our understanding of Mars dynamics, among other things.

IF its proven..

[nurb432]

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?

Re:IF its proven..

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 'the world' DOES mean 'the universe' in some languages. Greek happens to be one of them. The most common Greek word that is translated 'world' is kosmos, from which we get our English word cosmos which means the universe. It is translated world because that usually makes the most sense in context, and sounds the best when rendering a thought in English, but it is not necessarily restricted to 'planet earth'. I don't know about Hebrew, but I suspect it may be similar.

Re:IF its proven..

[GospelHead821]

Here is how I reconcile:
I hold that faith applies to notions outside of the scope of scientific inquiry. I accept, on faith, that some unprovable, untestable ideas are truthful. I do not, however, consider ALL unprovable, untestable ideas to be truthful. I choose what to believe. I happen to choose to believe in a faith that is based on a long-established canon that is grounded, to some degree or another, in historical events. (This is why I believe that Christianity's claims are more credible than Pastafarianism's, for example. They are not provable, but they contain elements of documentary evidence.)

In this regard, I consider myself to be arational, but not irrational. Here is why:

When faith and reason conflict, I side with reason. I closely examine apparent conflicts between them. After I have carefully defined terms and established that the claims between the two are genuinely contradictory, I will reassess my interpretation of scripture based on what reason tells me must be true. Reason is absolute. My faith, on the other hand, is based on my ability to interpret a document that has undergone many translations and which requires a holistic understanding to grasp. I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that my capacity to interpret scriptures is woefully limited.

This does not mean, however, that I will change my faith whimsically. Give me the benefit of the doubt, at least, and accept (as some do not) that I make a genuine effort to maintain the integrity of my faith within the boundaries of reality, as I know it. My philosophy is generally that there is only one truth and that reason and faith both pursue it. Part of my faith is that I accept reason as a gift from God that I am to use to enjoy creation and to refine my faith.

Re:Well...

[Original Replica]

our hydrogen-peroxide breathing overlords

I wonder if our overlords would consume rocket fuel? Are they inherently as corrosive as peroxide normally is to metals? It would be ironic to discover the beginnings of life there only to find that it would be a major barrier to visiting the planet.

Re:Take with a whole shaker-full of salt

[shaitand]

'How many would you need to be convinced that ESP does not exist? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?'

None. So long as there are millions of credible reports in the field no failure to replicate the condition in a lab would prove to me that the condition can not exist. As a technician there are no shortage of conditions my customers have reported that I have been unable to replicate, that hardware manufacturers and software firms have been unable to replicate. I might like to dismiss these strays reports as mistakes but if there are enough of them I am forced to accept that the conditions are occurring and the failure is on the part of myself/firms/manufacturers.

If ESP is to be shown not to occur it will be through a more perfect understanding of how the brain DOES function. There are loonies who would have you believe we know nothing of how the brain functions, the only ones worse are the neurologists who would have you believe the scant data we have on the brain constitutes anything like a rudimentary understanding of its function.

'ESP is about as likely as creationism'

Neither are especially likely or unlikely.

'the people believing in it are using the same thought processes as the made-in-seven-days crowd'

The made in seven days crowd are beginning with an elaborate myth and assuming it is true without evidence. I would agree that those who believe in ESP fall in that category as well. The same is true of anyone who believes ESP does not exist, or has a belief in creationism or a lack thereof. The only ones who do not fall into this crowd are those who refuse to adopt a belief on a topic without substantial evidence.

'Science can disprove nothing.'

Science can in fact disprove very specific things. Objective findings can eliminate possibilities. That's is what science does, it is a process by which we gather data, form possible conclusions based upon the data and hope to disprove those conclusions by continuing to gather more data.

'What it can do is collect evidence'

Right.

'give us likelyhoods'

Wrong. Science does not give likelyhoods poor scientists do. Good scientists collect data and let the data determine what is and is not.

'With no reliable evidence supporting it, ESP is as likely as the tooth fairy.'

Reliablity of evidence does not determine likelyhood. Reality is fairly likely even when we have observed NO evidence of it yet. There is no evidence of a tooth fairy credible or otherwise. ESP has not been confirmed in the lab but there are mountains of credible eyewitness accounts (even more that are not credible and that is why closed minded fools dismiss the possibility).

The lab may not be as far away as you think either. There are ongoing experiments at MIT where individuals are able to influence robots with thought in a manner that consistently beats statistical probabilities.

The brain is a complex machine and we do not understand the technology. Until we do, only an idiot would reach conclusions about its capabilities.

I worked on the Viking Lander project...

[mbone]

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...

Unsung Hero

[Chemicalscum]

For years Dr. Gilbert Levin, leader of the labeled release biology experiment of the Viking project. Has been arguing that the experiment produced strong evidence for life on Mars.

http://mars.spherix.com/

In 1997 he presented a paper showing that after 21 years of study of the data he felt that:

Objective application of the scientific process to 21 years of continued research and to new developments on Mars and Earth forced this conclusion. Of all the many hypotheses offered over the years to explain the LR Mars results, the only possibility fitting all the relevant data is that microbial life exists in the top layer of the Martian surface.

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.

The Same Only Different

[DynaSoar]

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".