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NASA's Mars News Is Not Life, But Perchlorate
leighklotz writes "In an update to the little green men story of not-life-on-Mars, NASA has twittered: 'The buzz this weekend was due to an interesting soil chemistry finding, still preliminary, but now avail here:' where 'here' is NASA Spacecraft Analyzing Martian Soil Data. The exciting bit: 'Within the last month, two samples have been analyzed by the Wet Chemistry Lab of the spacecraft's Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, suggesting one of the soil constituents may be perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance.' Also, 'NASA will hold a media teleconference on Tuesday, Aug. 5, at 2 p.m. EDT, to discuss these recent science activities.'"
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious here, but how seriously are they considering the possibility of contamination? Because unless I'm remembering something wrong, perchlorates are most excellent oxidizers and hence commonly used in, oh, say, solid rocket fuel, among other things.
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So, they are REALLY little green men? So small they look like chemicals?
Yeah, me neither.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Perchlorate, ok. What are the ramifications of finding naturally occurring perchlorate?
So who had the job of explaining this to Pres. Bush, and how long did it take before he understood?
Because it sure sounds like "whole heck 'o alot of rocket fuel just lying on top of frozen water on a planet with 38% of the gravity of Earth"
Sounds like it would make space travel / trips to / from Mars dramatically easier.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
OK, so at first I read "highly oxodizing" and was thought, "neat; now they know why Mars is rust colored." However, even after RTFA, I was still clueless as to why I should care. Luckily, Wikipedia comes to the rescue.
From the wiki:
Both potassium perchlorate (KClO4) and ammonium perchlorate (NH4ClO4) are used extensively within the pyrotechnics industry, whereas ammonium perchlorate is a component of solid rocket fuel. Lithium perchlorate, which decomposes exothermically to give oxygen, is used in oxygen "candles" on spacecraft, submarines and in other esoteric situations where a reliable backup or supplementary oxygen supply is needed. Most perchlorate salts are soluble in water.
So, it seems to me that the important discovery is that there could be a relatively massive supply of a chemical compound which is able to produce breathable oxygen, if and when we can ever get people to Mars. If this is indeed the case, then YES, this is exciting news, a whole lot more important than why Mars is red, and is on the level of the sort of thing that the President might want to know about.
(okay so more strictly that would need to be ammonium perchlorate, but I'm sure the astronauts could, ahem, provide a little ammonia themselves).
Best get the mining ships up there quickly (assuming the Martians haven't already scalped the place).
The opinions expressed here are those of this individual, and may not reflect the policy or practice of the collective
I think the buried lead here is that the government is now microblogging. Wonder who they're following?
After a Martian belched on the lander's instruments during Mar's version of the 4th of July weekend it's understandable that they would get a false positive for life. After the Martian sobered up he cleaned the lens and promised never to do it again so there's still hope of detecting the faint signs of life coming from the Martian soil. In a related story the yellow ice crystals were the result of the same over indulgent Martian who has also promised to stop pissing on the lander's leg. Hopefully now that the Martian work week has begun NASA can go back to looking for trace signs of water.
It'll be like in that Disney movie where Christopher Lloyd was a Martian. The name escapes me right now. They'll find all kinds of fascinating stuff in soil and rocks and it'll be fascinating like crazy. Then, when the power supply dies and the rover freezes forever, it will be about ten feet away from where a city the size of New York would have come into view. That's a hundred quadrillion dollars well spent!
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
It just confirms the Viking results that Mars is just one big solid rocket booster for the Martians to use to get out of the neighborhood before the Sun dies out.
Sig this!
I used to perchlorate my coffee every morning, but then I read that the drip method actually gives you more caffeine. So the mars people are stuck with 1960s technology then?
Caveat Utilitor
Perchlorate does three things:
-Treats thyroid gland disorders
-Used as rocket fuel
-Used in generating oxygen (O2) chemically
Seems like good happenstance to land on a planet with frozen water on tracts of rocket fuel and solid oxygen-generating salts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_oxygen_generator
So as I understand it, perchlorate can be used to make rocket fuel.
Sort of -
Perchlorates are oxidizers, which technically are not the "fuel" in the reaction. Oxidzers are, however, the stuff that is somewhat dangerous to handle / transport - the fuel is normally a rather ordinary substance (i.e. in black powder the fuel is charcoal, in modern rockets, powdered aluminum)
A catalyst is required, but the less you have to ship to mars, the easier it is...
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
...the EPA will now make Mars a Superfund site...Mars missions are going to have to wait until it's cleaned up.
Kevin
I think the buried lead here is that the government is now microblogging. Wonder who they're following?
Yeah, and how many sockpuppets?
so we're polluting our home planet and we need to colonize a new one, and the first candidate turns out to be a contaminated rocket fuel brownfield
the conference on august 5th will nothing more than an announcemnet that NASA is being put under administrative jurisdiction of the EPA
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He explained it to NASA over 40 years ago. There is no life on Mars because life would effect the atmosphere in ways discernible to us. There isn't any need to send missions to figure that out. It of course wasn't the answer NASA wanted from him. There could of course be evidence of life in the past, but it looks unlikely to have ever been the case. Still the missions to Mars on a hopeless search for life are cool.
Like they have been doing to rocket hobbyists who use perchlorates down here on earth?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/25/159239
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/20/1318259&tid=159
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/11/1817203&tid=167
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Maybe the President just needed a few days to rent and watch Total Recall, then convince Governor Schwarzenegger to go to Mars and start the ancient Martian machine that creates a breathable atmosphere.
perchlorates could be used to generate free oxygen, but that might not be a good idea unless the chlorine is also bound up into something useful. Maybe there is a good way to do that, too.
If it turned out to be, say, Sodium Chlorate, then a little heat can release oxygen leaving behind... table salt! Too cool. Is that too much to hope for?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Obama and Mccain on Space Exploration.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
NASA has twittered
God help us.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
What do you call a Perchlorate with ADHD?
A hyperchlorate.
*groan*
Keeping it in the atmosphere is quite another and is largely a function of gravity.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Or maybe not, based on data from the Viking missions:
http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/viking_life_010728-1.html
"Photos taken on Mars' surface of a Viking magnetic experiment on both landers show material clinging to the magnets. That suggests to Levin that whatever the surface processes are on Mars, they are not innately highly oxidizing. A highly oxidizing soil would convert magnetized materials to oxidized forms. Therefore, the magnet would be free of such particles.
"Similarly, the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997, Levin added, also had significant amounts of magnetic material adhering to magnets attached to the spacecraft.
"Levin said that the paradigm of a Mars sterilized by a highly oxidizing surface is "too embedded in our scientific fabric to be set aside even by demonstrated proofs. He points to a John F. Kennedy quote that says 'the great enemy of truth is often not the lie --deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.'"
The News Conference is on Tuesday, Aug. 5, at 2 p.m. EDT, but it's not on TV, it's streaming audio from Here...
http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Perchlorates are a normal part of decomposing electronic devices.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
No way am I believing that mars has perchlorates now!
I read a national geographic from many years ago, and the previous landers (from the 1970's?) basically did this, quickly came to the conclusion of life, and then realised that there was an oxidant in the soil making a mess of things. Does anyone remember this?
A highly oxidizing substance on the surface of the rusty red planet? STOP THE PRESSES!
"And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, cause there's bugger all down here on Earth"
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Cmon NASA, stop being coy. You found it didn't you? I'm bummed you won't report on the ancient Martian gateway into deep inside the planet, marked with ancient pictoglyphic scriptures with overtones from Egypt. You know you have it. You know you've found the interdimensional gateway where your inside people had supersecret meetings with The Progenitor, a master being who designed evolution here on Earth. What's with this wussy "interesting chemical" crap?
Back in the 70's, NASA ran an experiment on one of the Viking landers to try to see if there was any life on Mars. The experiment contained some radiolabeled "food," to which a sample of regolith and water would be added. If radiolabeled gas evolved from the resulting mixture and was detected, it would be taken as a sign that some kind of native microbe was eating the food and emitting the gas as a byproduct of anaerobic respiration. And in fact, the experiment did detect radiolabeled gas. However, none of the other analyses turned up positive, including the mass spectrometer. So scientists floated an alternative theory: that the Martian regolith contained some kind of oxidizing agent, which would have explained both the evolution of radiolabeled gas, and the absence of life on Mars. Most scientists accepted this theory, but even to this day, there were a few who believed it was a little bit too convenient, and that the labeled release experiment had actually turned up evidence of life. The discovery of perchlorate, a strong oxidizing agent, would put that speculation to rest.
Chances are, this source of unburned perchorate is from retro-rockets from either American or Soviet landers. I highly doubt that this is naturally occuring, since there are records of Soviet and American landers that crashed on the surface, presumably with unused or partiall-used retro-rockets.
I know that the Soviets employed landers that collected samples, loaded then into a re-entry capsule, and then launched them back to Earth, where they were recovered. I'm not sure if the Soviet probes landed on Mars used the same method, though. However, I am definitely sure that the source of the perchlorate found on Mars is from retro-rockets that was swept up and widely dispersed by massive Martian sandstorms, and is not naturally occuring.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Or to stay there. So far: soil that can grow asparagus, water, and now a source of oxygen. The hard part has always been getting back. Suppose we send someone who wishes to stay? (with maybe a little monkey friend.)
"The spice must flow."
OK, work with me here...See? There's all this salty stuff in the ground...Oh, nevermind.
It helps us that learned english late in their lives to figure out what word to look up in a dictionary.
I agree. unfair moderation.
Sounds like Mars is going to be the first inter-planetary "gas station" with all that rocket fuel up there. Just a couple more decades until OPEC sends a crew up there to start mining and refining it.
Get it while it's cheap!
I'm of course interested in the source of this... as an oxidizing chemical on mars indicates there was a lot of oxygen on mars at one time.
That after we conferm there was water. I think that's the big news. That sucker was 100% habitable at one time. It's a bit of a fixer upper, old owner let it go to hell... but who knows. Some curtains and a new climate and we might be in business.
Side note: Wonder if whatever society is sending probes to earth 500 million years from now is going to say the same thing, haha
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Well, no one said it yet.
Cmon. They briefed the white house
about perchlorates? Really? They took time
to tell the prez about perchlorates?
SpaceGeek: Mr President, we found perchlorates.
Bush: Great, we can have blondes on Mars!
SpaceGeek: No, Mr President, not peroxide, perchlorates.
\\\\\ + /////
Really? It wasn't about LGMs? Not even microbial ones?
-AI
[AlienIntelligence]
... as an arbitrary pile of carbon/oxygen compounds is to Jessica Alba.
(And every conclusory sentence I tried tacking onto that sounded obscene, so I'll let you work out the implication.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Great. So we have oxygen & iron. Somehow I don't think we are going to get lift off from Mars with a Rust Powered Rocket Booster.
Do we have any extremophiles that life in a highly oxidizing environment?
This actually seems like it's good for life. Perchlorate isn't so bad that it kills everything (in fact, it's probably less aggressive than atmospheric oxygen), but it's a ready-made energy source for microbes.
It is an ion. Was it perhaps Calcium perchlorate, hydrogen perchlorate or something else. Maybe it was Uranium perchlorate?
Saying it was perchlorate is as meaningless as saying that the sea is full of hydroxide, In fact H20 is hydrogen hydroxide - or water. We need a more meaningful statement...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Perchlorate might be the first step to terraforming Mars. Like with huge machines that heat soil components to produce oxygen, as was seen in the alien artifact of the movie Total Recall. It could also be used on smaller scale to create rocket fuel and oxygen for life support systems.
Hmm, also, those oxygen generating candles they use to supply oxygen to the facemasks that drop down in airplanes are perchlorate. So to generate oxygen for mars space missions may be as simple as diging it out of the ground and lighting it off..
...
Perchlorates such as sodium perchlorate can be made by electrolysing NaCl water. The NaCl first becomes NaOCl ( Sodium Hypoclorite aka Bleach ) then Sodium Chlorite and then Sodium Chlorate ( NaClO3 ). Sodium Chlorate is WEED KILLER. Then finally another oxygen is added to make NaClO4 ( Sodium Perchlorate ).
I doubt a bulk commoditity product like fertilizer would be made that would likely be contaminated with weed killer unless great care were taken. 'Great care' would be too expensive for something that is supposed to be cheap such as fertilizer.
Yes, there is hydrogen and oxygen produced in electrolysis of saltwater, but some of the oxygen oxygenates the Cl to make ClOx where X = 1, 2, 3, or 4. You'll notice less than half the oxygen ( by volume ) is produced than hydrogen. The missing O2 goes to turning Cl- into ClOx-
...
welcome our new perchlorate overlords
Good people go to bed earlier.
... Martian Dechloromonas overlords.
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Dechloromonas_aromatica
http://jb.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/187/15/5090
---- Where is my mind?
I know, isn't it great.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Viking explicitly tested for "biological activity" and had a false-positive result due to an oxidizing soil. I think they blamed it on a peroxide at that time, but Viking didnt have as accuratate analyszers as Phoenix has.
I recall it was Carl Sagan who suggested biological life was locally anti-entropic and one should look for chemical disequilibriums like free oxygen or methane. Over time these substances naturally move into lower energy states through chemical reactions if life wasn't present. However, planetary surfaces and interiors may not be closed energy systems. Mars soil is bombarded by solar UV; Io is heated by Jupiter tidal stress. These energy injections can create life-like chemical disequilibriums too.
Good point on the Oxygen generator. Now, I wonder if there is a funny statue which a funny hand fits in.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is the best news Phoenix could possibly have delivered.
Perchlorate does mean there's all the oxygen we'll ever need on Mars. I'd rather they found perchlorate than fucking oil. It means that humans can live and work there, and it strongly suggests that there is probably no life that we'd have to worry about preserving and protecting, at least in this region of the planet.
Strong oxidizers are just what you want to find when you're 100 million miles from home and low on gas.