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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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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.
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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.
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!
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
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.
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.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
NASA has twittered
God help us.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
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.
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.
No Mars probes used perchlorates. And even if some did...do you realise the difference in scale between miniscule amounts such probe would care and the whole f***ing planet?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Do we have any extremophiles that life in a highly oxidizing environment?
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.
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..
...
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.
This sounds SO, SO, SO improbable.
At least to me. Ya think they land in previously landed places?
I mean its a whole planet. It would seem to me that if you calculate a, say 1000 kilometer radius from your landing site that is "clean" (noone landed inside the circle) by our records, this posibility you point out is highly improbable to happen.
Even more so if you pick the lannding at random.
In any case, i would be astonished to find out that they knowingly went in and landed in a contaminated site: everything we touch there we contaminate.
NO SIG