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Mars Robot May Destroy Life It Was Sent To Find
Hugh Pickens writes "New Scientist reports that instead of identifying chemicals that could point to life, NASA's robot explorers may have been toasting them by mistake. Even if Mars never had life, comets and asteroids that have struck the planet should have scattered at least some organic molecules over its surface but landers have failed to detect even minute quantities of organic compounds. Now scientists say they may have stumbled on something in the Martian soil that may have, in effect, been hiding the organics: a class of chemicals called perchlorates. At low temperatures, perchlorates are relatively harmless but when heated to hundreds of degrees Celsius perchlorates release a lot of oxygen, which tends to cause any nearby combustible material to burn. The Phoenix and Viking landers looked for organic molecules by heating soil samples to similarly high temperatures to evaporate them and analyse them in gas form. When Douglas Ming of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and colleagues tried heating organics and perchlorates like this on Earth, the resulting combustion left no trace of organics behind. "We haven't looked the right way," says Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center. Jeffrey Bada of the University of California, San Diego, agrees that a new approach is needed. He is leading work on a new instrument called Urey which will be able to detect organic material at concentrations as low as a few parts per trillion. The good news is that, although Urey heats its samples, it does so in water, so the organics cannot burn up."
I suggest we send someone back in time to prevent the robot from killing the life on Mars.
Mmm... organics boiled in water. Now I know what I'm having for lunch.
Play me online? Well you know that I'll beat you. If I ever meet you I'll "/sbin/shutdown -h now" you. -Weird Al, kinda.
So, instead of the Martians coming here, blowing stuff up and then catching a cold and dying out, we go there, give them heat and wipe them out first? I suppose the best defense really is a good offense!
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Some NASA engineer laughs quietly to himself, knowing he prematurely stopped the Martian invasion of Earth before it even had a chance to begin.
They've built a perchlorate percolator?
Your cup of spunk is in the mail.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
I am not sticking that part of myself into an oven, if that's what you're getting at.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Martian bonfires anyone ?
Didn't he write Born To Be Wild?
Blank until