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Viking Landers Might Have Missed Martian Organics
Sonny Yatsen writes "A new study suggests that the Viking Landers might have found organic compounds on Mars, but failed to recognize them because of the methodology used to detect organics. The findings may suggest specific strategies that would improve on the way organic compounds are detected on the red planet."
Morbo predicted this...
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
... suggests that Carl Sagan said exactly the same thing over three decades ago.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
TFA says that any organic compounds which might have been found would have been destroyed by heating perchlorate to 200-500C. I remember reading something similar to this a while back here on /. (but I don't have a link handy).
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
Haha, I read this post on Slashdot a couple of minutes ago. Nice job, guy, completely ignoring the article and just rushing to get the first post.
They could do the same thing with Mars that I do with milk:
Sniff it.
If it smells like there's anything growing in it, throw it out.
If not, taste a little.
If it tastes distinctly bitter or sour, throw it out.
If not, put it back in the fridge until you need it.
with actual Viking explorers like Lief Ericson? Was totally confused, huh, how did Lief Ericson fail to discover martians in North America?
/. is no longer hip to the world.
If it's "new to you" and you are reading the firehose, it gets clicked up, then the bots that have replaced the admins click on all the ones that are sticking up above all the others and they get conveyor-belted to the front page.
Occasionally, the admin who snuck the "Idle" page in will grab one that tickles his cat's fancy, but that's about the only variation in the zombie conga line that passes for a meme stream here any more.
Why do you think the Vikings didn't stick around? Couldn't cope with the Martian freeze rays (coincidentally responsible for both Mars' icy terrain and Canadian winters).
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
how did Lief Ericson fail to discover martians in North America?
He didn't. He discovered them on Mars.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
I had the same immediate interpretation. Except that the Martians weren't on North America proper, but Greenland.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
They would have gone straight for the organics.
The prettier ones, I'm sure.
Isn't that considered part of North America?
One of the jokes circulating at the time of the landings was that, because of the nature of the testing procedure, the Vikings wouldn't discover life on Mars, they'd just destroy it. Of course CmdrTaco was still only a spermatogonium and an ovum at the time, so the joke didn't get posted to /.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Zort the last living Martian stood watching the alien spacecraft growing larger and larger and larger ......
But NASA invalidated the tests
The results of these experiments were complex. The first three gave positive results, but the complete absence of any organic compounds in the Martian soil according to the mass spectrometer experiment suggests that the positive results for the first three were not evidence for life, but rather evidence for a complex inorganic chemistry in the Martian soil. Thus, the Viking verdict was that there was no evidence for present or past life on Mars.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Could it be that during that time period we didn't fully understand all the chemical processes that could produce the Vikings findings?
Point is, we know more than we did then. Apply this to any old analysis and it's likely we missed something. Viking didn't fail here. We merely improved our understanding of observed data analysis.
Slashdot didn't properly detect it as a story. Probably due to methodology.
meep
Will you people stop using 'methodology' when you mean 'method'?
For christ's sake, 'methodology' is the study of methods. Stop using big words whose meaning you don't know!
And yet despite all this, comparing to all others, it is still the best discussion site on the net.
Was I the only one who read the title and thought it referred to the original Viking Landers in 1000 BC?
ah, that explains the blue-eyed LGM. man those vikings were horny SOBs...
Wow! You are so goth!
Until something moving or reproducing is actually seen in a microscope, this issue will never be settled. Without such direct evidence, the algorithm will likely repeat:
1. Devise a new test for life
2. Mars probe results are positive
3. A plausible inorganic explanation is eventually devised
4. Go to step 1
Table-ized A.I.
It's not even a month old: the problem with perchlorates was known several years ago. There have been documentaries that included detailed examinations of how Viking basically bungled the biology experiments.
These documentaries are themselves old enough to be outdated because they were about the Mars rovers primarily, which are themselves old news now. Viking was tossed in mainly for "this is how it used to be" coverage.
So while YOU may have just heard about perchlorates, and The Universe may have just talked about it, that does not mean nobody else knew. It's been known for decades. What to DO about it has been the issue.
I agree with you, but I just thought you should know you posted on the wrong article (presumably, I guess it's still possible you're crazy. This is the internet, after all).
yes, though its kind of counter intuitive because its Denmark's territory.
OK, here is one of my pet peeves and something I think is plaguing what we call science today (and why it is mostly pseudo-science) - that tone of the article assumes that life existed and we have just not been able to find it. What this means is *we do not know*. True, that means we may have dug it up and not know, but consider the following re-writing of the synopsis:
"A new study suggests that the Viking Landers used a flawed method to detect organic compounds. Because of the methodology used to detect organics all results would have been negative. The findings may suggest specific strategies that would improve on the way organic compounds are detected on the red planet."
and you frankly have a totally different report on the matter. The latter *is* science, the former is opinion and faith masquerading as science and our schools do *nothing whatsoever* to teach the difference. Indeed, they *encourage* the the pseudo-science. If you want to see what I think is going to eventually cause a total collapse of our society it is this - not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not Christians, not Muslims, not whatever social construct you want to pick. Those may be the final cause just as "emphysema" may go down as the report as to why a 4 pack a day cigarette smoker dies, but it isn't really the true cause. It is what allows that to occur and prevents it from being fought.
It is difficult to mount an attack on the so called "intelligent design" for that very reason. In the current state what the public face of science offers tends to simply be a thinly veiled pseudo-scientific version more based on what the person believes than what is shown to be true. As such it allows crazy ideas to flourish. If, instead, science had focused on what it *does* know, admitted that things it doesn't know could be true (even if you stated probably not), then crazy ideas like the current version of Intelligent Design would mostly drop away. As is it just becomes whose faith do you want to believe. Sadly real academic papers tend to understand this, it is when either journalists or individual scientists that can't separate their faith from their research speak (and the journalist who give them too much space to spout out their believes) that are causing it.
There is not a *single* thing in *any* evolutionary theory that has any say - positive or negative - about if there is an intelligence behind it. Once you choose one of those paths you are operating on faith. Once you choose that life exists outside of our planet you are operating on faith, not science. That it is more likely either true of false is *not* that same things as it *being* true or false, you can work based on assumptions (and often have no choice) but once it becomes such an ingrained idea that it is true by default then you are simply having faith in something despite the evidence. Once that happens it then becomes an argument of faith, not science and you compete with more popular faiths.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
As I read this, I had a mental image of a NASA lander on Mars, pointing all its sensors one way, while a bunch of little green men stood behind it, making fun of the machine's inability to look backwards.
I think it's incredible that those hardy Scandinavian reavers made it off world at all.
Leif, not Lief.
Did anyone else read the headline, thought about the Vikings that landet in america around 800 and thought: Martians in the early america? WTF?
Well, I suppose that missing martian organics ist still better than missing martians' organs ...
Yours sincerely,
Anonymous Coward
My first take on the submission was that those nice gentlemen with the funny horned helmets should have been looking out for alien organic compounds, but of course Mars is a long way to sail (or even row), no matter how hard you flog your crew...
I have *no* idea what you're saying here. You're one sassy frood who really knows where his towel's at.
That's only because I'm here, which is only because I'm bored.