Slashdot Mirror
Mars Rover Finds Complex Chemicals But No Organic Compounds
techtech writes in with the results from the first soil samples tested by the Curiosity rover. "Although NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't yet confirmed the detection of organic compounds on Mars, it's already seeing that the Red Planet's soil contains complex chemicals — including signs of an intriguing compound called perchlorate. The first soil sample analysis from Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars lab, or SAM, was the leadoff topic today at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco. The findings were eagerly awaited because of rumors that the Curiosity team was on the verge of announcing major findings — and although NASA tamped down expectations, the scientists said they were overjoyed with the first round of analysis."
on Curiosity and are just about ready to go... http://imgur.com/VWcAU
:o)
NASA can't keep up being the "boy who cried wolf." People will just stop listening if every little thing is "breakthrough" and something "earth-shattering!" My goodness.
Nothing is more dangerous than a programmer with a screwdriver.
What a let down.
Reminds me of this recent SMBC comic.
There is some good science being done and the Good Stuff will be when Curiosity reaches the clay layers at the base of Mt Sharp, so be patient. There is also the minor mystery of the chlorinated methane products...
on Curiosity and are just about ready to go... http://imgur.com/VWcAU :o)
That doesn't look like Jimmy Hoffa to me...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
They mention that the Calcium Perchlorate may be an energy source. How about using it to manufacture rocket fuel on mars? It's similar to other oxidizers used in solid fuel rockets. Wouldn't it be strange if the fuel for a return-to-earth trip could be manufactured right there from materials lying right there on the planet surface? Or am I totally smoking something?
Perchlorate is intriguing for a number of reasons that are tangental to the compound's intrinsic character.
First, it is a potentially biologically useful compound as an oxygen source for single cellular respiration in autochemotrophs.
Second, if concentrations are high enough, the salt lowers the melting point of water sufficiently that martian soil could be "moist" at sufficient depths.
Also, the compound usually only forms in nature from UV irridation of aqueous saline solutions. A high abundance of the mineral is very suggestive of a very different mars from what we see now.
Previous rovers have detected gypsum, and perchlorates at other locations. Additional samplings of perchlorates increases the probability that the mineral is very prevelent in the crust, which greatly increases the chances of finding microbiotic life.
The fact that perchlorate salts are about as "interesting" as O2, salt, silicon dioxide, and other inorganic substances here on earth does not mean that they are uninteresting in an environment that is radically different from our own.
It is a wicked oxydizer, and it does kill most terrestrial microbes almost instantly. (Its basically bleach.)
However, the degree of lethality is deprendent on concentration of the perchlorate salt (my understanding was that it was under 1% of the sample, suggesting it was a low yeild, but omnipresent mineral), as a small qualtity would be tolerable to extremophiles, which is what you would expect in the extreme conditions on mars.
Life on mars appears more and more to fall into a very narrow band of habitablility, like the photosynthetic soil microbes of antarctica, assuming it exists at all.
Missions like this one give us a better understanding of martian environmental conditions, and allow us to make better guesses about what areas of mars might potentially harbor life.
Earthicans banned it in 2010...
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/air/dry_cleaners_perchlorate.shtml
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.