When politics becomes a saddening bore, the idea of life on other planets cheers me up:
A new look at data from the Mars Viking landers concludes that the two landers may have found the building blocks of life on the Red Planet after all way back in 1976. The surprise discovery of perchlorates by the Phoenix mission on Mars 32 years later could means the way the Viking experiment was set up actually would have destroyed any carbon-based chemical building blocks of life – what the experiment set about to try and find.
“This doesn’t say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question,” said Chris McKay of NASA’s Ames Research Center. McKay coauthored a study published online by the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets, reanalyzing results of Viking’s tests for organic chemicals in Martian soil.
The Viking lander scooped up some soil, put it in a tiny oven and heated the sample. The only organic chemicals identified in the Martian soil from that experiment chloromethane and dichloromethane — chlorine compounds interpreted at the time as likely contaminants from cleaning fluids used on the spacecraft before it left Earth. But those chemicals are exactly what the new study found when a little perchlorate — the surprise finding from Phoenix — was added to desert soil from Chile containing organics and analyzed in the manner of the Viking tests.
stevie314159
I heard the Viking lander scooped up Obama’s Martian birth certificate.
Bob Loblaw
Since we already know the probability of life existing within this solar system to be 1, it wouldn’t be that mystifying to find the existence of anaerobic microorganisms somewhere else in the system. Confirming the existence of “life” in a system not previously guaranteed to sustain life in the first place would seem much more shocking, from a scientific perspective.
Zifnab
I wonder how long it will take until one of our probing missions accidentally seeds Mars with life from Earth. I figure it’s got to happen sooner or later.
Southern Beale
I asked my readers a few months ago to share their thoughts on intelligent life in outer space. Got a few interesting responses, not nearly as interesting as when asked “what happens when we die” though.
I like asking those types of questions every once in a while because politics can be so soul-deadening. It’s an opportunity to have some interesting conversation with people whom I often don’t agree with politically.
Randy P
I could never figure out why more people didn’t get excited about the possible discovery of life on Saturn’s moon Titan, back in June.
– Methane is a liquid on Titan.
– There’s too much methane in the atmosphere. Something is replenishing it.
– There’s not enough hydrogen in the atmosphere. Something is consuming it.
There is at least a possibility that this is due to life which is based on liquid methane and breathing hydrogen, instead of water and oxygen.
DougJ
@Zifnab:
You mean anchor microbes?
Amir_Khalid
@Southern Beale:
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cause there’s bugger-all down here on Earth
— Monty Python, The Galaxy Song
JGabriel
DougJ:
Me too. I wish I could go looking for it.
As long as I can keep an internet connection.
Yeah, I’m a wuss.
.
cls180
My dad designed the power cells for the Viking project. I remember growing up, we had framed pictures of Mars hanging in the upstairs hall. One was a pic of a rock formation that looked like a Volkswagon bug. There may be more to life on Mars than you think….
JGabriel
@DougJ:
Nah, anchor microbes are the illegal aliens that parasitically hitch a ride on returning probes, then sell crack while getting welfare.
BTW, can anyone explain the wingnut obsession with drug dealing welfare recipients? I always thought the whole point of dealing drugs was that it’s supposed to pay rather well.
.
slag
@DougJ:
Ha!
slag
@Bob Loblaw: I don’t know. I remember how thrilled I was to learn about whole communities of life surrounding hydrothermal vents. Cool shit is cool shit. On earth, mars, or any other planet, as far as I’m concerned.
Chad N Freude
So isn’t anyone going to take a swipe at Ray Bradbury?
(For the record, I grew up on Bradbury, have always admired his writing and still do, and I think he’s entitled become a right-leaning Luddite if that’s what he wants at the age of 90.)
Chad N Freude
The anchor microbes are the ones that go to Mars on our machines.
Hmm…
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: Should have acknowledged @Zifnab. Sorry, dude.
licensed to kill time
♪♫ ‘Cause the man from Mars won’t eat up bars where the TV’s on
And now he’s gone back up to space
Where he won’t have a hassle with the human race ♪♫
Jon H
I want to send a message out to space 24×7: “ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EARTH. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE. WE’RE FUCKED UP”
DCr
So, in other words, it’s possible Earth sent a spacecraft to another planet, Mars, in part to search for life. In the event, that spacecraft possibly and ignorantly destroyed the life it found.
How many metaphors are embodied here for current times?
DCr
Zifnab
@DougJ: I suppose I do. Are they already an issue?
Chad N Freude
@DCr: Or introduced life where none had existed before.
Nylund
I’m emailing my father for comment.
He was in charge of testing the lunar samples from Apollo 11 for carbon (the finding was something along the lines that contamination from spacecraft/machinery oils messed everything up.)
He was also very involved with Viking, specifically, looking for life, in both the experimental set up (which he’s described as “we set it on fire and see what comes out,”) and analyzing the findings. I do remember him complaining about all sorts of funding and bureaucratic problems and that the experiment just barely met the minimum requirements outlined by the initial objective.
In short, this post has his name written all over it.
If anyone is interested in his response, please email me and I’ll happily forward it on (if/when he answers).
Anne Laurie
@JGabriel:
It’s part of the Contamination Narrative — those anchor-baby-breeding terrorists from somewhere else (Scary Ghetto, where decent folk fear to tread) are simultaneously sucking our precious financial fluids and contaminating our almost-as-precious bodily fluids. “Those people” as parasitic insects. It doesn’t make sense in the rational world, but the wingnuts aren’t interested in “rational”, just tribal. You know the old anthropology chestnut about how every primitive tribe calls themselves “The People” and everyone outside their little intermarried clan is by definition not people? The Wingnut Wurlitzer has spent the last 40 years perfecting that primitive human instinct as a sure-fire high-tech selling point.
Anne Laurie
@Jon H:
We’ve been doing that for years — it’s called ‘television’.
Sometimes I take comfort in the theory that the Universal Instrumentality is waiting just outside our planetary line-of-sight, checking at intervals to see if we’re ready to hang with the grown-ups yet. “They’re working with nanobots, that’s a positive. But the teabagger astroturfing? — gonna cost them another decade of isolation…”
MobiusKlein
What scientists and engineers should take from this: Always set up a control case. Run the experiment ahead of time on a variety of inputs ( desert soil, beach sand, regular dirt, etc) so you know what your uncontrolled sample’s output would mean.
_ CALIBRATE YOUR INSTRUMENTS _
Nylund
I emailed my father (see my prev. comment) and he and his old Viking/Moon buddies are discussing this. I can’t follow their conversation (its too technical for me), but the old guys seem to think this new study missed some details from the original Viking results that would complicate these findings. Some of them are meeting on Sunday to talk this over and I think they’re going to contact these authors to discuss it further.
I know that my father often feels a lot of time is wasted rediscovering things that were figured out decades ago and that a lot of trouble could be avoided if new researchers just bothered to call them up and discuss things before making assumptions about what was and was not done. Admittedly many of those people from back in the 60’s and 70’s have passed away, but there are still a few around.
Cermet
@MobiusKlein: The Standard null test for the organic experiment on Viking was performed and it proved that their results (on Earth) were shit wrong but what did they do (NASA?) They said that the four experiments in Viking while on Mars that indicated life must be in error because the carbon detection (organics) said zip (but that is the one that failed the simple test on Earth and said material from Antarctica was incorrectly shown to be sterile and they KNEW that is incorrect since such organics are in the Antarctica soil – total dumb shits.)
Now, we KNOW large amounts of methane gas (which is produced by life here on Earth but while there are special non-life based chemistries that can also do it – but not very well, this is a great sign.)
So, combine that ALL the Viking experiments confirm possible life (could have been special chemistry) AND there are large carbonate deposits AND methane gas is constantly added to the atmosphere the probability of alien Martian life isn’t just remote but the MOST likely explanation of ALL the data – period.
NASA needs a sample return mission ASAP.
SteveinSC
One of the humorous episodes from the Viking Project came from the Viking Lander Imagery Team–Carl Sagan. The Lander cameras were facsimile cameras, electomechanical jobbies (don’t laugh.) They could make great pictures, but a snap-shot was out of the question. So the question came up, How to image a live, moving Martian? Carl Sagan suggested that they hang a blob of jellow like material on a pole in front of the cameras. Water, being in supposed short supply, the martian creatures would come to the water and we would have a better chance to take its picture. If the water thing proved impractical, Sagan suggested painting the Mars Lander sexually attractive colors and patterns. The martian creatures would come to the Lander, attempt to copulate with it and the camera would take a picture of the creature in flagrante delicto. –From the small book of little known anecdotes that make history fun.
Keith
Newt Gingrich tells me that perchlorate-laden soil makes an excellent spot to build a mosque.
jah
Canopus
by Bert Leston Taylor (1866-1921)
WHEN quacks with pills political would dope us,
When politics absorbs the livelong day,
I like to think about that star Canopus,
So far, so far away.
Greatest of visioned suns, they say who list ’em;
To weigh it science almost must despair.
Its shell would hold our whole dinged solar system,
Nor even know ’twas there.
When temporary chairmen utter speeches,
And frenzied henchmen howl their battle hymns,
My thoughts float out across the cosmic reaches
To where Canopus swims.
When men are calling names and making faces,
And all the world’s ajangle and ajar,
I meditate on interstellar spaces
And smoke a mild seegar.
For after one has had about a week of
The argument of friends as well as foes,
A star that has no parallax to speak of
Conduces to repose.
S. cerevisiae
It’s life, Jim but not as we know it.
OK seriously this is cool shit. My personal opinion is that simple life is common in the universe, and if there is some kind of microbe or something that can survive on freaking Titan then life is even more common.
Thursday
@JGabriel: It doesn’t. Not for the vast majority of the people involved. Hell, Amway pays better, and it’s just as creepy.
Love the thought of life on Mars (the show was pretty good, too), but I have to side with xkcd on this one: xkcd.com/786/