Posted on 03/01/2004 7:57:32 PM PST by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -
Speculation was rife on Monday that space scientists were on the verge of announcing they had discovered evidence that Mars was once a wet and warm planet, possibly capable of sustaining microscopic life forms.
Officials with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that Mars scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, were flying to Washington for a "significant" announcement, but shied away from saying what it would be.
"I can't confirm what they are going to say ... just that it's a significant ... finding," by the rover Opportunity, JPL spokesman Guy Webster said.
But in recent days, scientists have openly spoken of their excitement over finding coarse gray hematite at the Opportunity site, and predicted it would lead to an understanding of how the bedrock the rover is studying was formed and whether water was involved.
The scientists and engineers working with Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, have held all their briefings in Pasadena since the robotic geologists landed on Mars in January.
But major developments in NASA (news - web sites) programs "are typically announced out of (Washington) headquarters," Webster said.
Scheduled to attend the Tuesday briefing were lead rover scientist Steve Squyres, geologist John Grotzinger, chief space exploration scientist Benton Clark, project scientist Joy Crisp, and Jim Garvin, NASA's lead scientist for Mars and the Moon.
Opportunity landed on Jan. 24 in a small crater on the vast flat Meridiani Planum near the planet's equator. It has spent most of its 36 martian days, or sols, studying finely layered bedrock in the crater's wall.
Scientists have been puzzling over whether the layers were formed by wind, volcanic lava flows or water, and if spherical "blueberries" discovered in the rocks were water-related.
In a briefing last week, the Opportunity team said data gathered by the rover's spectrometers and microscopic imager in a flat area of bedrock nicknamed Charlie Flats suggested the presence of gray hematite, which on Earth can form in oxygenated water.
Opportunity's spectrometers also have detected a large deposit of hematite in the surrounding plains.
The science team had planned to compare the spectral signatures of the martian rocks with Earth samples to confirm that the composition was the same.
Evidence of rocks or soil that formed in water would help validate scientists' theories that for the first half of its 4.6 billion-year existence, Mars had plentiful surface water -- even rain and snow -- and possibly, life.
Opportunity and Spirit, now in sol 57 on the other side of the planet, were designed to search for signs of water for at least 90 days, or as long as their solar-powered batteries last.
There's never been absolute, conclusive evidence of either 1) LIQUID water CURRENTLY existing on Mars or 2) LARGE quantities of LIQUID, FLOWING water on the surface of Mars. Plenty of hints though.
The basic problem (and this goes for a lot of the science threads on FR) is that most popular media reporters and editors are absolute, total morons who completely botch every science story they write.
I've talked to scientists who are awestruck at how badly some newspaper article will totally botch everything they told them in some interview.
All too often people seem to complain more about the scientists instead of the idiots writing the stories, though.
A lot of popular media headline writers don't understand the distinction between frozen and liquid water on Mars, so they'll have headlines saying "Rovers find water on Mars" causing befuddlement among people aware that there's already pretty conclusive evidence of frozen water in the ice caps
We sent unmanned landers to Mars before the Apollo missions, and their data was CRITICAL in designing the lander and choosing landing sites.
It's not some either-or thing.
And for the cost of a single manned mission, we could pave Mars over in Rovers like this.
Frankly, from a PURELY SCIENTIFIC standpoint, and factoring in likely advances in robotics in the next few decades, there's no reason to have any manned missions at all from a strict cost-to-science done ratio.
The problem is that people look at it emotionally rather than rationally. I do support a manned Mars mission because of the emotional aspect.
Even though you'd make a lot more scientific discoveries spending the manned Mars mission money on hundreds or even thousands of rovers, nobody would ever actually SPEND that much money unless it was a manned mission.
But my gut says that given enough grinding they will expose what absolutely "looks like" a fossil cast. . . .they may have already . . .
Neither would I, although ISTM (and others here) that the evidence that it has been found via this mission is "rock solid" to coin a phrase.
Simply conclusive evidence of standing liquid water or true water-generated sedimentary rocks on Mars would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the space program, and, indeed, the whole century.
Here's an excerpt from something I posted in another thread:
My WAG is that they're playing the "limited hang-out" gambit and will not 'fess up to the obvious evidence of life found by the rovers, but will make great hay over the (already known) water.
What will (IMO) be new will be the revelation that there is liquid water in the immediate sub-surface region. One implication would be that the earlier satellite data of massive amounts of sub-surface water -- in the form of permafrost -- will have to be revised. This would mean that it could be fairly trivial to sink a shallow well and draw up liquid water. Whether it's sweetwater or "brine" is yet to be determined.
My theory is that the bitter cold temperatures reported in the Martian air are meaningless WRT the ground temperature. Some time ago it was reported that there was a dramatic air temperature gradient, with the air at the surface level being very warm, IIRC in the 70 deg. F range.
The extremely thin Martian air would be a very poor conductor, so, it would not be very effective at bleeding off the ground heat either by conduction or convection.
Meanwhile, the ground would continue to soak up heat from the Sun, and retain it. If there is residual heat from the core, it could contribute to maintaining the heat. In essence, it would be sort of a "greenhouse effect", only based in the soil, rather than the atmosphere.
A "warm, wet Mars" from the ground level on down could easily be teeming with life. (And, those "blueberries" might actually be turds afterall!)
Then, there's Gilbert Levin's startling assertion:
His credentials, from the article copied in that thread:Levin points to Opportunity imagery that offers conclusive proof of standing liquid water and running water on a cold Mars.
Other images show the rover tracks clearly are being made in "mud", with water being pressed out of that material, Levin said. "That water promptly freezes and you can see reflecting ice. That's clearly ice. It could be nothing else," he said, "and the source is the water that came out of the mud."
He is Chairman of the Board and Executive Officer for Science of Spherix Incorporated in Beltsville, Maryland.
Levin is a former Viking Mars lander investigator. He has long argued that his 1976 Viking Labeled Release (LR) life detection experiment found living microorganisms in the soil of Mars.
In 1997, Levin reported that simple laws of physics require water to occur as a liquid on the surface of Mars. Subsequent experiments and research have bolstered this view, he said, and reaffirms his Viking LR data regarding microbial life on Mars.
And finally, this statement of his from the same context:
"It's hard to image why such bullet-proof evidence was denied for such a long time, and why those so vigorously denying it never did so by meeting the science, but merely by brushing it away," Levin said.
"Of course, now that it must be acknowledged by all that there is liquid water on the surface of Mars," Levin added, "this starts those denying the validity of the Mars LR data down the slippery slope leading to life."
And then there are all of those obvious fossils found by many of us, including several geologists, in the threads over the past few weeks. Do a search on the Mars threads via the posting histories of members like Phil V., Piltdown_Woman, and the rest of the usual suspects. :)
Long John Silver's announced on January 16 that it will give America free Giant Shrimp if NASA's Mars Exploration Rover project finds conclusive evidence of an ocean on Mars by February 29, 2004.
Did the actual offer use the word "finds", or "reports"? :)
No, it didn't.
There's one retired Viking scientist, I believe, who insists it did. I haven't researched the story enough to really comment on his possible kookiness (and yes, legit scientists can and do go "kooky.")
Whoa, not so fast there, cowboy!
To: djfInstant research, courtesy of Google:
http://www.resa.net/nasa/mars_life_viking.htm
That first one covers it pretty much as I remembered it. NASA said it couldn't be life, because life was impossible on Mars, given the conditions found there after landing. Others, though, said otherwise. :)
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/07/20/viking.anniversary/
That article explains the control -- they boiled one sample, then tested both. A reaction from only the non-boiled sample would indicate life, and that's what happened. It (the article) also has a suggestion on repeating the test to eliminate most of the variables -- do separate L and D tests to test for "handedness", which, if present, would be pretty conclusive evidence. (my paraphrasing)
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/09/03/mars.viking/
That article covers the discovery of a circadian rhythm in the Viking tests, which is strong evidence of life.
I got 14,000 hits for "mars viking life experiments" (w/o the quotes), those were from the top of the first page of hits. Here are a couple more links from the query:
http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/viking_life_010728-1.html
That article (on the second page) profers a theory similar to the one discussed in this thread, i.e., meteoric strike on Earth that "infected" Mars. It also goes into more depth on the circadian rhythms, which matched Mars' day length.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/viking_labeledrelease_010905-1.html
That one has more details on the experiments.
Please note that the experiments have been receiving a fair amount of scrutiny as of late, since NASA published the results, and there is a growing consensus for the "pro life" side of the debate. Among other things, there was a circadian rhythm -- based on the Martian day length (and, the experiments were temperature-controlled to a very high degree of accuracy).
To: Brett66Here is a link inside of the article that you posted:
http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/viking_life_010728-1.html
The link above is for an article about the Viking I/II mission.
Here is a quote from the article:
""To my surprise, in their LR experiment, they seemed to have clear periodic oscillations in the release of gas from a Martian soil sample injected with a nutrient solution. The oscillations in gas release had a period of what appeared to be one Martian day. Being a circadian biologist, I became very excited," Miller told SPACE.com.
On Earth, Miller said, circadian rhythms -- oscillations with a period of nearly 24 hours -- are present in every species examined down to blue-green algae. Was it possible, he asked, that the LR experiment was recording the circadian rhythm of a Martian soil-dwelling microbe?
NASA worked with Miller, providing him the 1976 LR data sets, as well as converting the information to an electronic format. That allowed the circadian biologist to study the data using modern computer-based analytical tools.
"I found that the gas release was indeed rhythmic, with a period of precisely 24.66 hours, a Martian day," Miller said. This finding, along with other painstaking assessments about LR operations, the scientist feels that a Martian circadian rhythm in the experiment may constitute a biosignature - a sign of life."
36 posted on 03/01/2004 12:23:42 AM EST by NotQuiteCricket (10 kinds of people in the world)
I'll close by pointing out that the above material reflects "pro-life" viewpoint from considerably more than "one retired Viking scientist" who went "kooky."
Check out the material I posted a couple of minuts ago, directly above this.
Among other things, the Viking experiments used a control, i.e., they checked two batches, one of which had been sterilized via heat, and one which had not. The sterilized batch did not show the reaction, and the nonsterilized batch did show it. This mitigtes against a chemical-based reaction, and in favor of a biological source, as does the circadian rhythm.
NASA's official position was based not on the results, but rather on the "fact" that they had determined that the Martian environment was not capable of supporting life (as we know it), and therefore, the results of the experments had to be flawed.
This is not what I call "science", unless "outcome-based experimentation" is "science".
It's sort of like running into a Frenchman in London, and insisting that he can't really be French, because as we all know, it's the English that come from London -- so therefore, he's actually an Englishman, and any "evidence" to the contrary is simply a misinterpretation.
And yes, that's a pretty decent analogy for the "logic" they used to discount the results of the experiments.
I know sedimentary structures when I am looking at them. Although I don't know the exact scale, that close-up is showing bedding. Since I can only assume that the top of the picture is "up" (you geologists will know what I mean), I sense a fining-upward sequence with occasional coarse interbeds. I am less certain about the smooth, dark gray features cutting across bedding, but I would hazard a guess that they may be the result of impact shock. They don't look like dessication cracks or dikes. However, they could represent some other sort of material injected under pressure.
Damn! What I would give to be standing there with my Brunton and Estwing soft rock pick.
If the light brown object in the upper right corner of the photo were something like a trilobite, it would be the most significant discovery in exo-biology.
To describe the object, I would say that the cephalon was partially cropped in the top of the picture, but there is a well-developed glabella and slight evidence of an eye ridge and fixed cheek. The thorax appears to be segmented into pleurons with pleural furrows. The axial furrow is unclear, as is the axial ring. The pygidium is obscured due to partial burial of the specimen. There is no evidence of a genal spine on the cephalon.
Trilobites were one of the first organisms to develop something like an eye.
It looks alot like an Elrathia kingi.
In fact, if I was running the show, I'd make sure there were two "known" (i.e., "apparently") functional return vehicles, twice the necessary fuel and water, and two shelters awaiting the human explorers. That sort of reduncancy is a good thing, especially when several lives are at stake, and there's no other possible method of redundancy.
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