Better have this ready just in case.
Posted on 07/23/2004 9:20:42 PM PDT by Simmy2.5
Ammonia may have been found in Mars' atmosphere which some scientists say could indicate life on the Red Planet. Researchers say its spectral signature has been tentatively detected by sensors on board the European Space Agency's orbiting Mars Express craft.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
And the problem is...?
Without being educated in science I can still say with absolute certainty...
Ah. As I suspected.
"Ah. As I suspected."
Ah, the arrogance of the modern 'scientist'.
(1). Yawn! The (amonia = Martian life) story claims that a NASA scientist said: ”there are no known ways for ammonia to be present in the Martian atmosphere that do not involve life.” However, the piece does not even give the name of this alleged 'NASA scientist'.
(2). An article written by Stephen Strauss of the 'Globe and Mail Update' says that reporters inundated the ESA for more information on the amonia 'discovery', and were referred to Guido De Marchi, an astronomer who also works as a Holland-based press officer for ESA. His response was: "It is not true; it is a hoax,”
(3). Some scientists say that amonia can be caused by electrical discharges such as lightening.
(4). Still other scientists say amonia could be caused by undetected volcanic activity on Mars.
(5). Still others claim it means there must be life on Mars.
Number 5 is what troubles me about these 'scientists'. Even with weak, unsubstantiated or refuted evidence, they still try to put forth their theories as facts, as though they were written in blood or etched in stone somewhere. But when you mention GOD to many of these people they smirk and say HE can't be seen or proven to exist, hence life began in some pool of slime or through some incredulous "big bang" theory. They have faith in themselves and their theories and try to advance them with a transcendent authority. It's all vanity.
Now please excuse me while I turn on the radio and listen to Art Bell, he always lulls me to sleep withing two minutes.
'jasee this one?
From the Mars atmospheric data:
Major : Carbon Dioxide (CO2) - 95.32% ; Nitrogen (N2) - 2.7% Argon (Ar) - 1.6%; Oxygen (O2) - 0.13%; Carbon Monoxide (CO) - 0.08%
Minor (ppm): Water (H2O) - 210; Nitrogen Oxide (NO) - 100; Neon (Ne) - 2.5; Hydrogen-Deuterium-Oxygen (HDO) - 0.85; Krypton (Kr) - 0.3; Xenon (Xe) - 0.08
No ammonia is even mentioned.
The scary question is: What could produce enough weewee to be detected a thousand miles away?
Yeah, but what kind of life would that be?
"Darling, smell the evening air through our gorgeous red haze of a sunset, so fragrant, all ammonia and rock dust. Inhale, sweet one, and ... remember this magic moment forever."
Gack!
*Richard C. Hoagland tinfoil hat on*
Well, it's because they are covering up the TRUTH! Viking DID find Ammonia back then. Just that all those 'evil' MIB NASA strongarm people made sure they keep the TRUTH from us. Covered somewhere is some warehouse. And they are still here keeping the truth from us now! They don't want us to know that there is life on Mars right now! Those 'evil' conspirators!
:-P
Results from NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers are being looked over by a legion of planetary experts, including a scientist who remains steadfast that his experiment in 1976 proved the presence of active microbial life in the topsoil of Mars.
"All factors necessary to constitute a habitat for life as we know it exist on current-day Mars," explained Gilbert Levin, executive officer for science at Spherix Incorporated of Beltsville, Maryland.
Levin made his remarks here Monday at the International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology, the 49th annual meeting of Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).
Provocative find
Levin has a long-standing interest in time-weathered Mars and the promise of life today on that distant and dusty world.
NASA’s 1976 Viking mission to Mars was geared-up to look for possible martian life. And it was Levin’s Labeled Release experiment that made a provocative find: The presence of a highly reactive agent in the surface material of Mars.
Levin concluded in 1997 that this activity was triggered by living microorganisms lurking in the martian soil – a judgment he admits has not been generally accepted by the scientific community.
Now roll forward to 2004. Consider the findings of Spirit and Opportunity, the golf-cart sized robots wheeling over Mars at Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum.
"Those rovers have been absolutely sensational, pouring out thousands of images. Those images have lots of information in them. And I’ve tried to deduce something in there relative to life…and I think I found a lot," Levin told SPACE.com.
Squeezed out of the soil
In perusing rover imagery, Levin reports there is clear evidence for liquid water existing under Martian environmental conditions. "The images should be reviewed against the background of surface temperatures as varying from below to above freezing reported by both Spirit and Opportunity," he explained.
Levin points to the potential for mud puddles on Mars, showing an image of clearly disturbed martian soil after rover airbags bounced across Mars’ surface. Possible standing water and sinkholes can also be seen in rover imagery, according to his analysis. In some pictures, the often-discussed "blueberries, " tiny spheres of material, disappear as if submerged underneath mud-like surroundings, he added.
Then there are tracks left by the machines as they roll across the martian terrain. Self-taken shots by the robots show what Levin said appears to be water squeezed out of the soil which then freezes into a whitish residue left in embedded tread marks.
Similarly, Levin added, are images taken by Opportunity of the results from an operation of the robot’s Rock Abrasion Tool, or RAT. The center of that particular RAT hole is largely white, possibly indicating the formation of frost since the hole was drilled, he noted.
Organisms there now?
Better have this ready just in case.
There is new life in old data…and it's likely Martian life.
Several scientists have found compelling evidence that Viking Mars landers did indeed discover life on the red planet in 1976. A re-examination of findings relayed to Earth by the probes some 25 years ago, claim the experts, show the tell-tale signs of microbes lurking within the Martian soil.
The researchers will unveil their views Sunday, July 29, at a session on astrobiology, held during the SPIE's 46th annual International Society for Optical Engineering meeting in San Diego, California.
Slam dunk discovery
When the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Landers dropped in on Mars that July and September of 1976, respectively, each carried the same set of biological experiments to search for signs of life.
But over a quarter of a century later, exactly what the robotic twosome did detect remains hotly debated.
Images
A model of the Mars Viking Lander 1
The TRW-built Mars viking biology experiment was prepared in a clean room. The equivalent of a university biology lab, it contained more than 40,000 components crammed into a space no larger than a car battery. Both Viking landers carried these devices. CREDIT: TRW Space & Electronics
The first picture taken on the surface of Mars. Viking's camera began scanning the scene 25 seconds after touchdown and continued to scan for five minutes. The picture was assembled from left to right during the 20 minutes it took to transmit the data from the Orbiter relay station to Earth.
A Viking 1 Lander image of Mars' Chryse Planitia. The large white object at lower left and center, with the American flag on the side, is the spacecraft's radiothermal generator (RTG) cover. The shot is looking to the northwest of the lander.
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The scientific squabble centers on one Viking biology investigation: the Labeled Release (LR) life detection experiment. It used a small measure of scooped up soil, stirred together with a nutrient "soup" containing carbon-14.
The idea was that any living organisms present would digest the radioactively labeled nutrient solution, then belch off gases as life metabolized the nutrient. And guess what? The LR experiments on both Landers coughed up puffs of radiolabeled gas - evidence for microorganisms in the soil of Mars.
But it was no slam-dunk of a discovery.
Sterile Mars
Another Viking experiment, a gas chromatograph mass-spectrometer (GCMS), built to identify organic molecules on Mars, found none to analyze.
That find threw the LR results into question. A default position adopted by a majority of scientists was that no life was present at the Viking sites. What the LR device yielded, said many of those assessing the Viking data, was a false positive result.
Cause of the result, and still widely held: A chemical practical joker is in the soil, some sort of oxidant that fooled the LR experiment.
Over the years, that verdict has been touted by many as the most likely rationale for the LR results. Moreover, that oxidant is nasty to life. It destroys organic materials, causing the surface of Mars to be a sterile, lifeless domain. Therefore, no wonder the GCMS found Mars absent of organic materials.
This tidy explanation has served well to derail talk that the Viking Landers detected life.
Clinging to the magnets
But a staunch believer that Viking found life is Gilbert Levin, former Viking scientist and now chief executive officer for Spherix in Beltsville, Maryland. His Labeled Release experiment, he told SPACE.com, worked like a charm and gave notice that life was observed
"The Viking LR experiment detected living microorganisms in the soil of Mars," Levin flatly said.
Also believing that a biological interpretation of the LR on Mars cannot be dismissed is David Warmflash, an astrobiologist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
These two paragraphs don't make you scratch your head?
(a find that TheCrusader had made, above)
Since the article came out about the ensuing difficulty in confirming the story, nobody's said anything. Whitehouse hasn't retracted his story. But the story does say that the ammonia that was found was not in the vicinity of the Beagle bags, which clearly implies that they did indeed see a signature of ammonia in a specific place (not near the Beagle site).
Beats me.
What "pet theory" is that? Do you know what it takes for a theory to become a theory in science? Hint, it's not just some WAG.
The jury is still out with me on this one. I don't have enough evidence to say there is or there is not life on Mars. However, I personally lean in the non-life direction. I still go by the rule - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I understand that John Kerry's underwear smells of ammonia. Does that mean there's life there?
I always feed my garden and pet spiders ammonia.
In my post I was alluding to the discordance between the hours-long existence of ammonia in the Martian atmosphere and the loss of the Beagle probe last year. Plus, I did not know that the location of the lost lander had been discovered.
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