MSL - SAM and CHEMIN, Discussion of the science/results from these instruments |
MSL - SAM and CHEMIN, Discussion of the science/results from these instruments |
Nov 21 2012, 11:46 AM
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 3108 Joined: 21-December 05 From: Canberra, Australia Member No.: 615 |
ADMIN NOTE: Hi All, a new topic for the discussion of the science from the SAM and Chemin instruments.
There has been a very important amendment to Rule 1.3 which is explained here. Please remember Rule 1.3 at all times when discussing matters in this section. |
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Dec 4 2012, 02:24 PM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 27 Joined: 6-August 12 From: Leeds, Yorkshire, UK Member No.: 6469 |
Not only was 'organic' not precisely defined in yesterday's conference, the word cannot be defined with any scientific precision. Organic originally meant relating to an organism, a living entity. These days, people most often see the word organic on meat & veg in the supermarket. Has anyone ever seen an inorganic cow or cabbage?
Astronomers say there are organic compounds to be found all over the universe, even in the rocks that fall from space onto Earth, Mars and everywhere else, but they don't intend to imply that these originated in an organism. Yesterday's NASA press release defined organic compounds as "carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients for life". There is no scientific consensus behind this definition. For some, if a compound includes carbon, it's organic. Others require a C-H bond, but then that excludes common bodily compounds such as urea. As if that weren't confusing enough, astronomers don't call CO2 an organic compound, even though it's unquestionably a carbon-containing chemical that's an essential ingredient for life. To be fair, I thought yesterday's conference did an excellent job explaining that the various compounds detected could have numerous explanations and that only painstaking, patient, scientific method will determine the answer. The co-ordinated, multi-instrument analyses they revealed are a spectacular achievement, but you could sense there was some discomfort and embarrassment on the platform, especially when the press kept returning to that darn word organic. This linguistic inexactitude is the root cause of the wild speculation about "Life on Mars" that springs up just as soon as the word organic is mentioned. The word is functionally useless in any scientific context. Worse yet, it's not even necessary. Among the many things that the MSL team have discovered so far are carbon compounds. They cannot yet say whether these carbon compounds are biotic or abiotic in origin. |
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Dec 4 2012, 03:27 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
If you currently do a Google News search for "mars curiosity" it's easy to browse headlines, and the contradictory takeaways this event produced are evident. While the main articles may or may not converge by giving the same nuanced explanation, the headlines swing wildly from "detects 'organic compounds'" to "sees... no organics." Yesterday, in the body of one article, I saw a claim that the organics might have been brought to Mars by Curiosity (which is right) but then added the possibility they were brought by some previous spacecraft, which given the distances between landing sites is outrageously wrong and suggestive of something wild!
My dog used to take any jingle of my keys as a sign that we were going for a walk, and would become agitated and persistent if she heard the jingle. It didn't take me long to learn not to jingle them unless a walk was imminent. The scientific establishment would do well to know how the dog (media, public) responds to jingle and to act accordingly. In this busy, information-packed world, headlines have a powerful currency, we must all choose which headlines we read past and which we learn from, and this was, as others have noted so well, a case which was treated appropriately when the scientists had time in a panel discussion to explain things clearly, but the first "jingle" was careless. I understand why there's excitement around the mere detection/non-detection of carbon in martian soil, but at the same time, carbon is the THIRD most abundant element in the solar system if you exclude helium (which is certain not to be a major bulk component of Mars) and the second most abundant element in Mars's atmosphere. In fact, there have to be some damned good reasons if we don't find any carbon in martian soil, which there obviously are (on Earth, as well, it is only 15th in crustal abundance). Which is just to say that finding it or not should have been (and should be, going forward) flagged in advance as a possible media event to treat according to a sensible key-jingling protocol. Without the team ever having misled anyone in a deliberate sense, there was a real, though unintended head-fake of the first degree here. News!?!?!? No, not in the sense that grabs first-page headlines. And the trust and attention erodes a little bit. Meanwhile, Venus Express may have found signs of a volcanic eruption on Venus, and hardly a whisper in the news... In the (striking!) event that in one week we have news concerning one substance or another at all three planets in the inner solar system, I'd say the Mercury case was handled perfectly, the Venus one with too little hoopla, and the Mars one with far too much. |
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