Martian soil may contain life, ...or maybe not |
Martian soil may contain life, ...or maybe not |
Aug 23 2007, 09:27 PM
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The Poet Dude Group: Moderator Posts: 5551 Joined: 15-March 04 From: Kendal, Cumbria, UK Member No.: 60 |
Sounds like the presentation went down very well, congrats Doug! (well worth downloading the slides too everyone, by the way...)
On a slightly different subject, wonder how many of you have come across this yet..? "Martian soil might contain life" Offered without comment or opinion, just wondered if anyone had seen it... reckon it'll be all over the news tomorrow. -------------------- |
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Aug 28 2007, 03:41 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
That's the thing, though. The VL results have been controversial for 31 years (!) now, and the subject of so much speculation that it's clear that no conclusion can ever be positively obtained from them. If we keep sending purely biochemically-focused life detection experiments then I don't think that we'll ever have a definitive answer to the fundamental question "Is there life on Mars?" because there will always be alternative inorganic explanations for any results obtained, or a given experiment's assumptions may be flawed, or purported microMartians don't eat & excrete in expected ways & patterns, etc., etc....it'll never end. We just don't know enough about what is and is not possible with respect to biochemistry to qualitatively analyze results from such experiments, and Joop's paper is providing some very serendipitous, extremely valuable illumination by making this point.
Apparently, the only true touchstone we have for life detection is that we know it when we see it. Let's get a mission together that can see. We can figure out the critters' biochemistry later, if they really are there. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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