Martian soil may contain life, ...or maybe not Options

[nprev]

Interesting speculations, oDoug.

Beginning to think that the next Flagship to Mars (after MSL) needs to be chock full o' microscopes & culture solutions, from straight optical all the way down to a miniaturized SEM. Let's settle this once and for all.

If there is Martian microbial life, and if its either extremophilic in a way that's hard for us to encourage growth and/or is significantly different from terrestrial life biochemically, then direct detection of individual bugs rather than indirect chemical analyses of candidate biological byproducts seems like the only possible strategy to avoid these "ifs".

[marsbug]

My thinking exactly nprev. It's an interesting piece of speculation, and I'm glad to hear that the originators at least have been responsible and presented it as just that, no more or less. I'd be very interested to see if they can come up with some predictions that might be tested by pheonix. It would be a long shot, but if they found some supporting evidence who knows?

[nprev]

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.

[mchan]

Beginning to think that the next Flagship to Mars (after MSL) needs to be chock full o' microscopes & culture solutions, from straight optical all the way down to a miniaturized SEM.

While not an SEM and with limitations on the field size, the AFM on Phoenix should provide some interesting views at um scales. Not enough to see nanobacteria fossils, though.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/polar2006/pdf/8047.pdf

[SpaceListener]

The true evidence of some kind of living is that it shows at least some kind of movement. That would be a much better life existence evidence than analyzing its past life.

[djellison]

culture solutions

So you don't like Joop's theory then

Doug

[AndyG]

I don't like today's Space Daily's report of this under the headline "Calculating The Biomass Of Martian Soil". With regards to the report, that sounds rather <i>biased</i>.

Andy

[djellison]

That's not a report. When SpaceDaily say 'by Staff Writers' they actually mean the copying and pasting of a press release, in full, verbatim.

Here's the press release, as it was in my inbox on Aug 18th.

[]Subject : Calculating the Biomass of Martian Soil
Email : A new interpretation of data from NASA's Viking landers indicates that 0.1%
of the Martian soil tested could have a biological origin.

Dr Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, believes that the
subfreezing, arid Martian surface could be home to organisms whose cells are
filled with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water. In a presentation at
the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam .....[/I]

I don't think I need to carry on. Calling it reporting is like calling photocopying a work of art.

Doug

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

That's not a report. When SpaceDaily say 'by Staff Writers' they actually mean the copying and pasting of a press release, in full, verbatim.

True enough, though SpaceDaily is by no means the only offender. Frankly, I've always thought this practice, widely accepted in the "space news" media, is not only misleading but borderline scuzzy.

[nprev]

So you don't like Joop's theory then

Doug

Well, I figure that any bugs of that particular ilk would probably do a LOT of moving when the water hits them before they go to that Great Extreme Environment in the Sky, where H2O2 properly mixed in an exact ratio with H2O flows like, uh...water, without boiling away...better have a nice, fast real-time imager...

[dvandorn]

True enough, though SpaceDaily is by no means the only offender. Frankly, I've always thought this practice, widely accepted in the "space news" media, is not only misleading but borderline scuzzy.

It's a grand old tradition in just about every journalistic enterprise, unfortunately. I started out, back in nineteen-mumblety-mumble, as a journalism major and then as a reporter/editor/photographer for a small suburban newspaper chain near Chicago. About 40% of the "news" content of those things consisted of slightly re-written press releases. I spent more time rewriting them than most of the staff, since a vast majority of those who write the press releases have no journalistic training and write extremely poor news stories.

It happens everywhere, from the Oak Brook Press to the New York Times. Trust me.

-the other Doug

[ElkGroveDan]

a vast majority of those who write the press releases have no journalistic training and write extremely poor news stories.

watch it

[dvandorn]

Oh, present company excepted, of course!



-the other Doug

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

About 40% of the "news" content of those things consisted of slightly re-written press releases.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the key description above is "slightly re-written." And I'm aware that this practice is widespread in the media as a whole, not just the space news outlets. Even re-writes are barely palatable, at least to me, but when news outlets post verbatim press releases in their web content, it's at the very least misleading. It's also inexcusable in this Age of the Internet when press releases are almost always online and can be simply linked rather than reproduced on one's own site. Frankly, the oft-repeated excuses that are trotted out to justify this practice (e.g., journalistic deadlines, poor writing of press releases, etc.) aren't convincing.

Perhaps my view is a bit prudish if not outdated, but it probably stems from academia, where even the slightest hint of "borrowing" or passing off other work as one's own is labeled plagiarism.