[X] My Assistant

[Paolo Amoroso]

I have just read a short story by Alex Saragosa published on issue 1067 (29 Aug 2008, pag. 61) of the italian magazine "il venerdì", a Friday supplement of the major national newspaper la repubblica. The story, titled "I batteri terrestri hanno invaso il pianeta rosso" (terrestrial bacteria have invaded the red planet), claims a group of JPL bilogists analyzed samples from the room where Phoenix was assembled and found 26,000 bacterial cells per square meter from 100 different species, including highly radiation resistant Bacillus pumilis. According to the story, these bacteria may have survived the trip to Mars.

I have never heard anything similar from reliable sources (i.e. anything but la Repubblica) . Any info?


Paolo Amoroso

[dvandorn]

To Doug et al -- what I'm really getting at, here, I think, is how the Viking results were received. At first, the gas emission results indicated that something was undergoing life-like chemical reactions which caused various liquids and nutrients to be processed and released. However, when the holy grail of organic compounds was not detected, the results were intepreted in the context of "well, since it cannot possibly be caused by any kind of living organism, what exotic chemistry can we postulate that would account for these results?"

In other words, when we placed Martian soil in an environment that would nurture life as we know it, we got results at least roughly consistent with life being present. But when we saw no organic compounds, instead of *also* trying to follow up possible life processes that could exist within the parameters of the observation, the interpretation of the results was shifted such that life-processes were taken off the table as being even remotely possible as the cause.

All I'm saying is that as long as we insist on defining life as *only* that which is based on organic compounds, as long as our definition of life automatically excludes anything except life as it is found on Earth, we are in danger of completely missing other types of life, based on different chemistries. That's really all I'm saying.

And IMHO, the "life question" is important enough that we ought to at least be aware that we're conducting our search with our heads buried in terro-centric sands.

-the other Doug

[djellison]

as long as we insist on defining life as *only* that which is based on organic compounds

I don't think anyone would. We just don't know what else to look for yet. Maybe in 100 years we'll have a wider understanding of what life can be, and then we can go looking for it.