This Chip Can Sift Martian Soil For Alien DNA

This is of course assuming that alien DNA, first even have DNA, and second it is of the same chemical make up. What happens if its not?

I agree with sir however it would still be worth doing, there has been enough transfer of material between earth and mars that life jumping back and fourth is not impossible. This would result in the life being related to earth life. If life independently evolved on mars and earth it would be a much more interesting discovery.

Sorry to say but both of your ideas are dumb

DNA is made out of proteins
Proteins make up every single living thing and even non living.
The cell walls, any structure, literally everything is made from protein, its the basic building block
I'm sure this just identifies proteins, particularly organic.
It does not matter what another life form outside of our knowledge is made of, it is a given that it is functioning through proteins. (unless its like the robots in Transformers)

Thats how crime scene investigators can identify criminals, they cut out parts of DNA strands using restriction enzymes.

@javor jav: Way to stiffle thinking and commenting on this new technology. You're saying the previous two poster's ideas are dumb, but your reasoning is based on your own assumptions on how this thing works. Try to be a little more open-minded and realize that you probably don't have all the information.

@javor And why would you say the second guy's idea was dumb? That is a scientifically sound observation!
Butthead.

why not use it on this kaputops skull a man in maine found?.. www.io9.com/5516665/man-finds-mysterious-fluid+secreting-skull-local-news-anchor-baffled

@javor jav... its not very nice to call people dumb, especially when your knowledge on the subject is clearly lacking. First, DNA is not made out of proteins. It is DeoxyriboNucleic Acid, which consists of a chain of nucleotides linked by a sugar phosphate backbone. Proteins are chains of amino acids linked together by peptide. Whether you know what any of that means, you should know DNA and proteins and separate things. Furthermore, cell wells are a phospholipid bilayer made up of fatty acid chains attached to a phosphate head group. These are also not proteins. Also, all proteins are organic. You really have no idea what you're talking about, so please don't be so mean.

alien life may not be constructed the same way on the nanoscale, sure (what do we know about it!?), but DNA isnt a bad place to look for proof of it's existence either. . .it's in pretty much every living/half alive (viruses) thing on earth so it makes sense to most people & would prob get more funding than SETI ;)

3% isnt really a good place to start becoming super hopeful.. is it just more likely it will be a much bigger chip?. . .or are the methods for determining if something contains DNA just a lot more tedious than most people realize/its better for a single chip to be left to the job?

I'm all for the gyroscopes/etc. being phased out with some new microball tech from MIT, maybe I'm being a bit picky here but I'd rather have a small modular lab do the testing than to leave the job of finding proof of alien DNA sequences to one miniscule chip.

In the search for life, you look for what is familiar.....Until you identify otherwise, look for life as we know it.

Potentially, we will overlook life as we don't know it and miss every signature of life elsewhere.....

I'm a pasionate enthusiats of the topic but it has been said that the universe as we know it is very similar in composition so the probability that if any possible lifeforms do exist on other planets, the might be carbon based. If life on Earth is an average representation of life in the universe(why should we be unique?) then these lifeforms would have to have DNA or other "blue print" of sort.

Great idea!!!

Link this up with NASA's LOCAD-PTS, go to an asteroid and things could get interesting.

All great exploration is based on the efforts of dreamers, not doubters.