Posted 09.10.2010 at 11:14 am
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Martian Surface
The first image from the surface of Mars, taken by Viking 1 moments after it landed July 20, 1976.
NASA
The building blocks of life might exist in Martian soil after all, according to a new study. Evidence from the late Phoenix Mars lander suggests its Viking forebears might have found organic compounds on the Red Planet — and destroyed them in the process of looking for them.
If this is true, it represents a monumental shift in the way scientists have thought about Mars for the past 30 years. The presence of native Martian organics suggests the planet might not be a dead rock after all.
The study came about after the Phoenix lander found perchlorate in the soil at the Martian north pole, where scientists had expected to find chloride salt instead. Perchlorate is an ion of oxygen and chlorine that breaks into highly reactive fragments when it’s heated. The fragments destroy organic compounds.
The perchlorate fragments form at the same temperatures to which the Viking craft baked Martian soil samples. The Vikings found chloromethane and dichloromethane, chlorine compounds interpreted at the time as likely contaminants from cleaning fluids or rocket fuel.
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Science, Rebecca Boyle, evidence of life on mars, martian soil, organic molecules, phoenix mars lander, viking lander"Our results suggest that not only organics, but also perchlorate, may have been present in the soil at both Viking landing sites," said the study's lead author, Rafael Navarro-González of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.
In the new tests, the organic compounds were destroyed. The team says the Viking soil samples probably also contained plenty of organic compounds that were destroyed upon heating.
Of course, this study does not mean Mars is a cozy place for life, and it does not prove that life has ever existed there, the researchers say.
Even if Mars never had life, it probably should have some organics, simply because of the number of meteorites that contain them. Before Viking, this is what scientists expected. NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay, who participated in the latest study, said the Vikings did detect organics — we just did not realize it.
At the very least, the discovery could lead to a new way to search for life on Mars. If Martian soil contains organic material on the parts-per-million scale, it makes sense to search for molecules like DNA or complex proteins.
NASA’s Curiosity Rover, scheduled for launch in November 2011, has the ability to search for organic compounds by adding liquid to soil samples, which would not subject them to the high temperatures at which perchlorate destroys organic compounds, according to NASA.
The study is reported in an upcoming edition of Journal of Geophysical Research–Planets.
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COOL god must of had a genesis on mars as well.
Theist - 2
Atheist - 0
@thunderf00t
Whether that is sarcastic, or a heartfelt statement.
+1 internet
It's funny that when we travel millions of miles to another planet and organic dust lands on our craft we say: OH LOOK LIFE!
Yet when it grows inside of a woman, our supreme court says: "Nope that's not life yet".
If we had found anything even close to a human gene on mars we would be jumping up and down saying, HUMAN LIFE!!!
It's analogous to stepping on a Dodo bird while landing; a rarety to find yet they managed to kill it by.accident :D
@seanreynoldscs
Did I miss the part in this article that had to do with abortion? Also organic material in no way equates to some abstract definition of life. Besides the fact, space and babies don't mix.
However, this does have some neat implications. It will be neat to see what Curiosity uncovers.
Scientists uncover evidence that previously uncovered evidence disproving the presence of life on Mars may have been misread! Yay. Nice to know that we're back to zero.
It's nothing at all like a dodo bird, by the way - we can assume that the sample is more or less representative of the surrounding material.
The first and third replies amuse me. They wouldn't be any more naked attempts to start an internet ideology slapfight if they were attached to the article about Nike's self-tying shoes instead.
@Dirk Mcbratney
We're not back to zero. Organic material exist in the Martian soil (theoretically). There's still no life on that rock, but it could make matters of terraforming a lot easier than say, our moon.
I will agree that the first to third comments amuse me too. Ideological slapfights are not relevant to the subject matter. Neither is abortion and how that pertains to life.
"Welcome! to the Federation Starship SS Buttcrack!!!"
Two entirely different fields with entirely different people involved the argument idea that "we" get so excited about life on mars yet "we" don't consider an embryo life here is faulty at it's core by assuming we as a whole believe these things while disproving this statement in your context. You don't know the position of those excited about this news when it comes to embryonic stem cells anymore than you know if those supreme court judged care about life on mars.
But I'll role with it, sounds fun.
how much sperm cells and egg cells remain unused ever, never to form new human life? Mean while millions of people have ailements which can benefit from this research or have died from something that stm cell research may someday be able to prevent or fix. the arguement against embryonic stem cell research tries to take the stance that taking a life to save a life is injust, and assume they are saving human embryos by fighting this. However ad stated there is no shortage of the material to make an embryo so if the research is not happening the embryo involved are not saved but rather will never exist.
So it seems the arguement against embryonic stem cells could be summarized like this "let many die so that a few can continue not existing."
Just a philosophical exercise before my comment, Domin8or.
"Murder" is defined by States.
I am absolutely convinced that human life begins at conception. Not because I am religious (I do not subscribe to any notion of the metaphysical), but because the genetic material is present and all that is absent is the expression of the genes as the zygote develops. Any attempt to define a place where "life" exists after conception is necessarily arbitrary.
Thus, I judge that abortion amounts to killing.
However, many States do not define all forms of killing as murder. Since, in the US, abortion is not defined by the State as murder until some arbitrary amount of development has occured, is not murder before that time.
Soldiers often kill others in war. We do not define that as murder so long as the act falls within internationally accepted norms for the conduct of war. Taking a family in Afghanistan into a back room and emptying a magazine or two is defined as murder.
As a Commissioned Officer in the Army during war, I caused a number of people to be killed. I was never charged with murder. What I did was considered to be in keeping with international norms for the conduct of war.
I find it morbidly amusing that it is often those who most loudly decry abortion who also most loudly encourage the prosecution of wars. Those who have been born are, apparently, fair game.
Now. Back to the subject of the article.
Are we back to zero?
No.
Our understanding of whether life exists on Mars can be defined in three states:
Null. We cannot place any value. Unknown. Undefined.
True. We know for sure that it does exist.
False. We know that it does not exist.
Our accepted value of the variable "life" was set to 0 in the 70s. We believed that the value was false.
Finding perchlorate, knowing it's possible power to destroy anything we might have found to prove life, sets the value back to Null. We cannot evaluate the variable.
Finding organic compounds is not sufficient to assign the value "True". We can be fairly confident that organic compounds exist on Mars due to their rather pervasive existence throughout the volume of space that we can observe. But we know that the presence of organic compounds does not mean that life exists. Therefore, we can make no determination of whether life exists or has ever existed on Mars.
We are back to Null. We don't know.
For the people talking about being back to square one. Do you remember that we have two rovers on Mars (and I believe still running around). And they landed without rocket fuel, and moved quite a great distance from where they landed. Do you believe that one lander that "might" have messed up looking so many years ago just happened to land on the only spot that might have organic materials on it?
Give me a break this story is more about "Wow we might have discovered some things a lot earlier" if anything.
It's nice to hear they go back over aged research like this, though I don't think this changes much regarding the search for martian life. So far as I know they never really did stop looking. It just would have been nice to have some positive return by now so they could justify more research money. They could have even talked Obama into sending people if we had some positive returns like this to follow up on. That's the only real disappointment for me. Though the meteor landing idea is a pretty cool one, too and does offer some planetary defence opportunities should we ever need to "Armageddon" an asteroid, haha.
And now for the off topic reply; How in the hell do you people turn this into an argument about abortion? Fact of the matter is most stem cells aren't gathered from fetuses ripped from the wombs of sinful young women with no other course of action. They're gathered from the zygote that's around 5 days old. They get them from excess after artificial incemination, primarily. Which, by the way, is also a sinful and disgusting practice since they create so many extras. They kill several "lives" just to create one. Cause we all know a mass of about 100-150 cells is totally sentient and self aware. Oh well, more room in heaven for us!
When are these Anti-Abortion freaks going to understand that the question is not about whether or not a fertilized egg equates to a human being afforded all the civic rights.
The question is about whether or not the government has the right to impose upon the will of the woman carrying the fertilized egg.
The answer is NO!!!
The vast majority of people would rather not abort a fetus. But making it illegal is unconstitutional, violates our freedoms and will never hold up in the court of law.
GOD BLESS AMERICA! [whatever your god may be]
How can a simple article about organic compounds on mars degenerate into a creationist pro/anti abortion debate. We need secular thinking in this day and age as the religious fervour of some citizens threatens to hold back humanity in not just scientific endevours but all endevours.
I love God, I love Humanity, I am a spiritual person but understand that we do not have the tools to measure God or these questions of religious obedience but we do have the tools to measure and catalogue our environment. We call these tools 'Science' science should be left in peace to do it's job free of religious limitations and restrictions.
Just for the record it's perfectly possible to be a moral human being without being religious whilst it's also possible to be immoral whilst being religious. The effects of religion and worship add nothing to the debate with regards to when life starts, stops or if it is right to interfere with it and terminate it early...
"If Martian soil contains organic material on the parts-per-million scale, it makes sense to search for molecules like DNA or complex proteins."
No...it doesn't.
Well the thing we all missed is dont name your babies inapropriately. Vikings dont care about life or your stinkin microbes.
Abortion is usually targeted at the minorities and the poor....don't beleive me? Look at the rates of abortion in the inner city compared to the suburbs..as well a Africa to Europe. Abortion is murder.