Viking Found Organics on Mars, Experiment Confirms

[D7M]

http://news.discovery.com/space/viki...xperiment.html

More than 30 years after NASA's Viking landers found no evidence for organic materials on Mars, scientists say a new experiment on Mars-like soil shows Viking did, in fact, hit pay dirt.

The new study was prompted by the August 2008 discovery of powerful oxygen-busting compounds known as perchlorates at the landing site of another Mars probe called Phoenix.

Scientists repeated a key Viking experiment using perchlorate-enhanced soil from Chile's Atacama Desert, which is considered one of the driest and most Mars-like places on Earth, and found telltale fingerprints of combusted organics -- the same chemicals Viking scientists dismissed as contaminants from Earth.

"Contrary to 30 years of perceived wisdom, Viking did detect organic materials on Mars," planetary scientist Christopher McKay, with NASA's Ames Research Center in California, told Discovery News. "It's like a 30-year-old cold case suddenly solved with new facts."

"If the Viking team had said 'Well, maybe there's perchlorate in the soil,' everybody would have said they're crazy -- why would there be perchlorates in the soil? It was only by having it pushed on us by Phoenix where we had no alternative but to conclude that there was perchlorate in the soil … Once you realize it's there, then everything makes sense," McKay added.

The Viking team's verdict that Mars lacked organics was the lynchpin argument against another Viking experiment that looked for signs of microbial life. In the experiment, a bit of nutrient-laced water was added to a sample of Martian soil.

The air above the soil was then monitored for signs that the nutrients had been metabolized. The instrument detected tracer gases the first time the experiment was done, but subsequent runs did not. The results were considered inconclusive and remain contested.

New evidence for organics on Mars does not mean Viking found life, cautions McKay.

"Finding organics is not evidence of life or evidence of past life. It's just evidence for organics," he said.

But if NASA had realized there were organics on Mars, there might not have been a 20-year hiatus in sending landers for follow-up studies, said Rafael Navarro-González, with the Institute of Nuclear Science at the National Autonomous University in Mexico.

"We might have had continuing missions," Navarro-González told Discovery News.

NASA plans to launch a follow-up mission to look for organics on Mars in November.

The research appears in last month's Journal of Geophysical Research.

[DSM4Life]

I am glad we spent 30 billion to find this out when we can't even find a god damn job in the U.S. Go America !

[D7M]

I am glad we spent 30 billion to find this out when we can't even find a god damn job in the U.S. Go America !

Yah, but it's a pretty significant experiment, no?

[DSM4Life]

Yah, but it's a pretty significant experiment, no?

Not sure. I am a science guy and base all my beliefs on it (not religious) but where do we cross the line into wasteful spending ? They say "We want to find a planet we can live on in since earth might not last forever." Well of course its not going to last forever because we are destroying it every @$@#$ day. Why not take the time to heal/repair the planet instead of looking for a spare ? With the millions/billions spent flying in space we could do a lot of good for planet Earth. That being said i still believe discovery is still very important but again which is more important ?

[Knockout_Power]

Its always nice to see that they can find a sutible recplacement somewhere in the universe for when we completely destroy this planet, but as DSM said, how aout spending it on fixing this one... maybe they know something we dont, like iminant destruction from a meteoroid so the important people need a place to go...

if they happen to find Midi-chlorian's over there, then Im guessing the star wars nerds will be happy

[DSM4Life]

Its always nice to see that they can find a sutible recplacement somewhere in the universe for when we completely destroy this planet, but as DSM said, how aout spending it on fixing this one... maybe they know something we dont, like iminant destruction from a meteoroid so the important people need a place to go...

if they happen to find Midi-chlorian's over there, then Im guessing the star wars nerds will be happy

Because you sure as $hit don't think any "common people" will be getting saved.

[D7M]

Not sure. I am a science guy and base all my beliefs on it (not religious) but where do we cross the line into wasteful spending ? They say "We want to find a planet we can live on in since earth might not last forever." Well of course its not going to last forever because we are destroying it every @$@#$ day. Why not take the time to heal/repair the planet instead of looking for a spare ? With the millions/billions spent flying in space we could do a lot of good for planet Earth. That being said i still believe discovery is still very important but again which is more important ?

You're not religious??? Is this something new?

yah, I hear you. I just don't have much faith in humanity anymore, really.

I mean, even if we spent 30+ billion on this planet, people would still fvck it up, because they are lazy and myopic.

[Knockout_Power]

Because you sure as $hit don't think any "common people" will be getting saved.

yah, thats my point in all this... we spend this much money on space exploration but its tax payers money that is spent without a vote on it if I remember correctly. Why is it so important to do so? Its not like we even possess a vessel that could carry enough people, fast enough, to make it a viable alternative to move to another planet

[DSM4Life]

You're not religious??? Is this something new?

yah, I hear you. I just don't have much faith in humanity anymore, really.

I mean, even if we spent 30+ billion on this planet, people would still fvck it up, because they are lazy and myopic.

I start to drift into this thinking but then i always read something in the paper/online that shows there are still people who care about others sometimes more than themselves. You say people will still F@#$ it up, what do you think they are going to do on this new planet !? You think they are going to say "This is a new planet lets be nice now."

[Matt]

Love these threads, always very interesting and good to read...

[D7M]

I start to drift into this thinking but then i always read something in the paper/online that shows there are still people who care about others sometimes more than themselves. You say people will still F@#$ it up, what do you think they are going to do on this new planet !? You think they are going to say "This is a new planet lets be nice now."

Oh for sure we would destroy a new planet!

It's sad, but its reality.

[Flagg]

Millions of years ago, Mars likely had a stable electromagnetic field, much like Earth, and despite temperatures being colder, meant that it would be very much possible that life could have existed on Mars.

At some point, an unspecified event disrupted Mars' magnetic field, which would have caused ultraviolet rays to bombard the planet, having massive impacts on any life that may have been there.

As for the amount of money spent on this experiment, GOOD! Sick of people uninterested in subjects saying we should spend money on this, on that...money is wasted as it is, it's good that money is being put towards something good that doesn't involve bombing a country flat and further alienating other nations from our own.

There was even talking of building a Nuclear powerstation on Mars in a bid to make missions there more viable.

EDIT: As for people fvcking up this planet, if the human race can pretty much survive to the end of this century in relative harmony, then we have a very real chance of bettering ourselves. As it stands we'll be hitting 14-19 billion by 2099, the amount of land that will be required to feed such a population, not to mention the amount of water required, and forests destroyed to achieve that doesnt bare imagining. If we obliterate ourselves in nuclear fire or starve to death, it'd be the best thing to happen in the interest of the rest of life on this planet.