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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 11/30/2010
Posts: 107
Points: 321
Location: Puget Sound
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Mars Viking Robots 'Found Life'Mathematical analysis adds to growing body of work questioning the negative results of a life-detection experiment 36 years ago. Quote:
THE GIST
* New results question the finding that the Mars Viking experiments did not find life.
* The analysis was based on studying the mathematically complexity of the experiment results.
* The idea is that living systems are more complicated than purely physical ones, a concept that can be represented mathematically.
New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week.
Further, NASA doesn't need a human expedition to Mars to nail down the claim, neuropharmacologist and biologist Joseph Miller, with the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, told Discovery News.
"The ultimate proof is to take a video of a Martian bacteria. They should send a microscope -- watch the bacteria move," Miller said.
"On the basis of what we've done so far, I'd say I'm 99 percent sure there's life there," he added.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Location: Stockton-on-Tees, United Kingdom
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The posts lately have been very interesting indeed. I hope this trend continues...
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 3/19/2008
Posts: 980
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Interestingly, last Friday I attended the JPL public lecture Gale Crater: Exploring the Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site.While I was listening to the lecture, I read RogerV's post and associated link about the reinterpretation of the data from the Viking mission. So, during the Q&A, I asked Dr. Golombek what he thought of the recent paper. He said he wasn't familiar with it, but essentially said (paraphrasing) "I suspect that this is coming from the same set of people who have been pushing for this idea for the past 30 years" and went on to explain why he didn't believe that the original data could have represented a signature of bacterial life on Mars. To me, it seemed like a typically defensive "stick with the status quo" type of response.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 11/30/2010
Posts: 107
Points: 321
Location: Puget Sound
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Mars Life Search to Go in High Gear NASA wants to pull out of a Europe-led Mars mission and instead plan a fast track to find Martian life. Quote:THE GIST
* NASA is casting a wide net to come up with less expensive but scientifically rich missions to Mars.
* Finding out if the planet has or had life remains the top goal.
* The United States plans to back out of an European-led expedition to Mars scheduled to begin in 2016. Privately, I've gotten to where I usually don't pay much attention to NASA as I've always seen them to be more of a smokescreen organization than anything else. Something to both mollify and distract the public - is just these days there is even less and less concern for even bothering to do the "mollify the public" shtick.
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