Mars Viking Robots 'Found Life'

[neufer]

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.

By Irene Klotz, Discovery News, Apr 12, 2012

<<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. Miller's confidence stems in part from a new study that re-analyzed results from a life-detection experiment conducted by NASA's Viking Mars robots in 1976.

Researchers crunched raw data collected during runs of the Labeled Release experiment, which looked for signs of microbial metabolism in soil samples scooped up and processed by the two Viking landers. General consensus of scientists has been that the experiment found geological, not biological, activity.

The new study took a different approach. Researchers distilled the Viking Labeled Release data, provided as hard copies by the original researchers, into sets of numbers and analyzed the results for complexity. Since living systems are more complicated than non-biological processes, the idea was to look at the experiment results from a purely numerical perspective. They found close correlations between the Viking experiment results' complexity and those of terrestrial biological data sets. They say the high degree of order is more characteristic of biological, rather than purely physical processes.

Critics counter that the method has not yet been proven effective for differentiating between biological and non-biological processes on Earth so it's premature to draw any conclusions. "Ideally to use a technique on data from Mars one would want to show that the technique has been well calibrated and well established on Earth. The need to do so is clear; on Mars we have no way to test the method, while on Earth we can," planetary scientist and astrobiologist Christopher McKay, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., told Discovery News.

While not iron-clad, Miller says the findings are an additional plank of evidence challenging the popularly contention that Viking did not find life. He also is reanalyzing the data to see if there are variations when sunlight was blocked by a weeks-long dust storm on Mars, with the idea being that biological systems would have acted differently to the environmental change than geologic ones. Results of the research are expected to be presented in August. The research is published online in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences.>>

[charlieo3]

"Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." (I'm not sure who I am quoting here, but I have no doubt it is someone extraordinary.)

[Beyond]

"Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." (I'm not sure who I am quoting here, but I have no doubt it is someone extraordinary.)

What an extraordinarily extraordinary extrapolated emission emanating from charlieo3 about an extraterritorial extraterrestrial possibility.

[neufer]

"Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence."

(I'm not sure who I am quoting here, but I have no doubt it is someone extraordinary.)

<<Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) is also widely regarded as a freethinker or skeptic; one of his most famous quotations, in Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (called the "Sagan Standard" by some). This was based on a nearly identical statement by fellow founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Marcello Truzzi, "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof." This idea originated with Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), a French mathematician and astronomer who said, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.">>

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 19#p160451

[Ann]

I'm with charlieo3. The claim made - we already found life on Mars! - was definitely too strong for the evidence given.

Ann

[bystander]

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=25619

Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
~ Christopher Hitchens

[Moonlady]

What is the interest of a neuropharmacologist? Besides having fun, selling antibiotics to kill new found life as bacteries? Or maybe selling the marsian bacilli antidepressants?

People, pack your suitcases and let's go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581_c

we might find life there!!! Don't forget to bring your microscope and "Gliesian-English Dictionary" with you!

Ps: Cancel your dates for the next...well hmmm dunno...we will be on a long long journey!