Study: Martian Soil Has Signs of Life

geoffrobinson writes "Reuters is reporting that a scientist from Germany believes Viking probe data shows signs of life. From the article: "Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, said on Friday the spacecraft may in fact have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin.""

Space.com article offering counter-point

[Mundocani]

Here's an article [space.com] with some counter-points to this theory.

Re:Data

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding right? The Viking data is often held up as a prime example of data loss through format and equiment obsolecense. I'm surprised you hadn't heard that one.

Around 1999, Dr.J.Miller wanted to have a look through the data and found it couldn't be accessed anymore. Most of what he did get was reassembled from old paper printouts that other reseacher hadn't got around to throwing out yet.

Coincidentally, his research was another case of finding signs of Martian life in the old data.

Here's one version.
http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/50/502.html [deadmedia.org]

Re:Space.com article offering counter-point

[CODiNE]

So I read the article and found mainly this counter-point :

But Pace, the University of Colorado microbiologist, thinks there is one very important reason why hydrogen peroxide life is unlikely. "Hydrogen peroxide inside cells is deadly in terrestrial kinds of cells," Pace said. "In fact, that's one way that our cells combat bacteria, by producing hydrogen peroxide locally."

I'm no scientist, but his reasoning doesn't seem very convincing. There's lots of chemicals that are deadly in our own bodies. He even says we make hydrogen peroxide in limited amounts. Why would that fact alone make a lifeform that depends on it unlikely?

Re:Alien!

[Junior J. Junior III]

If Buckaroo Bonzai taught us anything, it's that all aliens are named John. Not Joop.

Re:Alien!

[Traa]

The name "Joop Houtkooper" is most likely Dutch in origin. Houtkoper means "wood buyer", the double 'o' in Houtkooper is likely an old style spelling (1600's).

note: this information is worth less then $0.02

Re:IF its proven..

[Anonymous Coward]

And your beliefs are perfectly rational. You're saying that you're open to the possibility of other things being out there, but you're not telling yourself or others exactly what they are or that others should believe in them (especially considering we don't know specifically what "they" are). To this AC, this belief system makes perfect sense.

Re:IF its proven..

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it that you can be both a geek and a believer in a god, especially an omnipotent and omniscient one?

Why not?

Those who would deny that there are a large number of great mysteries around us that are beyond our current understanding, and a somewhat smaller number of even greater mysteries that appear to beyond our very capability to understand, are demonstrating a profound ignorance of the human condition. A life based on pure reason is a life void of friendship, ecstasy, and love. However this would not be Nirvana since anyone living this kind of life will definitely experience other irrational states like loneliness, pain, anxiety, and agony.

From a pragmatic viewpoint, a life based on some kind irrational belief system is to be preferred since it is a far richer and more enjoyable experience than a life of pure reason. Whether the irrational part represents as a desert war god like the christian trinity or the witches' fertility goddess or some quasi-Jungian humanistic grouping of totems is mere detail.

Of course the devil is in the details, but that's another myth. Read some Connie Willis if you think your reasoning abilities are up to that kind of challenge.

Re:I worked on the Viking Lander project...

[Chemicalscum]

I could never understand why one of the biological researchers didn't just say, "we have detected life, by our published criteria, but we don't understand it." However, none did.

Dr. Gilbert Levin leader of the labeled release experiment did just that:

http://mars.spherix.com/ [spherix.com]

Re:I worked on the Viking Lander project...

[Chemicalscum]

Yes I am a analytical chemist who had just started working with GCMS systems then, at that time Professor Klaus Bieman was regarded as an almost god like figure by those of us involved in gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, the hyphenated technique he founded and he was a figure of great stature in the chemistry community overall. Dr. Gilbert Levin on the other hand was a scientist/entrepreneur little known outside the specialist area of environmental engineering where he developed the labeled release technique.

The chemists were determined to prove that if their experiment couldn't show the existence of life on Mars no-one else's experiment could and they used their considerable pull in the academic community to influence the outcome of the debate.

Also I believe Levin has suggested that there may have been fundamentalist Christians in positions of influence in NASA at the time who held deep theological opinions against the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

He certainly seemed to be fighting against heavy odds. It not only

has to be viewed as a huge strategic failure of the US space effort

but also as a failure of the science community to work in the objective manner it is supposed to.

Re:IF its proven..

[Dr. Manhattan]

if God doesn't exist, then there's no basis for morality

Nope [intellectu...vative.com]. Wrong [homeunix.org].