White House Briefed On "Potential For Life" On Mars 610
Veeoh writes "FTA: It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more 'provocative' than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface. This news comes just as the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) confirmed experimental evidence for the existence of water in the Mars regolith on Thursday."
Colour me confused (Score:5, Interesting)
Heed my word, my brothers, for I have RTFA! It says that there's no way it has confirmed the presence of life right now or in the past on Mars. So what can be the big story they want to tell the President first?
Or if it's no bigger than "we found something that may or may not indicate the possibility that Mars may or may not have probably potentially hosted a form a life, maybe eventually?" then why the secrecy?
cite? (Score:2, Interesting)
I hope it's DNA (or RNA) (Score:3, Interesting)
Since Phoenix can find organics and (I think) has a mass spectrometer perhaps it has found DNA? If they just found some carbon compounds that wouldn't seem that noteworthy, they find them everywhere in space (like carbonaceous meteorites). Of course if it's DNA (or RNA) then the possibility of contamination comes in (of course it if uses a totally different "code" that would make me believe at least it wasn't deliberate. A really sneaky scientist could put some DNA in there that didn't bear any resemblance to Earthian DNA thus leading one to believe it was martian. I say this in reference to some experiments where scientists are adding some new "letters" to the alphabet of amino acids that DNA codes for, the triplet codons in nature redundantly code for only 20 amino acids, not the 64 it could.)
Reminds me of the scene if "E.T." when during the capture of E.T. someone announces "he's got DNA!".
Of course this is completely idle wishful speculation on my part, the discovery is likely much more pedestrian. Feel free to ignore this post. ;)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I the only one? (Score:2, Interesting)
Am I the only person who, quite honestly, is not that fascinated about this prospect? Yes, it would be exciting to some to discover life on other planets, but Mars just doesn't seem to be such a major leap...it's our neighbor. We quite obviously have life here on Earth (though some would question how intelligent it is ;), so it just doesn't seem to be such a monumental thing to discover some pre-microbes in the neighborhood. In fact, I somewhat expect it.
I think what we _really_ want to investigate is if there's some earth-like planet (and, possibly, earth-like life) outside our "comfort zone" -- I want to know if there's a more (or less) advanced civilization somewhere out there looking for us. That's the monumental discovery and the world-changing realization. Finding some bacteria on Mars doesn't really help answer that question at all, IMHO.
Re:so which is it ? (Score:1, Interesting)
President Bush is the CEO of a large corporation called the Executive Branch.
Back in the Middle Ages, they had to make some governing decisions (e.g. whose head to chop off). At the time they focused on trying to find the best possible person to make the decision. In order to attract the best possible person they let them eat off gold plates and such. But it didn't work. For one thing, they attracted people who liked to eat off gold plates rather than people who were good at deciding whose head to chop of.
More fundamentally, though, it turns out that you don't want one guy at the top making the decisions - no matter how good that guy is. What you want is a system. For example, you want a system of laws and judges and lawyers and juries to decide whose head to chop off - rather than some lone king or dictator.
This was the fundamental idea behind the American Revolution that rejected the English monarchy. Unfortunately, Bush (and a great many Americans) seem to forget this. Bush's flaw is not that he is inadequate to make good decisions. Bush's flaw is that he makes the decisions himself rather than allowing the system to make the decisions.
Should NASA have to check with Bush before they announce their findings? No, there should be a system that decides how to announce important or controversial discoveries. This system should take input from a variety of experts, among others. Bush himself should only be involved if there is reason to suspect that the system is not functioning properly - and then only to repair the system (in accordance with the Constitution that specifies how the system is supposed to operate). On no account should Bush himself decide how to announce important or controversial NASA discoveries.
Re:Colour me confused (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the GP has kind of a point. If we would find carbon-based life with DNA and the same mapping between triplet codons and amino acids as is found on Earth, the sensible conclusion would be that we still have not seen two instances of life originating, but only a single on that was capable of spreading to another planet. That is still interesting, but the amount of material that would leave a life-inhabited planet with enough velocity to ever get to another star system would be miniscule.
It would still be totally possible that the solar system would be the only inhabited system in the galaxy, or even the observable universe. If we find life on Mars, that is recognizable as such, but still radically different, THEN we are really talking.
Re:Phoenix capabilities? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not much life on Mars. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well... i dont think we know about the origin of life enough to make that broad a statement.
What if its the other way arround? Barring some primitive bacteria or virii that does this or that, you cant have an atmosphere thick enough to give oceans....etc.
Im just saying, the cause of the event "life on earth" is still unknown.
Re:Big and black (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why don't you link to the original article? (Score:2, Interesting)
because I didn't bloody see that link obviously.
Re:Colour me confused (Score:3, Interesting)
Reason for informing White House? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/protdet.htm [setileague.org] "The discoverer should inform his/her or its relevant national authorities." This is in Step 2 of the protocol. The implication is that Step 3 will not happen, unless Step 2 is allowed.
This practice is not anything new. When Mars meteorite ALH 84001 was suspected to have fossilized life, previous White House administration was notified. Only after getting permission from White House (took about couple of weeks) was that news even published.
Re:2008 just called... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Because) I spoke about Creationists and ID supporters.
In my world that's quite a difference with (Roman!) Catholics or main stream Protestants.
I fully agree the Bible does not at any point exclude other life.
And for me the Bible is not a fact book but a guide.
Re:2008 just called... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I hope that the solution is better than the one Europe found for Serbia. Oh, wait, they didn't. They stood by as hundreds of thousands of people were brutally executed and dumped into mass graves as their wives and daughters were being raped.
If that didn't happen, then I might listen to your ragging.
Re:2008 just called... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why don't you link to the original article? (Score:5, Interesting)
The key part is in the last paragraph, where it says the "provocative" results came from the experiment where they added water from Earth to a sample of soil. I bet they had a burst of oxygen like the old Viking lander experiments, which no one ever satisfactorily explained. The one that I remembered that made sense was some kind of dry peroxide in the soil formed by UV, which reacted with water to generate O2, but didn't repeat because the peroxide was used up.
I hope this indicates some kind of chemistry that makes it easy to extract breathable O2 from Martian soil, so that any explorers/exploiters won't have to take as much in consumables. Would be nice to find a nitrogen source, then you'd have CHON, which is most of what you need to live. In the right proportions, of course.
Re:U.S. is better than Al Qaeda (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? So the numerous agricultural combine lobbyist groups, comprised of small farm holders, is "big cash"? La Raza, the largest Hispanic lobbying group, is "big cash"? How about lobbyists from the ABA, or the AMA?
This notion that only "big cash" hire lobbyists is a myth. And its a myth perpetrated by the ignorant that can only rail against "the MAN" while sitting on their couches doing nothing.
Re:Big and black (Score:5, Interesting)
No paper trail is required to prove corruption. All that has to be shown is that your people benefited, that friends, colleagues, former coworkers etc. gained from your decisions while in office.
The Halliburton no-bid contracts [halliburtonwatch.org] are an excellent starting point, with many more like them to investigate.
Re:woo (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, why the run around. Did they go to the president when the viking Labeled Release [space.com] results ended up positive?
Well, according to the article you linked to, one experiment on the Viking missions indicated a possible presence of life; another indicated an absence of life. Furthermore, it is possible (again, according to the article you linked to) to explain the positive result as a false-positive. As such, the results were inconclusive, and to suggest that these indicate that there is life on Mars is crazy.
However, it's possible that the current results show the existence of organic compounds after all -- in other words, demonstrating that the negative Viking result was incorrect, and supporting the Viking LR data. Obviously, this would be a very important finding, and together the data from the two missions would provide strong evidence for the presence of life.
(And that, of course, is going to seriously upset the creationists. Although really I think it's pretty obvious that Mars was just a sandbox for God's first attempt at life ...)
Re:Colour me confused (Score:4, Interesting)
I think some of us are a little short on trust this week. Remember, the EPA didn't write a report detailing the dire consequences of global warming, the one and only anthrax bomber committed suicide so the case is closed, and a Brig. General connected with the "sloppy" nuke transfer from Minot to the Middle East staging area also committed suicide, "presumably" with a handgun. (They aren't sure?)
That was this week in America. Next week? Stay tuned.
I hope there is no life on Mars. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I hope there is no life on Mars. (Score:2, Interesting)