BOLD Plan To Find Mars Life On the Cheap 61
techfun89 writes "There is a BOLD new plan for detecting signs of microbial life on Mars. The nickname is BOLD, which stands for Biological Oxidant and Life Detection Initiative, would be a follow-up to the 1976 Mars Viking life-detection experiments. 'We have much better technology that we could use,' says BOLD lead scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, with Washington State University. He elaborates, 'Our idea is to make a relatively cheap mission and go more directly to characterize and solve the big question about the soil properties on Mars and life detection.' To help figure out the life-detection mystery, Schulze-Makuch and his colleagues would fly a set of six pyramid-shaped probes that would crash land, pointy end down, so they embed themselves four to eight inches into the soil. One of the instruments includes a sensor that can detect a single molecule of DNA or other nucleotide."
Re:What if the creature uses N2 rather than 02 ? (Score:5, Informative)
The B.O.L.D. program hinges on detecting oxygen exchange
What if the life form on Mars uses N2 instead?
Nitrogen is a bit on the inert side to be useful as life's energy source.
Re:Microscope? (Score:5, Informative)
No, you don't need machine vision algorithms or real-time human intervention. People often deal with much bigger delays in analyzing microscope images on earth. Phoenix actually had a microscope, they just aren't good at detecting bacteria.
Re:False positives? (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure why you got modded insightful. Space is almost a perfect vacuum, and the vast majority of the matter out there will be hydrogen with very little else. Even if there was DNA floating around in space, it would get destroyed by the radiation that's out there. If the probe can make it out of our atmosphere without getting contaminated with DNA then it will make it to Mars without encountering any DNA.