Meanwhile, NASA at it again

NASA Ames has determined the Viking landers found organics on Mars.
You know how?
They found combusted organics in soil from Chile’s Atacama Desert:
http://www.discoveryon.info/2011/01/...s-on-mars.html
Now if they can just find them on Mars.
Me, I'd look for them near the arsenic-based lifeforms living in the
inexplicable submerged water lakes of the geologically dead planet.

Pat

On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:36:21 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

NASA Ames has determined the Viking landers found organics on Mars.
You know how?
They found combusted organics in soil from Chile’s Atacama Desert:
http://www.discoveryon.info/2011/01/...s-on-mars.html
Now if they can just find them on Mars.
Me, I'd look for them near the arsenic-based lifeforms living in the
inexplicable submerged water lakes of the geologically dead planet.

This is a strange issue. IIRC Viking performed two independent tests
to search for life in 1976. One gave a positive result, the other
didn't. The principal investigator for the first instrument has
insisted ever since that his experiment was right and the other one
was wrong, but the scientific community voted the other way and thus
there was the proclamation "no life on Mars" in 1976.

Now Spirit and Opportunity have proven there is something called
perchlorate in the Martian soil, and that could have caused the second
Viking experiment to give a false negative. So NASA went to the
Atacama Desert to try and get the same results as Viking.

And guess what, it did.

Either Atacama is lifeless, or there is/was microbial life on Mars.

And we know that the Atacama is not lifeless.

We're still not ready to proclaim life on Mars, but the main reason it
was dismissed in 1976 is no longer valid.

Brian

Brian Thorn writes:

Now Spirit and Opportunity have proven there is something called
perchlorate in the Martian soil, and that could have caused the second
Viking experiment to give a false negative. So NASA went to the
Atacama Desert to try and get the same results as Viking.

And guess what, it did.

Either Atacama is lifeless, or there is/was microbial life on Mars.

Nobody is speaking of "microbial life". "Organics" in chemistry is not
"life", it just means there is carbon involved.



Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Le 08/01/11 11:05, Jochem Huhmann a écrit :
Brian writes:

Now Spirit and Opportunity have proven there is something called
perchlorate in the Martian soil, and that could have caused the second
Viking experiment to give a false negative. So NASA went to the
Atacama Desert to try and get the same results as Viking.

And guess what, it did.

Either Atacama is lifeless, or there is/was microbial life on Mars.

Nobody is speaking of "microbial life". "Organics" in chemistry is not
"life", it just means there is carbon involved.



Jochem


No. Organics means that the compounds are produced or are related to
organic LIFE. Obviously our form of life is based on carbon, so that
all organic chemistry is carbon related. But nobody would say that
diamonds or graphite are "organics", even if they are just pure carbon.

On 1/7/2011 5:06 PM, Brian Thorn wrote:
So NASA went to the
Atacama Desert to try and get the same results as Viking.

And guess what, it did.

Finding perchlorate on Mars means you've found perchlorate on Mars...
and that's all it means
Atacama desert is way different from Mars, in that it has a far higher
atmospheric pressure and different atmospheric gas composition,
different soil chemistry, doesn't get bombarded by hard UV, and doesn't
get blasted by solar storms.
You can make the perchlorate=organic argument for Mars if you can show
that there is no way for perchlorate to be present except as an end
result of organic chemistry of some kind.
Way back when the did the Viking tests (of which there were four, not
two: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_...al_experiments ), they
came to the conclusion that what they were seeing was the end result of
hyperoxide activity in the Martian soil, as that gave the same results shown
Even if you did find organic compounds on Mars, that wouldn't mean life
by any means, as all that organic means is that the compounds contain
carbon, as do carbonaceous chondrite meteorites and also comets for
instance in their ammonia and methane ices (remember when they found the
methane and were bouncing up and down about that... till it was pointed
out that the tiny amount they found could easily be explained by one
tiny comet impact every few years?)


Either Atacama is lifeless, or there is/was microbial life on Mars.

And we know that the Atacama is not lifeless.

We're still not ready to proclaim life on Mars, but the main reason it
was dismissed in 1976 is no longer valid.

Note that NASA isn't going to say this finding means there's life on
Mars; it's going to be coy about it and let you draw that inference if
you want, without pointing out the other sources of organic compounds.
They aren't going to mislead, they just aren't going to point out all
the different interpretations that are possible except the one they want
you to embrace.
In fact, the perchlorate argues against life, as their argument for
organic compounds comes from the fact that the perchlorate is the end
product of them being destroyed by reacting to the perchlorate.
Which is sort of like pointing to a spot of soot on the ceiling over a
candle, and saying that's the end result of a moth flying into the flame
and burning up in a puff of smoke, proving the existence of moths in the
room.
This sort of stuff is getting so frequent with NASA over the past couple
of decades that it's making them look like some sort of UFO evidence
group. (I found the original story over on The Fortien Times BTW, in the
same daily news round-up that has the Zionist vulture spy being caught
by the Saudis, and the Romanian witches cursing their government over
being taxed:
http://www.forteantimes.com/latest/b...eird_news.html
)

Pat

On 1/8/2011 2:48 AM, jacob navia wrote:


No. Organics means that the compounds are produced or are related to
organic LIFE. Obviously our form of life is based on carbon, so that
all organic chemistry is carbon related. But nobody would say that
diamonds or graphite are "organics", even if they are just pure carbon.

It can mean either life or non-life related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound
If it only meant living, they would have a lot of explaining to do about
organic compounds being found in Nebula:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...r-to-life.html

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:


Finding perchlorate on Mars means you've found perchlorate on Mars...
and that's all it means

I would say that finding perchlorate means that instead of the Viking
experiment proving that there were no organics in the samples tested,
the experiment as run was incapable of giving definitive results either way.

On Jan 8, 7:32*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 1/7/2011 5:06 PM, Brian Thorn wrote:
So NASA went to the

Atacama Desert to try and get the same results as Viking.

And guess what, it did.

Finding perchlorate on Mars means you've found perchlorate on Mars...
and that's all it means
Atacama desert is way different from Mars, in that it has a far higher
atmospheric pressure and different atmospheric gas composition,
different soil chemistry, doesn't get bombarded by hard UV, and doesn't
get blasted by solar storms.
You can make the perchlorate=organic argument for Mars if you can show
that there is no way for perchlorate to be present except as an end
result of organic chemistry of some kind.
Way back when the did the Viking tests (of which there were four, not
two:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_...l_experiments), they
came to the conclusion that what they were seeing was the end result of
hyperoxide activity in the Martian soil, as that gave the same results shown
Even if you did find organic compounds on Mars, that wouldn't mean life
by any means, as all that organic means is *that the compounds contain
carbon, as do carbonaceous chondrite meteorites and also comets for
instance in their ammonia and methane ices (remember when they found the
methane and were bouncing up and down about that... till it was pointed
out that the tiny amount they found could easily be explained by one
tiny comet impact every few years?)

Either Atacama is lifeless, or there is/was microbial life on Mars.

And we know that the Atacama is not lifeless.

We're still not ready to proclaim life on Mars, but the main reason it
was dismissed in 1976 is no longer valid.

Note that NASA isn't going to say this finding means there's life on
Mars; it's going to be coy about it and let you draw that inference if
you want, without pointing out the other sources of organic compounds.
* They aren't going to mislead, they just aren't going to point out all
the different interpretations that are possible except the one they want
you to embrace.
In fact, the perchlorate argues against life, as their argument for
organic compounds comes from the fact that the perchlorate is the end
product of them being destroyed by reacting to the perchlorate.
Which is sort of like pointing to a spot of soot on the ceiling over a
candle, and saying that's the end result of a moth flying into the flame
and burning up in a puff of smoke, proving the existence of moths in the
room.
This sort of stuff is getting so frequent with NASA over the past couple
of decades that it's making them look like some sort of UFO evidence
group. (I found the original story over on The Fortien Times BTW, in the
same daily news round-up that has the Zionist vulture spy being caught
by the Saudis, and the Romanian witches cursing their government over
being taxed:http://www.forteantimes.com/latest/b...aily_roundup_o...
)

Pat
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...ok-antarctica/
As long as were on the topic......Doc

On 1/8/2011 6:42 AM, jacob navia wrote:


In both definitions life is implicit: man made implies biological
activity.

Yeah, but here NASA is saying organic compounds, not organic chemistry.
They are trying to get you to think they mean they are saying organic
chemistry (i.e. life), but they aren't.

Pat

On Jan 8, 5:39*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 1/8/2011 10:23 AM, Dr.Colon Oscopy wrote:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...ok-antarctica/
As long as were on the topic......Doc

It will be fascinating to see if there's life of some sort down there.
One of the big problems they were worried about regarding drilling into
it was that there could be so much gas dissolved in the water by the
high pressure from the ice over it that if they pierced it the whole
works might come bubbling up the drill hole like a giant geyser as the
gas came out of solution.

Pat

I'm not so sure after reading about the described sample collection
method if a "pristine" sample is in the offing. Hope they don't blow
a 14 million year investment! Oh shades of Mono............Doc