-Caveat Lector-
NASA Lost Evidence Of Life On
Mars For 25 Years
By Kevin Krolicki
7-28-1
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Did NASA discover evidence of life on
Mars and then misplace it for almost 25 years?
A University of Southern California scientist argues that is
just what
happened and that once-lost data collected by the 1975 Viking
probes suggest the existence of Martian microbes.
The significance of that finding was overlooked -- along with the
data itself -- after NASA concluded that its experiments showed
only
signs of chemical activity on the surface of the "Red Planet,"
said
Joseph Miller, a USC neurobiologist.
But a careful reexamination of a fragment of the recovered NASA
record showed a surprising pattern: gas released by the Martian
soil
and tracked by Viking followed the same kind of rhythms followed
by
all Earth-bound organisms from humans to fruit flies in a cycle
akin
to feeding and respiration by colonies of microbes.
"I think, basically, that it's bugs," said Miller, a
neurobiologist and an
expert in the study of the circadian rhythms that regulate
biological
activity.
Two Viking spacecraft were launched by NASA in August and
September of 1975 and took almost a year to reach the Martian
atmosphere. Once there, both sent probes to the surface some
3,000 miles (4,828 km) apart to conduct a series of experiments,
several of which were designed to look for evidence of life.
In one of those tests, a robotic arm on the probes scooped up
soil
samples, which were dropped into a dish along with a shot of a
radioactive carbohydrate solution.
Scientists reasoned that any organisms in the Martian soil would
consume the nutrients and release radioactive carbon as a gas,
something the probe was equipped to measure, said Miller.
Viking found clear evidence that the Martian soil generated gas
over
the nine-week experiment, but scientists concluded that was the
product of reactive chemical "superperoxides" in the soil, not
evidence of life, Miller said.
NASA LOST TRACK OF RESULTS
That closed the book on the Viking experiments until Miller, who
had
worked with NASA in the early 1980s studying the sleep cycles of
monkeys in space, asked the agency to go back over the record of
the experiment in 1999.
"I figured this was going to be on a Web site somewhere," Miller
said. "Well, guess again. They had lost track of it."
NASA scoured its archives and turned up the long-neglected
computer tapes, only to discover they were coded "in a format so
old
that the programmers who knew it had died," Miller said.
Working from a printed record that the initial NASA team had
saved,
Miller has been able to assemble and analyze about a third of the
data and plans to present his initial findings on Sunday at a
scientific conference in San Diego.
Miller found the gas emissions from the soil sample fell into a
cycle
of precisely 24.66 hours -- the length of the Martian day -- a
pattern
that was linked to a slight variation in the temperature inside
the
mostly insulated lander.
That pattern of heightened activity in the warmer daytime and
inactivity at night is akin to the kind of temperature-driven
circadian
rhythm that simple terrestrial organisms such as bread molds
exhibit,
Miller said.
Even more suggestively, the amount of carbon gas released rose
over the course of the experiment, but then also dropped sharply
at
one point when the soil sample was heated to 160 degrees Celsius
(320 degrees Fahrenheit).
"I think that what was happening there was that we were killing
all
the bugs," said Miller, who is working to recover the full
Viking data
record to see if it confirms the pattern.
Other recent studies have shown signs of climate change on Mars
dating back about 100,000 years, instead of millions or
billions, and
suggest that there could be shallow ice reserves below the
planet's
surface -- a key to sustaining life there.
Miller said he hopes his unexpected findings will encourage both
NASA and European researchers to revive biological experiments in
the next generation of Mars probes.
"Over the years NASA has primarily been interested in geology,"
said Miller. "But this is something out of the clear blue sky,
or I
guess I should say the red sky."
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010727/19/science-space-mars-life-dc
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