KILAS-BALIK Life
on Mars. Past
life on Mars.
PROOF OF PAST LIFE ON MARS
ESTABLISHED:
Agence France Press in Washington an other news agencies
have released the information on 02.27.2001 that elements taken from the
Martian ALH-84001 meteorite indicate that
there was life on Mars billions of years ago. The findings of the international
team of scientists were published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences periodical.
Scientists such as Imre Friedmann, a
researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, have observed
magnetite crystals, an iron oxide, strung in chains like a "string of
pearls," which they investigated and found that they can only be formed by
living organisms.
"The chains we discovered are of biological origin. Such a chain of magnets
outside
an organism would immediately collapse into a clump due to magnetic forces."
The researchers said the chains, probably formed inside organic material, were
preserved,
fossilized in the meteorite long after the organisms themselves decayed.
The meteorite was formed by a collision between an asteroid
and the planet some 3.9
billion years ago and was propelled toward Earth by another collision
around 13,000 years ago,
the researchers said. It was discovered in Antarctica in 1984.
When NASA announced in 1996, that a team of researchers led
by David McKay and
working at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Johnson Space
Center in Houston, Texas, noted that it contained mineral traces of biological
origin, their
findings were met with harsh skepticism, in the scientific community, and were
subsequently called into question by some scientists. Later, the evidences just
added up.
Meanwhile, the international list of researchers jumping on
the Allen Hills meteorite bandwagon has grown large. Seventeen researchers were
involved in
three papers made public yesterday. Much of the research into the rock has been
funded by the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution and
NASA's Astrobiology Institute.
The study highlights the similarities between the Martian
magnetite crystals and crystals formed inside magnetotactic bacteria present on
Earth. The Ames
study determined that the crystals were of similar size and shape, that they
did not touch
each other and that the chains they formed were curved, additional signs of a
biological origin.
They also deduced from their great concentration in a small, two-kilogram
(4.5-pound)
meteorite that they must have been rather widespread on the surface of Mars.
And since bacteria
on Earth that use magnetic forces require some oxygen, researchers said their
presence on the
meteorite denotes that there were plant-like organisms using photosynthesis on
Mars 3.9
billion years ago.
The very next day already, other scientists had already
claimed in response that... "The scientists studying the Mars rock haven't
really eliminated the possibility that these structures are inorganic in
origin"
THE BOTTOMLINE:
The study has shown that there is currently no known inorganic chemical
means of producing these magnetite crystals with their unique
morphologies.
Kathie Thomas-Keprta, lead author of one of the new papers,
responded that the researchers have taken a more in-depth look at the structure
of the magnetites and have done an extensive literature search for other
studies that might show analogous structures created by inorganic means, and
zero were found.
But the bottomline is, as Thomas-Kperta said, that the
detail of the team's original paper, published in the December issue of
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, was voluminous and may not have been read
widely or thoroughly by critics.
"These shapes and features and properties that we found
in the Allen Hills
magnetite have been understood for years to indicate biogenic origin," NASA
geologist David McKay
said today.
No onehas succeeded in producing similar structures via inorganic means, despite
serious efforts such as the project going on at the Johnson Space Center, where
McKay and Thomas-Kperta work.
"At some point you have to ... accept that the only way they could
be produced is by biology,"
McKay said.
Research will continue. McKay expects proof of life on Mars
to come within five years, based on study of a dozen or so Mars rocks found on
Earth. "We're not expecting any one paper or any one line of evidence to
convince people," McKay said. "But we think that over a period of
time ... people will be convinced
by the evidence, not by us, not by claims in the press."
Meanwhile, more rocks from Mars have been studied by the
same researchers who originally examined the Allen Hills meteorite. Two
meteorites, called Nakhla
and Shergotty, showed the same evidence of microfossils and other remnants of
early life as Allen
Hills, according to a team of researchers led by Everett Gibson, a geochemist
at JSC.
The next big step to take for the scientific community is to accept the new
conclusions from the recent reevaluation of the Viking LR experiment and
acknowledge that there is still life on Mars nowadays.
PART - 2 ( there is still life on
Mars nowadays )
There is life on Mars. The Viking experiments conducted to determine that
were positive. After the experiemtn took place and were positive that at least
a micro organic life still
exists on Mars, the results were contested, on grounds that make no more
sense today.THE BASICS:
When NASA needed to design an experiment to detect if life
still exists on Mars, which the 1976 Viking lander should run, the experiment
was carefully concepted and designed. It was intended that if the experiment
turns out positive, then there
is life. The experiment did turn positive.
But this result was rejected very
fast. Ground: it cannot be.
For the general public, the answer to the question of life
on Mars evolved gradually to a negative answer:
* There are signs of life on Mars.
* There are signs of something lifelike on Mars.
* There are signs of something lifelike which is not life on Mars.
* There is a highly active chemical activity on the surface of Mars but
it is not life.
* There is some chemical activity on the surface of Mars.
* There is only chemical activity on the surface of Mars.
* There is no life on Mars these days.
* There is no life on Mars.
* The Viking experiment proved life does not exist on Mars.
The fact is, the experiment was positive, and the conceptor
of the experiment has been fighting for the last 24 years to re-establish the
fact.
1997 PRESS RELEASE:
In a July
30 1997 press release, Dr.
Gilbert V. Levin, President of Biospherics Incorporated, who was the conceptor
of the life detection experiment of the Viking lander, said he has now
concluded that his
experiment detected
microbial life on Mars 21 years ago.
Based
on a re-evaluation of his and other Viking results coupled with new Martian and
Earth relevant scientific data, Levin stated: "The only conclusion
consistent with all the known facts is that the Viking Labeled Release
Experiment discovered
microorganisms in the soil of Mars."
THE SCIENTIFIC REPORT:
In the 29 July-1 August 1997 scientific report of the Viking
LR experiment to detect life on Mars, you can read the following conclusion:
Many hypotheses have been advanced and tested in attempts to account for the
well-characterized activity detected in the surface material of Mars by the LR
experiment. As shown above, these hypotheses have themselves been found
wanting. The demonstrated success of the LR and the exquisite sensitivity with
which it has detected microorganisms during its extensive test program with its
record of no false positives can no longer be denied. No non-biological
approach published, or known to the author, has duplicated the LR Mars data.
Some laboratory experiments have produced positive responses, but the detailed
thermal sensitivity exhibited by the variety of controls conducted on Mars has
remained elusive in all such tests compatible with Martian conditions. On the
other hand, a combination of known properties of microorganisms, perhaps even
those possessed by
single species, could reproduce all aspects of the LR data. The biological
interpretation of the Mars LR results is left standing alone. Recent
discoveries of life forms thriving in extraordinarily severe environments on
Earth strongly indicate that any alien organisms arriving on Mars might well
and widely adapt to their new home. Application of the scientific principle
leads to a conclusion: the Viking LR experiment detected living
microorganisms in the soil of Mars.
THE SPIE STATEMENT:
The Labeled Release (LR) life detection experiment aboard
NASA's 1976 Viking Mission reported results which met the established criteria
for the detection of living microorganisms in the soil of Mars. However, a
variety of reasons led to the consensus of involved scientists that the
positive responses at
both Lander sites were caused by a chemical agent in the soil and not by
microorganisms. In the
years since Viking, new information from Mars and Earth has come to bear on
this issue. ... It is concluded that the Viking LR experiment detected
living microorganisms in the soil of Mars."
Reprinted from: Proceedings of Spie, SPIE-The International
Society for Optical Engineering, "Instruments, Methods, and Missions for
the Investigation of Extraterrestrial Microorganisms. 29 July-1 August 1997,
San Diego, California.
THE CONDITIONS ISSUE:
Any kind of life that got a start on Mars would have slowly
evolved by natural
selection to keep up with changes in the environment. Life is enormously
resourceful, and
there is no reason to think that life originating on Mars would be less
adaptable than the earth's. If free oxygen were never present in the
atmosphere, life could thrive without it. Many of the earth's organisms do. If
liquid water became scarce, Martian organisms might have come to retain a
supply in their tissues and add to that precious hoard by acquiring other forms
of water from the environment. Many common earthly micro-organisms can survive
under
Martian conditions. Scientists have put samples of soil in containers called
"Mars jars", where the atmospheric temperature, composition, pressure
and dryness are close to those of Mars. Some of the micro-organisms in the
samples always survive.
Subsurface Martian organisms could be supplied with a large energy flux from
the oxidation of photochemically produced atmospheric H2 and CO diffusing into
the regolith.
LIFE AS WE KNOW IT?
Were the Viking probes looking for the correct signs anyway?
The chemical reactions that drive biological activity are now known to be much
more diverse than anyone suspected in
Viking's day. It is now clear that reactions involving hydrogen, methane,
sulphur or iron can
sustain biological activity. Last year, Todd Stevens and James McKinley of the
Pacific Northwest
Laboratory in Richmond, Washington, discovered bacteria deep within basalt rock
beneath the Columbia River that thrive
only on hydrogen.
The hydrogen is continually produced by chemical reactions between water and
crushed basalt. An ecosystem like this would have been completely invisible to
the Viking craft.
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