Great Discoveries are Sometimes Unacknowledged When They Happen
One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes takes a moment to tell us that John Michael Godier has a 45 minute interview with Dr. Patricia Ann Straat, who was in charge of the detect life experiment in the Viking Landers in '75/76. She and her team thought they'd found life then but after some initial enthusiasm it was declared a false positive and then pretty much ignored after the new NASA leadership took over in '77. She and others have recently pointed out that the experiments alleged to debunk her team's claims were improperly done and she's got a very strong case that Martian life was detected in 1976.
But wait. There's more!
"New evidence regarding organics and seasonal methane emissions seems to support her conclusions and if these pan out, it'll be important to remember that it was Dr. Straat and her team who first discovered life on Mars, probably before the first people who will first see it under a microscope were born. "
Time will tell but her argument seems compelling. Indeed, its looking more and more like she's right and that the decision to not put any life detecting experiments on the subsequent probes was ill-conceived at best. She has a book on the topic that is, for some reason, not available in the usual places but you can buy it here.
Full Disclosure: "Science Babe" is actually Makise Kurisu from Stein's Gate, but you know that, because you've seen it, unless you haven't in which case you're wrong.
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We need more info for anything to be conclusive, probably. One bit of information is far too small for all the things we would want to know about life on Mars, if it exists.
As a grad student, it was amazing how hard it was to get repeatable, reliable results from an experiment when you could open up the chamber and fix things, restart things, kick things, resolder bad connections, etc. (In my case, I got a negative result for what I was searching for.)
For something that's millions of miles away on a robot probe with limited manipulators, it's amazing they got results that could even be classified as "positive" or "negative" instead of "huh?". It's amazing they could propulsively *land* the thing with the technology of the time.
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Mon Nov 25 10:57:09 2019 (K+Kza)
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Could still be an inorganic reaction with an oxidizing chemical in the soil. The heated soil test seems like they controlled for that, but they could also have baked out the active inorganic chemical too in the low pressure atmosphere.
Need more testing. Need a robot with microscopes and slides. Need moar info.
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Mon Nov 25 11:06:05 2019 (K+Kza)
A MUCH earlier post; see, back in November of 2007 we noted that archeologists had discovered a semi-mythical submarine that was claimed to have been all kinds of advanced but was believed to have been lost in 1869, 150 years ago this year.
The SUB MARINE EXPLORER did indeed exist and was found 12 years ago. She was intended for underwater salvage, exploration and pearl diving and sallied forth to Panama to do the latter, where her entire crew died "of fever" after a long dive.
Examination of the wreck and what was known of the sub's design indicate that they died of the bends after staying down to long and not decompressing properly. Now, a dozen years later, the reports of the survey are available online as well as photos and schematics of the submarine itself derived from the wreck that confirm other reports about how advanced the vessel actually was. The SUB MARINE EXPLORER was remarkably advanced for its day and worked, achieving most of its design goals. It had the ability to equalize pressure like a diving bell allowing its crew to exit the vessel underwater.
From the set of plans drawn up from the wreck and historical records at the Library of Congress
Sadly, reliable dive tables were not available until the early 20th century and this condemned the crew to an early grave despite everything else being done right. Unknown unknowns are among the most dangerous of things, but are inevitable when exploring new frontiers.
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"Unknown unknowns," they are called. My over-degreed & credentialed pharmacy colleagues are discovering they are not construction project managers...
Similarly, when Musk drops his volunteers onto Mars (and I would still gladly put my name in) they will encounter things that all of us brights who read Brickmuppet's blog could never imagine.
Death, rarely, is sometimes the only way forward. The next colony will build upon the first's lessons. And their memories and bones.
Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Sat Nov 2 20:28:48 2019 (ug1Mc)
