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Did Viking lander actually find life on Mars?

AdMan

Penultimate Amazing
AdMan
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Feb 10, 2010
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THE GIST

  • New results question the finding that the Mars Viking experiments did not find life.
  • The analysis was based on studying the mathematically complexity of the experiment results.
  • The idea is that living systems are more complicated than purely physical ones, a concept that can be represented mathematically.
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Mars Viking Robots 'Found Life'

PDF of the paper: http://ijass.org/On_line/admin/files/2)(014-026)11-030.pdf

I'm skeptical, but it is an interesting possibility.
 
Critics counter that the method has not yet been proven effective for differentiating between biological and non-biological processes on Earth so it's premature to draw any conclusions.
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Seems reasonable to me.
 
At first as I recall scientists thought they had found life but later on changed their mind with most scientists saying no but a few saying yes. Only time will tell. When humans finally land on Mars and start using water there it won't take long for mars to be teeming with transplanted living things.
 
Yes, that's what happened. There was excitement for a couple of weeks when the LR got positive results, but later that was interpreted by most chemists as a purely inorganic chemistry result. What the paper is saying is that the time-sequence of the results is more complex than pure chemistry suggests, and that effects like diurnal fluctuations may weigh more heavily toward organic than inorganic causes. An interesting controversy.
 
I remember soon after the first one landed. They announced the test for life a success, and in the same breath said it didn't prove anything.

Couldn't they have done that analysis before they launched? "Assume the test comes out positive. Now rip the results apart, and let's re-formulate the experiment." And repeat until nobody can poke holes in it anymore.
 
Beerina said:
I remember soon after the first one landed. They announced the test for life a success, and in the same breath said it didn't prove anything.

Couldn't they have done that analysis before they launched? "Assume the test comes out positive. Now rip the results apart, and let's re-formulate the experiment." And repeat until nobody can poke holes in it anymore.
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That's a good question. It would appear that the scientists who were consulted on the Viking experiment load may have been a tad overly optimistic about success of the experiments, and didn't look into the contingencies far enough. When it did succeed, the announcement finally dug out the kind of negative analysis from those who simply didn't believe the results, who were not consulted in the planning. One other possibility is the change of the state of the art in the seven or so years between concept and design through use.

Overall, I think it mirrors the difficulties in defining life (even life-as-we-know-it), and being able to definitively say yes this is life, or No, it isn't, even here on Earth, then trying to cram all that into a remotely operating experiment in less then 30 pounds.
 
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What I read was that some of the life-detecting tests were positive, some were negative, and it all was decided by the results of one test-----which had been unable to find life in Antarctic soil (which has life). So.....we don't really know.
 
This story is popping up a lot this week. The chance to see life formed by a seperate abiogenesis event is mind bending. But if we did find martian life using DNA supporting the theory that life was seeded on this planet, I wonder what Christians would claim Genesis "really" meant.

"Oh, the heavens and the Earth meant all the planets in the universe, people just phrased it in terms they could easily understand then".
 
CapelDodger said:
I seriously doubt that'll happen, until we melt some frozen samples ourselves. If viable life emerges I won't be surprised, but I'd want odds before I'd bet on it happening :).
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And then, of course, we'd have to eliminate contamination of the sample itself.
 
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