Re: Possibilities for life on Mars - a surprising new microbe.

From: Uncle Al (UncleAl0_at_hate.spam.net)
Date: 01/22/05 

Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 08:41:26 -0800

Robert Clark wrote:
>
> The famous Viking life experiments provided perplexing results in
> regard to life on Mars. They gave "positive" indications but they were
> different from the ones expected for Earth life. Because a separate
> experiment designed to detect organic molecules called the gas
> chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GCMS) was unable to detect any
> organics, the accepted conclusion in regard to the life experiments was
> that it was exotic chemistry not biology that caused the unusual
> reactions.
[snip]

This is all speculative crap. The Atacama Desert is sterile absent
human incursion and it sits on a planet filthy with life. Mars'
equatorial surface is a uniformly lousy place for life. The only
marginal environments would be deep underground, especially at the wet
poles and with some marsothermal heat.

The deep underground organic vein that is South African gold ore -
remains of a prehistoric swamp that scrubbed gold from groundwater -
harbors thermobarophile viable organisms that haven't seen the surface
in 20+ million years. What are the chances of hitting a goodie by
randomly sinking a borehole in South Africa? How would you culture
them? Aside from the obvious, they have learned to grow sloooooly. A
terrestrial PCR DNA probe on Mars may be irrelevant to local nucleic
acid chemistries.

Nobody is going to bore a kilometer underground on Mars in any
forseeable future. If they did, there is no way to rationally proceed
to detect local life. 

-- 
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
 (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
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