[meteorite-list] Study: Martian soil may contain life

From: Rob McCafferty <rob_mccafferty_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 05:19:53 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <399330.64416.qm_at_web51007.mail.re2.yahoo.com>

Hmmm! I thought Norman Pace a comedian famous for
microwaving a cat? Brits, help me out. It'll be on
Youtube somewhere.
It's all very amusing (the life on Mars thing, not the
stuff to do with cats)




--- "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

> Hi, All,
>
> Not everybody likes this idea... This headline
> on another
> report on the same paper reads: Claims of Martian
> Life Called 'Bogus'!
> http://www.space.com/news/070823_mars_life.html
>
> Everybody calm down. Let's just go there and
> find out.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mike Groetz" <mpg444 at yahoo.com>
> To: "Meteorite List"
> <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 7:11 PM
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Study: Martian soil may
> contain life
>
>
>
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/08/23/mars.soil.life.reut/index.html
>
> Study: Martian soil may contain life
> Story Highlights
> Signs of weird life on Martian surface, scientist
> suggests
>
> Mars may contain microbes made of hydrogen peroxide
> and water
>
> Data studied was originally collected in 1976 by
> Viking landers
>
> LONDON, England (Reuters) -- The soil on Mars may
> contain microbial life, according to a new
> interpretation of data first collected more than 30
> years ago.
>
> The search for life on Mars appeared to hit a dead
> end
> in 1976 when Viking landers touched down on the red
> planet and failed to detect biological activity.
>
> But Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen,
> Germany, said on Friday the spacecraft may in fact
> have found signs of a weird life form based on
> hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian
> surface.
>
> His analysis of one of the experiments carried out
> by
> the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of
> the
> Martian soil could be of biological origin.
>
> That is roughly comparable to biomass levels found
> in
> some Antarctic permafrost, home to a range of hardy
> bacteria and lichen.
>
> "It is interesting because one part per thousand is
> not a small amount," Houtkooper said in a telephone
> interview.
>
> "We will have to find confirmatory evidence and see
> what kind of microbes these are and whether they are
> related to terrestrial microbes. It is a possibility
> that life has been transported from Earth to Mars or
> vice versa a long time ago."
>
> Speculation about such interplanetary seeding was
> fueled a decade ago when researchers said an ancient
> meteorite found in Antarctica contained evidence of
> fossil life on Mars. Doubt has since been cast on
> that
> finding.
>
> Houtkooper is presenting his research to the
> European
> Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany.
>
> While most scientists think our next-door neighbor
> in
> the solar system is lifeless, the discovery of
> microbes on Earth that can exist in environments
> previously thought too hostile has fueled debate
> over
> extraterrestrial life.
>
> Houtkooper believes Mars could be home to just such
> "extremophiles" -- in this case, microbes whose
> cells
> are filled with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and
> water, providing them with natural anti-freeze.
>
> They would be quite capable of surviving a harsh
> Martian climate where temperatures rarely rise above
> freezing and can fall to minus 150 degrees Celsius.
>
> Houtkooper believes their presence would account for
> unexplained rises in oxygen and carbon dioxide when
> NASA's Viking landers incubated Martian soil. He
> bases
> his calculation of the biomass of Martian soil on
> the
> assumption that these gases were produced during the
> breakdown of organic material.
>
> Scientists hope to gather further evidence on
> whether
> or not Mars ever supported life when NASA's
> next-generation robotic spacecraft, the Phoenix Mars
> Lander, reaches the planet in May 2008 and probes
> the
> soil near its northern pole.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Fri 24 Aug 2007 08:19:53 AM PDT