Vikings  1 and 2 found life on Mars, but some academicians are difficult to convince

Article from National Geographic, author Ker Than

"A fresh look at NASA data suggests that a robotic mission uncovered microbial life on Mars—more than 30 years ago. In 1976 NASA sent two space probes, Vikings 1 and 2, to Mars to determine whether life exists on the red planet. The probes carried three experiments specially designed for the task, one of which was called the Labeled Release (LR) apparatus. The LR experiment worked by scooping up a bit of Martian soil and mixing it with a drop of water that contained nutrients and radioactive carbon atoms. The idea was that if the soil contained microbes, the life-forms would metabolize the nutrients and release either radioactive carbon dioxide or methane gas, which could be measured by a radiation detector on the probe.   

A number of control experiments were also performed, including heating some Mars soil samples to different temperatures and isolating other samples in the dark for months—conditions that would kill microbes that are photosynthetic or that rely on photosynthetic organisms for survival. These control samples were also mixed with the nutrient solution. To the delight of many biologists at the time, the LR experiment came out positive for life, and the control experiments came out negative. "The minute the nutrients were mixed with the soil sample, you got something like 10,000 counts" of radioactive molecules—a huge spike from the 50 or 60 counts that constituted the natural background radiation on Mars, said study team member Joseph Miller, a neurobiologist at the University of Southern California and a former NASA space shuttle project director. Unfortunately, the LR experiment results were not backed up by the probes' other two experiments, both of which came out negative for life, so the space agency dismissed the possibility. Now, after running Viking's LR data through a mathematical test designed to separate biological signals from nonbiological signals, Miller's team believes that the LR experiments did indeed find signs of microbial life in Martian soil. "It's very possible that if you have microbes, they're living a couple of inches beneath the soil, close to water ice," he said. For the study, Miller and mathematician Giorgio Bianciardi, of Italy's University of Siena, used a technique called cluster analysis, which groups together similar-looking data sets. "We just plugged all the [Viking experimental and control] data in and said, Let the cluster analysis sort it," Miller said. "What happened was, we found two clusters: One cluster constituted the two active experiments on Viking and the other cluster was the five control experiments." To bolster their case, the team also compared the Viking data to measurements collected from confirmed biological sources on Earth—for example, temperature readings from a rat—and from purely physical, nonbiological sources. "It turned out that all the biological experiments from Earth sorted with the active experiments from Viking, and all the nonbiological data series sorted with the control experiments," Miller said. "It was an extremely clear-cut phenomenon."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120413-nasa-viking-program-mars-life-space-science/

blog in Spanish_  daniloanton.blogspot.com

Life was scientifically detected on Mars more than 40 years ago.

In the Viking lander experiments life was detected but a conservative and erroneous interpretation of the upper level authorities of NASA  decided that it was not. This interview to Gilbert V. Levin describes this strange (and negative) approach to research that was utilized by the NASA mission management team.

One of the Principal Investigators for the NASA Viking biology team was Dr. Gilbert V. Levin who invented and built the Viking Labeled Release Experiment. His experiment tested the soil of Mars nine times at two different landing sites under different temperature regimes and environmental conditions. All his data point to microbes metabolizing a nutrient solution and giving off an indicative radioactive CO2 gas. In 1997, Levin simultaneously reported in my book MARS: THE LIVING PLANET and in an Astrobiology Proceedings paper for the SPIE, that his experiment definitely detected living organisms on the surface of Mars. He has been highly criticized by many of his peers, but certainly not all. With the recent smoking gun evidence of meandering river channels on Mars formed by liquid water, the odds that Mars once had life and still has life today have gone up significantly.

In the following conversation I talk with Dr. Levin about his early work as a Sanitary Engineer and how it got him involved with NASA and the search for life on Mars.

1) You actually started your career looking for microbes in municipal water systems correct?

My professional career started as a 'sanitary engineer.' During my senior year in high school I met a sanitary engineer who was a commissioned officer in the U.S. public health service. He told me of the many facets to this profession and the multiple scientific and engineering disciplines involved in protecting the public health. Career possibilities included water supply, wastewater, drainage, air pollution, foods, and all aspects of the environmental protection, and the development of relevant processes and products. I applied to the Johns Hopkins University to enroll in its sanitary engineering program and was accepted. The first step was to obtain a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, and then take a master's degree in sanitary engineering and public health. Upon completion of both degrees, I went to work for the Maryland state health department as a junior sanitary engineer. My assigned responsibilities dealt with municipal water supplies, waste water disposal, industrial waste disposal, shellfish sanitation, and swimming pools. Water quality analysis, especially microbial, was involved in all these activities. Early on I became especially interested in the microbiology concerned projects I was assigned.

2) You worked with a microbial detection technique called radiorespirometry in the late 1950's that was extremely sensitive for the detection microbes in water and in blood. Are you the inventor of this method and how does it work?

I am the inventor. It is a very simple test, patterned after the long-used, classic method for detecting bacteria. That method placed a sample of the material suspected of bacterial contamination into a test tube containing a liquid broth designed to culture the bacteria. If bacteria were present, they would eat the nutrient and reproduce. At the same time they were exhaling gas as part of their metabolism of the food. Eventually enough gas would be expired to create small, visible bubbles. The bubbles were proof that bacteria were present. Some tests were designed to detect any bacteria. Others were designed to detect specific species. The types of nutrient used determined which bacteria would respond. Varied depending on the specific test, the length of time required to detect the bacteria ranges from one to several days, even up to a week. My invention was simply to add tiny amounts of radioactive nutrient into the nutrient(s) used in the test. Chemically there was no difference between the radioactive molecules and the nonradioactive ones. The bacteria could not tell the difference between them and metabolized them both. However, when radioactive molecules were metabolized the gas produced was radioactive. Methods to detect radioactivity are so sensitive that the gas can be detected within minutes, providing answers almost immediately compared to the length of time required by the classic method. In the standard test, bacteria have to reproduce to about a million per milliliter of culture broth to produce visible bubbles. The radioactive method is so sensitive that as few as ten bacterial cells in the sample can be detected in about half an hour, before any growth occurs. Growth is not needed. I developed the method to detect total bacteria and to detect coliform organisms (of sewage origin)for use in detecting contamination of drinking water and swimming water. This was adopted by several states as an emergency water supply public method. I then developed the method and associated instrumentation to be able to detect and identify specific pathogenic microorganisms of public health interest. The method is now used in hospitals and clinics worldwide to detect human blood infection very quickly.

3) Didn't you have a problem selling the invention initially?

My carbon-labeled microbial respirometry technique worked very well, both to detect and to identify microorganisms. However, potential user agencies feared the public relations aspect of using radioactive material. Of course, hospitals were using increasing amounts of isotopes and X-rays, but even they resisted (until sometime later) expanding that use into microbiological testing. This was frustrating.

4) How did you get involved with NASA?

In 1958, I accompanied my wife, then a reporter for Newsweek magazine, to a Christmas party at the home of the Washington bureau chief, Ernest Lindley. There I met the first Nasa administrator, Kieth Glennan and we had a nice talk about space research. I had long been interested in the possibility of life beyond the earth. When I was 9 years old, my cousin, pointing out Mars to me, told me about an astronomy course she was taking at college where the possibility of life on mars and elsewhere was discussed. An idea dawned on me at the party. Putting down my martini, I asked, only half-jokingly, whether Nasa might ever look for life on Mars. Glennan surprised me by saying he was planning to do so, and that he had just hired an M.D., Clark Randt, to head up a new Nasa biology program. Glennan suggested I go see Randt and tell him about my test. I made an appointment very soon after. Randt was most receptive and told me to submit my idea as a proposal for possible funding for me to do the research. This was very exciting, and I promptly went to work crafting a proposal explaining what needed to be done to develop my microbial radiospirometry experiment and an instrument to perform it on Mars. He said Nasa intended to fund several such experiments and to choose a number of them for a Mars lander.

5) When did NASA officially fund you for this?

In 1959, Nasa funded my proposal to develop my radiosrespirometry experiment to go to Mars. I named it 'Gulliver,' because it was to seek Lilliputian life forms on a far away land, and I hired a small team to help me in the laboratory. The development went exceedingly well. Within the first year we had developed a suitable nutrient for detection of a broad array of microorganisms, selected and incorporated the radioactive carbon label, and demonstrated the sensitivity and quickness of the technique. Later, Nasa changed the name to 'Labeled Release' to indicate the seriousness of its purpose. Before the end of the year we had a working instrument that a subcontractor manufactured to meet our concepts. We tested the instrument on a nearby playground and it promptly detected microorganisms.

6) Can you describe how the Gulliver worked?

The instrument shot out 2 greasy strings that fell onto the ground with their free ends landing about 100 feet from the instrument. The strings were then reeled in, collecting tiny particles of soil that adhered. A glass vial of the nutrient was broken over each reel. The soil organisms promptly attacked the nutrients and produced radioactive gas. Geiger counters measured the radioactivity of the gas as it rose above the reel, providing evidence that a reaction had taken place. When one reel showed a positive response, the other was promptly doused with a poison to kill any microorganisms on it in order to serve as a control. The monitoring for radioactive gas arising from each reel continued. In our very first field test, the poisoned reel produced very little gas, while the test reel produced thousands of counts per minute in about half an hour. The difference between them proved that the first reel was responding to living organisms.

During the ensuing years, Nasa funded about 10 mars life detection experiments, including two additional ones of mine: the 'Dark Release' experiment - which detected photosynthetic microorganisms by demonstrating their uptake of radioactive carbon dioxide in the light, and their release of the gas in the dark; and 'Diogenes,' based on the enzymes in the firefly lantern that light up in the presence of adenosine triphosphate, a chemical that is the immediate energy provider in all known metabolism. All the experimenters went full tilt in developing their experiments and enabling robotic instruments in the hope of making it aboard a Mars lander whenever it might be designated.

Reproduced and adapted from Space Daily

Author: Barry E. DiGregorio
Ref.  http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-03l.html

A fossil-like structure on Mars was destroyed

The Opportunity rover on Mars found several interesting structures on the martian outcrops. Among them, one of the most interesting ones was a very singular feature that looked very similar to a fossil of an invertebrate. In fact, the structure looked suspiciously alike to a fossil crinoid  (crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms phyllum). The mission managers decision was to grind, and obviously destroy the suspicious fossil.  ,   

Astrobiologist Richard Hoover spent more than forty six years working at NASA. In that time, he established the Astrobiology Research Group at the NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, and became internationally known for his research on microfossils in meteorites. Hoover has published many papers in which he asserts the discovery of extraterrestrial life in meteorites Hoover no longer works for NASA, but he continues his controversial research and is currently an astrobiologist at Athens State University and a visiting research professor with the Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham. Hoover discussed his research in a lecture at the 2014 International UFO Congress. Speigel pointed out that Hoover’s findings have met with harsh skepticism by critics. But Hoover stands behind his research. He replied, “These critics will not debate me in an open scientific forum. I would be perfectly willing to go to the Cosmos Club in Washington, to go to any university and have an academic debate and scientific discussion. During Speigel’s interview, he also asked Hoover about a possible organism photographed by NASA’s Opportunity rover. Hoover explained

Opportunity rover in 2004 took an image of a fascinating structure on Mars that shows structural features that are consistent with organisms on Earth known as crinoids . . . Crinoids are echinoderms, like starfish . . . so these are animals! And I’m saying that Opportunity took a photograph on Mars that shows features that are consistent with what we know of crinoids . . . Now, the fascinating thing is here you have a possible fossil of a very interesting organism in a rock on Mars, and three hours and a half after that photograph was done, that rock was destroyed by the rock abrasion tool.

Hoover claims that he asked NASA astrobiologist David McKay to explain why such an interesting structure was destroyed. He was told that it was done “to look at the inside looking for carbon.” But Hoover has a problem with this answer. He explains, “Well, the problem is, anyone who does much in the field of paleontology knows that you don’t have to find carbon to find fossil.” To further explain his confusion by the decision to destroy a potential fossil, Hoover offered this analogy: “If a paleontologist finds on Earth a rock containing an interesting fossil, they collect it. You would never have a paleontologist say, ‘Gee. That may represent a new genus of life on Earth. Where’s my rock hammer? I want to smash that to bits.

That seems absurd, but this is what the mission managers did.

Subsurface life on Mars.

I share an article on Thomas Gold opinion

13/2/1997

Life on Mars existed for billions of years -- and may continue still -- Cornell astronomer says

By Larry Bernard

Subsurface life on Mars probably did exist and may still exist for the same reason it exists on Earth -- both these planets and many other planetary bodies in the solar system are made of similar stuff and provide similar conditions, a Cornell University astronomer said today (Feb. 13).

Microbes deep inside the Earth's crust get oxygen from rocks and use it to oxidize hydrocarbons that come streaming up from below, receiving energy by this process. It now seems probable that life evolved by such processes from the inside out, rather than commencing at the surface, said Thomas Gold, Cornell professor emeritus of astronomy. The same scenario is likely to be true for Mars and several other planetary bodies, he said.

Gold, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, described this theory at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on Thursday, Feb. 13, at a session on "New Worlds and Old Worlds" in a talk called "Was There and Is There Life on Mars?"

His answer: Yes, there was and probably still is. "Microbial subsurface life has existed on Earth for billions of years and still does," Gold said. "It is very likely that we will find a deep, hot biosphere on Mars, as we have found on Earth, and probably on many other planetary bodies in our solar system."

Gold first proposed his theory in a 1992 paper, "The Deep, Hot Biosphere," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (July 1992). In it he wrote that the Earth contains internal chemical energy sources in which microbes thrive, using hydrogen, methane and other liquids and gases that percolate up through cracks from the planet's interior, together with oxygen and other components of the local rocks. He suggested that such microbial life probably would be found in many areas below the surface of the Earth and will exist also on many other bodies, such as the moon, Mars, many asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, Titan (satellite of Saturn) and Triton (satellite of Neptune) and other satellites of the giant planets, and Pluto, the farthest known planet, where similar fluids have come up from below.

Further, he suggested in the 1992 paper that the known meteorites found on the Earth and identified as having come here from Mars should be examined for evidence of such microbial life. He also suggested that the search for such evidence of life would become a central issue in planetary research.

Last year one of these meteorites was found to contain what many scientists believe is evidence for such life. Gold considers this evidence to be particularly strong because the meteorite, Meteorite ALH84001, contains solids that are known on the Earth to be residues of such microbial activity.

The key to his theory, he said, is that petroleum has come up from great depth, not from biological sediments generated at or near the surface. The clearest evidence for that: helium.

The chemically inert gas, helium, is found to be strongly associated with petroleum all over the Earth, Gold said. This is true not only for great petroleum deposits, but also in detail in gases that are measured in thousands of locations at shallow depths. Yet no chemical process exists in which biological sediments would have concentrated this gas.

Helium is generated diffusely by the decay of uranium and thorium in the rocks. Gold is first to suggest that fluids, such as petroleum, that have washed through great distances in the rocks flush out the small quantities of helium that have accumulated along their way, increasing the helium concentration in such fluids.

"This is the only possible mechanism. Why else would helium be found together with petroleum?" Gold asks. "The association of helium with biological matter has not been accounted for in any other way."

If so, this requires that petroleum has come up from great depths, like 100 miles or more, rather than from just the upper four miles or so where there are biological sediments.

"In that case all the biological components that petroleum contains must have been additions it obtained later at the shallower levels from which we extract it," Gold said. What accounts for this biology? Microbial life, he said.

It was for this reason, Gold said, that he had to suppose that there was a huge amount of microbial life at all these shallower levels. "At the levels to which we drill, petroleum is a wonderful food for microbes," Gold said. "They thrive on that. With this combination we can understand why there is helium in petroleum and at the same time why there are biological molecules in it also."

And if it is true that hydrocarbons are cooked deep inside the Earth and then are mechanically washed up by geologic forces, where microbes then feed on them, then it's just a small step to wonder whether similar processes would not exist on other similar bodies in the solar system, he said.

"The Earth, then, has no particular prerogative to develop microbial life. Its subsurface is not unique. We know there are petrochemicals under the surfaces of many other bodies in the solar system, and in fact most other solid bodies have shown evidence of hydrocarbons."

The Martian meteorite ALH84001, which is thought to contain evidence of life, as announced in a paper in the journal Science (Aug. 16, 1996) by David McKay of NASA and others, has other similarities to Earthly subsurface life, Gold said.

"For example, unoxidized sulfur compounds and concentrations of small grains of the iron mineral magnetite, both not common in rocks, are found frequently around oil wells on Earth -- solid refuse left behind by microbial activity," Gold said. The meteorite ALH84001 has iron sulfide and magnetite, "very suggestive of the processes we see here," he said.

He added that the present or past surface condition on Mars is irrelevant to this problem. A huge impact was required to eject material from Mars, including the meteorites that have been found in Antarctica. Most of this ejected material would have come from deep inside the planet, from the crater this impact would have generated. A small distance down into such a crater, a mile or two, one would find liquid water and hydrocarbons, Gold said.

His 1992 suggestion on how to find evidence of life by spacecraft missions to Mars still holds, he said. There are areas on Mars where huge landslides have exposed material that once was at a depth of two miles or more, certainly into the depth range of liquid water. Why not select such locations for a robotic vehicle landing with a sample return capability? Gold asked. Now as a result of the meteorite investigation, NASA is planning to send probes on Mars missions to look for further evidence of life.

Said Gold: "As long as you think that life is possible only on planetary surfaces, the Earth is uniquely suitable. But when you talk about life deep below, the Earth is not unique at all. The deep, chemically supplied life may be common, not only in the solid bodies of the solar system, but throughout the universe."

 http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/02/earthly-deep-hot-biosphere-called-probable-throughout-solar-system