The Atlantic - How Many Astronauts Believe Aliens Exist? Answer - ALL of them.

Just listened to Chris today, he was on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast-

podcasts.joerogan.net... (2nd one down)

He talks about his experience in space, its effects on the body, traveling to Mars and aliens.

Aleister
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Mr. Oberg can't respond, he's busy chewing on his hat.

Very good post, just like a thread in itself, and very educational. thanks.

Very good reply, indeed, should serve as an example for future mustering of evidence to make a point. Attagirl, with all sincerity.

The other argument contra the 'why haven't we seen them already?' query is that we have but not recognized them.

But the query's fundamental challenge remains. The question is not, why haven't we noticed and catalogued ALL the ET civilizations nearby in the galaxy?

The arguments made about galactic and atmospheric opacity in various [but never in ALL] EM wavelengths, as an excuse for NOT detecting any indication of non-human technology, seems like 'special pleading' to me since it requires that all ET civilizations tailor their EM broadcasts -- both deliberate and accidental -- specifically to conform to Earth-local 'forbidden bands' that happen to fall outside our viewable wavelengths.

In a galaxy hypothetically teeming with diverse and culturally unrelated technologies, both organic and cybernetic, this view requires universal identical [and coordinated?] avoidance strategies that 'just happen' to prevent leakage into the human sensory range. No exceptions. No out-liers. No wild heretical transmitters. EVERYBODY is hiding.

So why haven't we noticed ANY -- not ALL, but at least a few, or even one -- of them?

Personally I don't like the implications of this and have looked for other explanations, exactly as detailed in highly accurate, complete, and clear form by the responder. Kudos! It's the kind of response I've often hoped to provoke, but so infrequently see.

Wow. The ATS forum at its best. May your tribe increase.

Aleister
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Mr. Oberg can't respond, he's busy chewing on his hat.

Very good post, just like a thread in itself, and very educational. thanks.

I doubt Jim Oberg is eating his hat.

I won't speak for Jim, but I feel that even though he may sometimes try to engage in logical debate about ETs and other subjects, going by his writings (not just here on ATS, but his professional writings outside ATS, also), it seems that Mr. Oberg believes it is probable that intelligent ET life is out there in the universe somewhere.


Edit to Update:
I see Jim answered for himself a minute before me.

The title is a big misleading though.....

All they really said was "I understand probability"

JimOberg

Soylent Green Is People

JadeStar
...One thing that should be noted is that our planet has been sending out its own signal that life exists here for about 3 billion years. This is due to the ratio of gasses that can only exist on a life bearing world. This ratio gives off a certain spectra which any sufficiently advanced aliens with a large coronagraph or a big set of space telescopes could have seen any time in the last 2-3 billion years...

Correct, but that may not make us interesting enough to come visit. I bet there are many, many planets in the Milky Way alone that show signs of life in an analysis of their atmospheres. If I were an alien species thousands of LY away, Earth still may not seem like that uniquely important of a place to visit. Perhaps interstellar space travel is possible, but still relatively difficult enough to make a 10,000 LY trip not something an alien species would do on a whim.

True in principle, but I think you have the age of a life-altered atmosphere a lot too high -- the Cambrian Explosion is generally thought to represent the time that free oxygen accumulated in the open air, and when iron deposits changed from ferric to ferrous compounds, as I recall the thesis.

I've no doubt advanced civlisations can easily figure out which planets bear life and which don't with far more advanced information processing techniques and sensitivity than we have. They could combine algorithims for many different factors and states (such as range of fluctuations and rate of fluctuations in the atmospheric chemistry) and chemistries to get very good estimates and if they have a good database of existing planets to work off they will be far more accurate.

JimOberg

Aleister
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Mr. Oberg can't respond, he's busy chewing on his hat.

Very good post, just like a thread in itself, and very educational. thanks.

Very good reply, indeed, should serve as an example for future mustering of evidence to make a point. Attagirl, with all sincerity.

The other argument contra the 'why haven't we seen them already?' query is that we have but not recognized them.

But the query's fundamental challenge remains. The question is not, why haven't we noticed and catalogued ALL the ET civilizations nearby in the galaxy?

The arguments made about galactic and atmospheric opacity in various [but never in ALL] EM wavelengths, as an excuse for NOT detecting any indication of non-human technology, seems like 'special pleading' to me since it requires that all ET civilizations tailor their EM broadcasts -- both deliberate and accidental -- specifically to conform to Earth-local 'forbidden bands' that happen to fall outside our viewable wavelengths.

In a galaxy hypothetically teeming with diverse and culturally unrelated technologies, both organic and cybernetic, this view requires universal identical [and coordinated?] avoidance strategies that 'just happen' to prevent leakage into the human sensory range. No exceptions. No out-liers. No wild heretical transmitters. EVERYBODY is hiding.

So why haven't we noticed ANY -- not ALL, but at least a few, or even one -- of them?

Personally I don't like the implications of this and have looked for other explanations, exactly as detailed in highly accurate, complete, and clear form by the responder. Kudos! It's the kind of response I've often hoped to provoke, but so infrequently see.

Wow. The ATS forum at its best. May your tribe increase.

The point earlier was a fair one. Our current technological abilities severely inhibit our abilities to pick up on evidence of alien life.

The strength of alien EM broadcasts would have to be tremendous to be picked up by us. The use of encrypted signalling also makes messages look like background noise to anybody trying to detect them from the outside.

Just think about it Jim? Do you know only one real experiment has been done on Mars surface to detect microbes through testing for metabolisis , that was the VIking landers (gave ambiguous results due to perochloate in the soil), not the latest probes. The current probes on Mars STILL don't have the equipment to look for our sort of life directly, which leaves me very puzzled indeed.

The much heralded billion dollar Curiosity probe cannot even drill down below 5 Cms of the surface! That's right, it cannot even get a sample from just your fingertip below the surface .... .it could be green with worm poo and we'd never know...



www.wired.com...

First, the bad news: Given the model’s assumptions, organic molecules would last a mere hundreds of millions of years in the shallow subsurface of Mars. As the paper notes, “that will pose a serious challenge for organic detection by [Curiosity] since its primary focus is to look for 3.5 billion-year-old organic biomarkers while only drilling 5 cm into the surface rock.”

Why look for evidence of dead life from 3.5 billion years ago instead of living life now?

Why? It has to be the dumbest thing I've seen NASA do. You ask people questions, and they can't give you a straight answer. My guess, it's because they are afraid of looking for living life again, not finding anything, and getting their budget decimated. They are afraid of failure and too timid.

But with a 5-cm drill range, the rover isn’t exactly set up for an extensive mining operation. Pavlov has two recommendations. One option is to let geological forces do the mining and search for recent “microcraters” nearby that may have moved deeper rocks to the surface. These newly excavated rocks could still possess partially intact organics that could be rover-accessible. The second option amounts to martian four-wheeling. Using the rover’s wheels to dig into the soft sediment, it would be possible to reach a depth of 20 cm, expanding the window for potentially detectible molecules by a few dozen millions of years.

Why is testing in the first 5 cms of soil a problem?
www.planetary.org...




The big news from Curiosity..we found water bound in the soil on Mars. We also recently found quite a lot of water bound into the Moons soil.

www.theverge.com...


If we didn't know there was water in those soils until recently it shows how limited our capabilities have been.

ManInAsia
The much heralded billion dollar Curiosity probe cannot even drill down below 5 Cms of the surface! That's right, it cannot even get a sample from just your fingertip below the surface .... .it could be green with worm poo and we'd never know...

Why are you under the impression the rover can't sample below the surface? Would 10-20 cm depth satisy your complaint? Why don't you think Curiosity can reach that depth?

ManInAsia
...I've no doubt advanced civlisations can easily figure out which planets bear life and which don't with far more advanced information processing techniques and sensitivity than we have. They could combine algorithims for many different factors and states (such as range of fluctuations and rate of fluctuations in the atmospheric chemistry) and chemistries to get very good estimates and if they have a good database of existing planets to work off they will be far more accurate.

But even then, the galaxy is vast, and many life-bearing planets may exist. What would make an alien species take enough notice in earth to make them want to come and contact us -- assuming they are out of the 100 LY range of being able to hear our radio broadcasts, and out of the (say) 500 LY range to be able to detect industrial gasses in the atmosphere.

To them, we may just look like a run-of-the-mill planet, even if they can detect the presence of life-processes in a spectral analysis of the light from our atmosphere (an analysis that would be as old as the light).

Depending on the age of the light from the atmosphere they are analyzing, they may not realize that the life on this particular life-bearing planet is technological -- or even intelligent, for that matter.

Assuming we count as an intelligent species - and one which would be alien to life on another planet ....... Exactly how many of the many hundreds of planets we've discovered, some of which we suspect support life, have we actually visited?

Who's to say all similar civilisations in this part of the Galaxy aren't in the same boat? Or, at least, only able to visit planets within a few light years of home?

We don't know that FTL travel is possible. Maybe it isn't? And that then solves the Fermi Paradox, even if there are billions of planets with intelligent life on them in our galaxy alone.

But maybe one day the alien equivalent of Voyager will reach our solar system, millions of years after it was launched (if any have passed through in the past, chances are we'd have missed them as even today we'd struggle to detect such a small probe unless it actually hit us)?

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Well, I can't say you are wrong or right on this because there is something more to what you think Edgar Mitchell actually claimed on extraterrestrial life.

You can take a look at this interview with Nick Margerisson and Edgar Mitchell (correct me if I'm wrong and this interview is falsified, which I doubt) -

Edgar Mitchell Interview On Et

Some quotes he made:

'I have had the privilege to [hear?] on the back that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real and have been covered up by our government for a long time'

'There is more nonsense about this than real informations, but the phenomenon is real [...] it has been well covered up by our government for the last 60 years or so [...] and some of us have been priviligied to been briefed on some of that [...]'

'[...] but I've also been in military circle and intelligence circle [...] but yes we have been visited.'

'[...] I have been involved in much of this work [...]'

The inverviewer: 'Why is it being covered up then, why isn't it mainstream?'

Edgar Mitchell: [coarse answer] The main instances after world war 2 wanted to keep it secret.

So, tell me now buddy, what do you think?

ManInAsia

Just think about it Jim? Do you know only one real experiment has been done on Mars surface to detect microbes through testing for metabolisis , that was the VIking landers (gave ambiguous results due to perochloate in the soil), not the latest probes. The current probes on Mars STILL don't have the equipment to look for our sort of life directly, which leaves me very puzzled indeed.

The much heralded billion dollar Curiosity probe cannot even drill down below 5 Cms of the surface! That's right, it cannot even get a sample from just your fingertip below the surface .... .it could be green with worm poo and we'd never know...

www.wired.com...

The sad thing is that it did not have to be that way.

Originally the Curiosity rover was called the MSL. Mars Science Laboratory.

And back then it was going to contain a device called a Tunable Laser Spectrometer or a Cavity Ring-Down Spectrometer.


www.space.com...

Unfortunately due to cost cutting, neither device made this mission.

The next mission in 2016 should have something similar.

First, the bad news: Given the model’s assumptions, organic molecules would last a mere hundreds of millions of years in the shallow subsurface of Mars. As the paper notes, “that will pose a serious challenge for organic detection by [Curiosity] since its primary focus is to look for 3.5 billion-year-old organic biomarkers while only drilling 5 cm into the surface rock.”

Why look for evidence of dead life from 3.5 billion years ago instead of living life now?

Simple answer: It's cheaper.

Ideally, you'd like to do both but as a space policy wonk, there's the old saying, "no bucks, no Buck Rogers".

So when choosing experiments to put on board a spacecraft you tend to see that instruments that are multi-use get the go-ahead and these are often fine for detecting signs of past life but poor or useless for finding signs of current life.

To find current life a series of special experiments similar to the kind placed on the Viking missions in the 1970s (in the sense that that's all the experiment package would do - not the parameters of the experiment obviously) would need to be placed on the lander or rover.

Unfortunately, these tend to cost more in terms of 'bang for the buck' than multi-use instrument packages/experiments.

Why? It has to be the dumbest thing I've seen NASA do. You ask people questions, and they can't give you a straight answer.

Did I not give you a straight answer? Granted I don't work for NASA (yet) but it seems pretty clear what is going on. But I guess you like the juicier, "conspiracy" angle?

My guess, it's because they are afraid of looking for living life again, not finding anything, and getting their budget decimated. They are afraid of failure and too timid.

Tinfoil hat time I see.... Trust me, I may be just a student but I have participated in NASA sponsored workshops in the past and those people would be thrilled to find life and EVERYONE in astrobiology wants more missions, more robust science, more targeted searches for extant and CURRENT life however there are political forces, parties and people opposed to science who see any mission to Mars or anywhere else as a "big government program that is a waste of time and my tax dollars".

How many times have YOU scoffed at stories about "scientists looking for life in frozen lake in Antarctica" or "scientists receive grant to study the sex habits and migration of ants"? Don't lie. You probably did it because you didn't understand the science or where such research fit into the larger search for life in the universe or equally big quests in the sciences.

Sadly that's just how it is, and you see plenty of sentiment of that sort right here on ATS.

The fact is, if you want high resolution, high sensitivity basic raw science then it is going to cost money. I saw someone complaining the other day that $600 million that NASA's Kepler Mission (you know the little space telescope which is finding all the earthlike planets?) cost was a waste of money!

SERIOUSLY!!??!?!?!

Yet we build plenty of $2 billion dollar B2 Spirit bombers (made for the Cold War), billion dollar ships the US Navy doesn't even want (to keep the dollars flowing into certain congressional districts), etc.

NASA due to its high visibility is usually one of the first things cut. And it doesn't matter what party is in the Congress or White House. That's been consistent since Kennedy.

Americans however are fine with over-funding big ticket military and intelligence items.

TRUE STORY: The NRO just gave NASA two space telescope optics that are BETTER than Hubble which your average Joe Sixpack had no idea existed. Just like, "Here take these, we don't need them, they're obsolete and we'd just send them off to the scrap yard so if you want 'em take 'em."

"NASA Mulls Missions for Donated Spy Satellite Telescopes" - www.space.com...

And most everyone in astronomy is drooling over the possibilities for these mirrors.

Drooling over the leftover scraps of dinner off of the plate of the National Reconnoissance Office!

It's like you drooling over an old school monochrome CRT given to you to surf the internet while the person who gave you it is using their flat screen 31" LED!

ANOTHER TRUE STORY: I was at an exoplanet conference last year and I asked one researcher who shall remain nameless, what it kind of optics we'd need to begin to get detailed, rich, spectra back from Super Earths and he told me but then added, "we'd be reinventing the wheel, the optics to do what you want exist but they are looking down at the Earth."

I just shook my head and said, "well they're looking the wrong way."

In other words we have the technology to detect alien life and perhaps even alien civilizations on other planets out there but a good portion of it is looking down at US!

So perhaps stop badgering NASA, a civilian agency and start asking why so much of your tax money is going into a black hole called the black budget?

If I sound a bit angry it is because I am.

I am in college majoring in a field that many people are hugely interested in as evidenced by the plethora and popularity of "UFO" and "Ancient Aliens" type TV shows and forums like this one, but when it comes to the REAL scientific search for ET they have little interested in funding it. Or worse, accuse the very people who are looking it of covering it up!

Look, I love a conspiracy as much as anyone. And I especially love debunking false conspiracies but on this, so many people on this site look at NASA and think of it as this huge government agency.

NASA is not that big at all compared to other government agencies. Neither in manpower or budget. NSA, NRO, CIA, DIA, NGIS all have bigger budgets. Yet NASA is the target of so much B.S. on here and other conspiracy sites!

They aren't covering anything up. Most people in NASA would love to find life, even extant life out there. It would help increase their budget and fund more interesting research!

As Sinead O'Connor once said: "Fight the REAL enemy!"

Deny Ignorance.

JimOberg

Personally I don't like the implications of this and have looked for other explanations, exactly as detailed in highly accurate, complete, and clear form by the responder. Kudos! It's the kind of response I've often hoped to provoke, but so infrequently see.

Wow. The ATS forum at its best. May your tribe increase.

Thanks. As a scientist-in-training, I'm all about supporting positions with evidence.

I just got here. I'm a newb.

JimOberg

ManInAsia
The much heralded billion dollar Curiosity probe cannot even drill down below 5 Cms of the surface! That's right, it cannot even get a sample from just your fingertip below the surface .... .it could be green with worm poo and we'd never know...

Why are you under the impression the rover can't sample below the surface? Would 10-20 cm depth satisy your complaint? Why don't you think Curiosity can reach that depth?

It is designed to sample 5 cms under the surface, with some fancy maneuvering it may be able to get deeper in a few spots. The fact is even 10-20cm is not good enough. Why? I've posted the reasons already, exposure to UV radiation and huge temperature variation being too obvious issues.

We already know there is no obvious life on the surface, so let's get bloody digging!

As for comments earlier about the puzzling lack of equipment (I'm talking PCR, rapid tests for nucleic acids and protein etc), I believe the real reason the equipment was included is these missions are dominated by engineers and geologists, not biologists.

I'm from a biology background and I see no reason whatsoever that this type of equipment wasn't included in the current mission, to look for life now rather than signs of ancient life. It doesn't make much logical sense to me. It should be easier to look for signs of living life rather than fossil life, wouldn't people agree?

Anyway, there's water in the soil on Mars, lots of it (yes the Curiosity has been a great success..don't get me wrong..I just think a couple of direct biological detection instruments should have been included in the mission along with a drill that can reach farther into the soil). Microbes with anti-freeze abilities have already been identified on Earth that can live in their own micro environments. Due to pressure underground water should become liquid again. Radiation sources could also supply energy to microbes.

reply to post by FlyersFan

ALL of them.

Is that what you think, or is that what they want you to think ?

ManInAsia

As for comments earlier about the puzzling lack of equipment (I'm talking PCR, rapid tests for nucleic acids and protein etc), I believe the real reason the equipment was included is these missions are dominated by engineers and geologists, not biologists.

Au contraire. There are a team of vocal astrobiologists on every Mars mission opportunity. The problem is it costs more money to do this experiment properly.

Simply putting a PCR on Mars makes little sense.

Rule #1 about Mars, i like to call MINE - Mars Is Not Earth

So, imagine the shock and horror you'd have undergone as an astrobiologist who sent a PCR to Mars only to find out that the soil is full of perchlorates... :/

I'm from a biology background and I see no reason whatsoever that this type of equipment wasn't included in the current mission, to look for life now rather than signs of ancient life. It doesn't make much logical sense to me. It should be easier to look for signs of living life rather than fossil life, wouldn't people agree?

Actually its the other way around. Its easier to look for past life because most of the geologic instruments on the rover can do that, thus becoming dual-use for the astrobiology people.

Rule #2 about a Mars mission: If it ain't cheap, it ain't flyin'.

Anyway, there's water in the soil on Mars, lots of it (yes the Curiosity has been a great success..don't get me wrong..I just think a couple of direct biological detection instruments should have been included in the mission along with a drill that can reach farther into the soil). Microbes with anti-freeze abilities have already been identified on Earth that can live in their own micro environments. Due to pressure underground water should become liquid again. Radiation sources could also supply energy to microbes.

I totally agree. But how do you design an experiment to detect current life if you do not at first understand whether current like can exist? We didn't know about the rich water content of Mars soil until this mission. What if Mars had been bone dry? Wouldn't that life searching suite of gear been nothing more than ballast?

As a biologist how would YOU design a Mars life detection package??? Remember rule #1. It has to be able to detect life perhaps vastly different from our own. Perhaps not even based on nucleic acids. And then after you do that, adhere to Rule #2. It's got to be cost effective.

reply to post by FlyersFan



"I don't know of any astronauts who think we're alone in the universe,"

And the significance of this quote is...?

Were astronauts presumed to all be skeptical about extraterrestrial life?

Does this stated belief increase the likelihood of it?

Does this alleged unanimity within this particular group make it a certainty?

JadeStar

ManInAsia

As for comments earlier about the puzzling lack of equipment (I'm talking PCR, rapid tests for nucleic acids and protein etc), I believe the real reason the equipment was included is these missions are dominated by engineers and geologists, not biologists.

Au contraire. There are a team of vocal astrobiologists on every Mars mission opportunity. The problem is it costs more money to do this experiment properly.

Simply putting a PCR on Mars makes little sense.

Rule #1 about Mars, i like to call MINE - Mars Is Not Earth

So, imagine the shock and horror you'd have undergone as an astrobiologist who sent a PCR to Mars only to find out that the soil is full of perchlorates... :/

I'm from a biology background and I see no reason whatsoever that this type of equipment wasn't included in the current mission, to look for life now rather than signs of ancient life. It doesn't make much logical sense to me. It should be easier to look for signs of living life rather than fossil life, wouldn't people agree?

Actually its the other way around. Its easier to look for past life because most of the geologic instruments on the rover can do that, thus becoming dual-use for the astrobiology people.

Rule #2 about a Mars mission: If it ain't cheap, it ain't flyin'.

Anyway, there's water in the soil on Mars, lots of it (yes the Curiosity has been a great success..don't get me wrong..I just think a couple of direct biological detection instruments should have been included in the mission along with a drill that can reach farther into the soil). Microbes with anti-freeze abilities have already been identified on Earth that can live in their own micro environments. Due to pressure underground water should become liquid again. Radiation sources could also supply energy to microbes.

I totally agree. But how do you design an experiment to detect current life if you do not at first understand whether current like can exist? We didn't know about the rich water content of Mars soil until this mission. What if Mars had been bone dry? Wouldn't that life searching suite of gear been nothing more than ballast?

As a biologist how would YOU design a Mars life detection package??? Remember rule #1. It has to be able to detect life perhaps vastly different from our own. Perhaps not even based on nucleic acids. And then after you do that, adhere to Rule #2. It's got to be cost effective.

edit on 14-11-2013 by JadeStar because: (no reason given)

You are making it out to be more difficult than it really is. I don't tell you how to align SETI to best detect alien signals, you should not tell me what is a good or not technique to pick up signs of living life (as we know it).

PCR is an extremely sensitive technique and very robust and inexpensive. It's likely if there is life on Mars that it is related to Earth's life (due to well documented exchange of material and fairly similar geology and large amounts of water). I'm very well aware that life can go in different forms, but as a start, this is really low hanging fruit.

So you get samples of material from different depths, use a pure sample, also could boil/acid treat for variety (to ensure cell walls broken just in case), then dilute in log range the sample in water (the idea of diluting and varying steps is to reach more optimum conditions for removing inhibiting chemicals from the PCR process). You should pick up DNA or RNA if it is there in one of these samples. There are actually very simple DNA stains that will do the trick too (they stick in between the DNA strands and fluoresce under UV). It's really not that hard or expensive and the equipment is not hard to modify. There is desktop size equipment to do PCR right down to microfluidic devices about the size of a business card.

Yes I agree Curiosity helps to lay the groundwork for life detecting missions and I understand some budget limitations, no I do not believe they had to wait that long to do these simple experiments.

I'm not even talking about metabolic detection experiments which have also not been included except for some gas sampling.

Looking for evidence of past life is also not easy (just think about how difficult it can be on Earth) nor is it a good way to tell if there is present life or not. It all seems like taking the long route for not very good reasons.

FlyersFan

coldkidc
The Drake equation ....

The Drake Equation - information here for those interested
As far as I'm concerned ... the Drake Equation proves with math the existence of MANY aliens.

Untrue good sir. You could be wrong...

Several of the parameters of the drake equation are not known at this time, and are very hard to estimate.

So in essence it is largely based on conjecture.

I still believe in aliens, but the drake equation doesnt do it for me!

ManInAsia

You are making it out to be more difficult than it really is. I don't tell you how to align SETI to best detect alien signals, you should not tell me what is a good or not technique to pick up signs of living life (as we know it).

Yeah, far be it for me, who studies astrobiology to tell you that. It's a good technique but it may not be practical on Mars. You know what perchlorates are right?

PCR is an extremely sensitive technique and very robust and inexpensive.

You forgot to add "...on Earth."

It's likely if there is life on Mars that it is related to Earth's life (due to well documented exchange of material and fairly similar geology and large amounts of water). I'm very well aware that life can go in different forms, but as a start, this is really low hanging fruit.

So, how do you rule out a false positive in such an experiment?

See, assuming your PCR worked on Mars and we detected Earthlike life, your first reaction would be: "OMG I found Aliens on MARS! GIVE ME MY NOBEL PRIZE!!!!!"

While mine would be, "This is interesting. We should check it out, it looks like the "clean room" may not have been so clean after all and we brought some Earth life with us."

Only after I ruled out Earth contamination (and there would be almost NO WAY to do that with a PCR!! LOL!!!) would I start thinking about shopping for my outfit to wear to the Nobel ceremony.

So you get samples of material from different depths, use a pure sample, also could boil/acid treat for variety (to ensure cell walls broken just in case), then dilute in log range the sample in water (the idea of diluting and varying steps is to reach more optimum conditions for removing inhibiting chemicals from the PCR process). You should pick up DNA or RNA if it is there in one of these samples. There are actually very simple DNA stains that will do the trick too (they stick in between the DNA strands and fluoresce under UV). It's really not that hard or expensive and the equipment is not hard to modify. There is desktop size equipment to do PCR right down to microfluidic devices about the size of a business card.

#1. You realize that if this were at all feasible or smart it would have been done already.

#2. The reason it has not been done is for the reasons I cited but which you ignore. MARS IS NOT EARTH FFS. You do not seem to understand that at all. The soil on Mars if full of perchlorates.

3. The radiation environment on Mars is vastly different from on Earth. Both ionizing UV and high energy particles get through the atmosphere frequently. Any life is likely to be below the surface and likely beyond the depth of Curiousity's drill

4. PCR is great if you're looking for EARTH life. But see, we're on another planet called MARS and the problem with looking for Earth life is that other observations and experiments we've done with the VIking landers and recent missions tends to rule out the "low hanging fruit" at least near the surface.

Yes I agree Curiosity helps to lay the groundwork for life detecting missions and I understand some budget limitations, no I do not believe they had to wait that long to do these simple experiments.

I'm not even talking about metabolic detection experiments which have also not been included except for some gas sampling.

Been there done that, 1976. Viking 1 and 2.

Looking for evidence of past life is also not easy (just think about how difficult it can be on Earth)

Well, fossils are heartier than living breathing organisms.

nor is it a good way to tell if there is present life or not. It all seems like taking the long route for not very good reasons.

It's called building a case.

Until Curiosity we didn't even know how much water would be available to life on Mars. Now we do. So now we can design the next experiments for the 2016 mission.

It seems easy to you because we know all about the conditions here on Earth and what life here uses and doesn't use.

We do not know as much about Mars, so simply putting a PCR (whose weight and space on a rover is not negligible at all once you know, you radiation shield it) would be putting the cart before the horse and likely wouldn't even be the right sort of cart.

combatmaster

FlyersFan

coldkidc
The Drake equation ....

The Drake Equation - information here for those interested
As far as I'm concerned ... the Drake Equation proves with math the existence of MANY aliens.

Untrue good sir. You could be wrong...

Several of the parameters of the drake equation are not known at this time, and are very hard to estimate.

So in essence it is largely based on conjecture.

I still believe in aliens, but the drake equation doesnt do it for me!

So many people so misunderstand the Drake Equation and the reason it was created its not even funny. It was never intended to give a definitive answer about how many aliens were out there.

It was to help guide thinking as to what kinds of experiments we would need to do to fill in the factors.

In short, it was a way of organizing and breaking down a big question in to bite sized pieces which could be attacked by various observations/experiments.

We only know out to ne with confidence. Everything after that is guess work but just 5 years ago ne was guess work.

Got ne all worked out ("Thanks Kepler!") On to fl !!!!!

I WANT MY E-ELT !!!