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GILBERT LEVIN aims to appropriate the Mars Science Laboratory for his own ends. "Since NASA has disdained any interest in MSL looking for life, I'm taking over," he says. "I claim it."
He is only half joking. If MSL's rover Curiosity finds carbon-based molecules in the Martian soil, Levin - who led the "labelled release" experiment on NASA's 1976 Viking mission - will demand that his refuted discovery of life on Mars is reinstated.
Levin, a former sanitary engineer, will make this call next week at the annual SPIE convention on scientific applications of light sources in San Diego, California. He wants an independent reanalysis of the data.
New Scientist tried to reach NASA for comment on Levin's claim, but without success.
Originally posted by robhines
Levin, a former sanitary engineer...
Originally posted by Chrisfishenstein
reply to post by robhines
It really doesn't matter in my eyes. Even if they do find something us normal people will never know about it anyways!!
It really doesn't matter in my eyes. Even if they do find something us normal people will never know about it anyways!!
Originally posted by Awen24
Originally posted by robhines
Levin, a former sanitary engineer...
wait. What?
Is that a euphemism for a janitor, or...
Originally posted by flexy123
Originally posted by Chrisfishenstein
reply to post by robhines
It really doesn't matter in my eyes. Even if they do find something us normal people will never know about it anyways!!
Why would that be?
I have no doubt in my mind if we find 100% evidence for past (or still existing) organic life on Mars it will be BIG news - why would NASA hide this? Absurd...it's one major goal of this mission and most experiments on the rover are designed for exactly this purpose, to find out whether life once existed on Mars and confirm (or not confirm) the inconclusive results of the Viking landers.
If you say "they wont release this info", this is pure speculation, doesn't make any sense. There are hundreds, maybe THOUSANDS of scientists directly involved, having a good interest in the findings of Curiosity...no reason to hide anything. (Only in the minds of some conspiracy people, of course.)
Originally posted by robhines
Wait, what? Something that cost $2.5 billion can't do some tests to see if life is there? Sorry but no matter which way you put it I think that's pretty insane.
"Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. ...The rover's onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and the local geologic setting in order to detect chemical building blocks of life (e.g., forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the martian environment was like in the past."
"...can detect a fainter trace of organics and identify a wider variety of them than any instrument yet sent to Mars. It also can provide information about other ingredients of life and clues to past environments. ..."If we do find detectable organics, that would be an encouraging sign that the immediate environment in the rocks we're sampling is preserving these clues," he said. "Then we would use the tools we have to try to determine where the organics may have come from." Organics delivered by meteorites without involvement of biology come with more random chemical structures than the patterns seen in mixtures of organic chemicals produced by organisms." "Even if we see a signature such as mostly even-numbered chains in a mix of organics, we would be hesitant to make any definitive statements about life, but that would certainly indicate that our landing site would be a good place to come back to," Mahaffy said. A future mission could bring a sample back to Earth for more extensive analysis with all the methods available on Earth."
"I'm now convinced that Mars
is inhabited by a race of demented landscape gardeners," Sir Arthur C. Clarke announced recently.
The author of 2001: A Space Odyssey was only half-joking. He claims that an image produced by the Mars Global Surveyor satellite shows "large areas of vegetation . . . like banyan trees." Most experts dismiss the idea. But Popular Science loves a free thinker, especially one as talented and charming as Sir Arthur. We questioned him in Sri Lanka via e-mail....
Arthur C. Clarke The image is so striking that there is no need to say anything about it -- it's obviously vegetation to any unbiased eye.
PS What about animal life?
AC If there is vegetation, it seems probable there are other life-forms as well.