Has the Nanosurf AFM Found Life on Mars?
Overnight the internet has been awash with speculation that the instruments, including the Atomic Force Microscope from Nanosurf, held in the MECA suite on the Phoenix Mars Lander has found life on Mars.
Speculation is rife that the Lander has found samples that could only be a form of faeces. More likely is the finding of a carbon compound that is somehow animal or plant related. Although NASA has denied the rumours, they have indeed found something. The MECA team were absent from a White House briefing last week where evidence was presented to the President proving the existence of water on Mars. At that time they said the MECA team had no findings to discuss - but now they do and will be having a press conference in the next couple of days.
Speculation is rife that the Lander has found samples that could only be a form of faeces. More likely is the finding of a carbon compound that is somehow animal or plant related. Although NASA has denied the rumours, they have indeed found something. The MECA team were absent from a White House briefing last week where evidence was presented to the President proving the existence of water on Mars. At that time they said the MECA team had no findings to discuss - but now they do and will be having a press conference in the next couple of days.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dr David on -
I've posted the text of the latest release from NASA on the Nanotechnology in Space Special Feature on AZoNano. It seems they want to talk about having found perchlorate.
Rather than being a disappointment, that's exciting. One of the primary uses we have for perchlorate is in solid rocket boosters. If they found perchlorate it should not be contamination from the Phoenix Mars Lander itself as it uses hydrazine rockets. The byproduct of those rockets is ammonia and the instruments on the lander are carefully calibrated to allow for that contamination.
So my thoughts are that the finding of perchlorate means either the little green men on Mars have rockets (unlikely) or NASA is excited because they could use Mars as a base for further space exploration and the perchlorate could be mined as a fuel.
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Permalink Reply by Dr. A.Choi on -
Little green men on Mars, this sounds like Hollywood blockbusters such as Independence day and Transformers.
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Permalink Reply by Dr David on
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This is part of what NASA had to say. Interesting that they played down the rocket fuel / space base angle. The whole report is here:
"Finding perchlorates is neither good nor bad for life, but it does make us reassess how we think about life on Mars," said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA), the instrument that includes the wet chemistry laboratory.
If confirmed, the result is exciting, Hecht said, "because different types of perchlorate salts have interesting properties that may bear on the way things work on Mars if -- and that's a big 'if ' -- the results from our two teaspoons of soil are representative of all of Mars, or at least a significant portion of the planet."
The Phoenix team had wanted to check the finding with another lander instrument, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), which heats soil and analyzes gases driven off. But as that TEGA experiment was underway last week, speculative news reports surfaced claiming the team was holding back a major finding regarding habitability on Mars.
"The Phoenix project has decided to take an unusual step" in talking about the research when its scientists are only about half-way through the data collection phase and have not yet had time to complete data analysis or perform needed laboratory work, said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Scientists are still at the stage where they are examining multiple hypotheses, given evidence that the soil contains perchlorate.
"We decided to show the public science in action because of the extreme interest in the Phoenix mission, which is searching for a habitable environment on the northern plains of Mars," Smith added. "Right now, we don't know whether finding perchlorate is good news or bad news for possible life on Mars."
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Permalink Reply by Dr. A.Choi on
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We may be a step closer in answering the question "are we alone in the universe". This discovery will also help us in understanding the origin of life on Earth.
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