Martian soil may contain life: study

[bananas]

Source: Reuters

LONDON (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.

Read more: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=martian-soil-may-contain&chanId=sa003&modsrc=reuters

[lovuian]

1. wow life on other planets who would have guessed

If its there maybe other planets

[burrowowl]

2. Far out! K&R

What will the anti-evolutionists say?

[cobalt1999]

5. "Satan put it there" is what they'll say.

That's how they explain fossils anyway.

[burrowowl]

6. Good one!

:rofl:

[theHandpuppet]

18. They're not kidding

When I was a youngster growing up in a Southern Baptist church there were tracts specifically addressing the topic of fossils. We were told that Satan put the fossils on earth just to test our faith. Of course my Sunday School teacher also told us that when a baby cried it was a sin because the baby was only thinking of itself (ie, selfishness) and that babies who didn't know Jesus were going to hell. When I, a child myself at the time, asked about the children who'd maybe never heard of Jesus my teacher replied that wasn't God's fault but ours. So we're responsible for millions of babies burning in hell because we hadn't told them all to worship Jesus, and God was just doing what God's gotta do.

I think I was about 9 when I'm sure I heard the voice of God telling me to get the hell outta there.

[tblue37]

11. Some actually say *God* put fossils in the soil to test our faith! (eom)

[weezy2736]

14. I remember having a conversation

with one of my friends when he said something like that. I was so bewildered I almost drove into a ditch.

[LiberalFighter]

27. One of those Martians impregnated Barbara Bush and we got dipshit for President

[stopbush]

9. Get ready for the "Bible Code" to show that the Bible spoke of life

on Mars. Or, maybe a new gnostic gospel will suddenly come to light that speaks of life on other planets. After all, there are already different versions of the Gospel of Mark, and the name "Mark" means "a warrior of Mars." Maybe a NEW version of Mark will appear.

The fundies will come up with an answer that's just as lame and stupid as the ones they provide to support their earth-bound myths.

BTW - why doesn't the Bible mention marsupials or micro-organisms? Weren't they on the ark?

[IndianaGreen]

3. As I recall, the scientist that designed that Viking experiment thought that biological activity...

was uncovered, but NASA was too quick to dismiss the results because none of the other experiments showed anything.

Fundie creed is threatened by any discovery of "life."

Will the Klingons have their own Jay-Zeus? Or are humans the only race to have Fallen? :eyes:

[Ilsa]

4. Hey! Don't make fun of the Klingons or their quasi-god, Kahless! nt

[tblue37]

13. A science fiction novella from the 1970s or 1980s,

entitled "Manticora," was about a planet of intelligent praying mantises. When their messiah was born, it came in a cohort of thousands of other messiahs, because each female of the species laid thousands of eggs at a time.

Since they had so many saviors, the praying mantis "people" of the planet kept trying to export some of their extras to earth.

[Odin2005]

20. "NASA was too quick to dismiss the results" I don't think so.

Based on what I've read the chemical reactions Viking detected were from the huge amounts of reactive compounds (like peroxides) in the soil

[daleo]

29. I remember that too

I think there is a minority opinion in the scientific community that is inclined to this position.

[wordpix]

7. I just wish more humans would protect life here on earth like whales, grizzlies, lions, elephants,

dolphins, orangutans, chimps (not the BushCo type), jaguars, wolves, polar bears, eagles .....

[Phrogman]

8. Jesus, I wish people would wake up....

Theres life on Earth, because theres life on lots and lots of planets.

ITS THE ISLAND EFFECT

Life from other islands will sooner or later make its way to yours.

[atomic-fly]

22. totally agree

if you look at the way nature spreads life, it makes total sense.

[mainegreen]

28. because bacteria often launch themselves at 11.2 km/s straight up.

And amazingly target planets with compatible conditions across thousands of light years, surviving both the long radioactive journey and the fiery re-entry for which they had never experienced any evolutionary pressures to survive.

[Spinzonner]

10. There's gotta be a blonde joke in there somewhere

[ProudDad]

12. Just Remember...

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_The_Meaning_of_Life

[Q3JR4]

24. Monty Python...

Good one :thumbsup:

[Mnpaul]

15. We should send Bush

To check it out. He wanted to go to Mars anyway.

[OneBlueSky]

16. his name is Fred . . . n/t

.

[spindoctor]

17. It's life, Jim. But not as we know it.

Oh the horror. God only created life on earth.

[sofa king]

19. Like my old man said,

"I didn't build that goddamned thing so that it would fail."

He was one of the many engineers who helped design and build the Labeled Release (LR) experiment, and for the past thirty years he's been saying that we did in fact find life on Mars, we just didn't find Earth-life on Mars.

[Joe Bacon]

21. So what about life, It's OIL that matters!

Gee maybe if the GOP finds oil on Mars, they won't bomb Iran...

[JerseygirlCT]

23. How cool is that?! nt

[sarcasmo]

25. Put this in your Creationism Museum.

Kick.

[treestar]

26. See, we told you global warming was not a problem!!!!!!

We'll just move to Mars! Man can invent the technology in the nick of time! Mars will be prepared for us!

:sarcasm: