Perchlorate- Key to Martian Chemistry?

[n2doc]

Analysis by Ray Villard | Sun Apr 11, 2010 05:14 PM ET

Two critical puzzle pieces for life on Mars, separated by 32 years of conjecture and thousands of miles of terrain, are coming together to yield new clues for a "Genesis 2.0" on the Red Planet.

The evidence is tied together by one thread: Perchlorate.

Perchlorate is a highly oxidized chlorate and is commonly used as a powerful rocket fuel. Perchlorate is so rich in oxygen it could also fuel Martian metabolisms. It is also a strong antifreeze that could be used by alien microorganism to combat low temperatures on Mars.

To everyone's surprise NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander -- our first extraterrestrial visitor to Mars' north polar regions -- found perchlorate in soil samples analyzed in 2008. What's more, the anomalous results from biology experiments conducted by the NASA Viking landers in 1976 may be explained by perchlorate in the Martian soil.

"This oxidizer may be at the root of an exotic Martian biology," says astrobiologist Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center. "It is the most important astrobiology discovery on Mars since the Viking experiments. It will cause us to rethink everything we knew about Mars chemistry because everything we thought we knew is wrong. Perchlorate is my favorite molecule for Mars biology."

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http://news.discovery.com/space/to-find-martians-follow-the-perchlorate.html

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Ummm ... perchlorate doesn't spontaneously evolve gas on contact with water.

Nor does it rapidly oxidize organics at low temps. In fact, ClO4- has often been used (inadvisedly) as a counter-ion for crystallization of organic cations.

Ferrate(VI) seems to fit the bill better: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC153549/

I don't doubt that perchlorate is present, just that it's necessarily significant.