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Tests for life on mars

  • 07-11-2003 01:13AM
    #1
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 95,988 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    WRT to the problems of Viking - was it chemical oxidation or did living organisms produce those ambiguous results..

    on BBC4 LW tonight they were going on about tests for life

    there's a project in the atacama desert of chile, seeing as how it's been a desert for like the last 15 million years and they have a novel way of distinguishing life from non-life.

    It's similar to the "chicken soup" test in Viking - detecting metabolic byproducts but with a twist, they repeated the experiment twice - once with biologically acceptible L-amino acids and then with a racemic mixture - both L and the D type which few organism can digest. The results - at the edge of the desert they found that they got a stronger result with the L mixture than the mix, where as at the centre of the desert the soil samples did not differ by much. The implication being that the baseline activity would come from chemical reactions but the difference could be attributed to biological reactions.

    I'd suggest that if you repeated it on Mars you should take along three samples L , D , a 50:50 mix. (the D would be in case martian life is left handed :) )

    My query is how likely would it be that stereo isomers of common earth nutriments would be toxic to martian organisms ???

    Remembering that obligate anerobic organisms on earth find Oxygen extremely toxic whereas they (and faculative anerobes) are quite tolerant of things like Cyanide, Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen Sulphide..


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