Saturday, September 10, 2005

Living with aliens





There is a Nasa project in the Atacama Desert. Here, the soil is so dry conditions are as close as you can get to those on Mars. To test for signs of life, the scientists soak the desert soil with nutrient soup to see if they get a reaction. Then they repeat with anti-soup - the same stuff, but made from mirror molecules. If the soil reacts the same way to both, biology can be ruled out as the cause.

So Pauline suggested we do an experiment with a bowl of anti-soup, dropping in various microbes to see whether some of them multiply. Known life would find anti-soup unpalatable, but it might be manna to a mirror microbe. The experiment is now under way at Nasa's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.


Huntsville is a start. But if NASA is serious about its "search for life" on Mars and other planetary bodies, it would seem this elegant experiment would have found its way aboard a rover or lander by now.

JPL's next-generation Mars rovers are as big as minivans -- certainly room enough to accommodate the space agency's mission statement. But, strangely enough, they aren't equipped with the simplest life-detection equipment. This oversight demands revision, if for no other reason than to determine what exactly the Viking landers detected in the 1970s.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Didnt they try this in a Star Trek episode once? I think they ended up with a Good Kirk and a Bad Kirk and they had to use the transporter to put them back they way they were.

That Anti-Soup is dangerous stuff. Dont mess with it.

Mac said...

That Anti-Soup is dangerous stuff. Dont mess with it.

I'll alert NASA.

Weevee: tzhdv (Tazmanian high-resolution video?)

Mac said...

was at a NASA talk the other day where the lead astrobiologist was _describing_ the design of just such "life-detection" equipment.

You heard an astro*biologist*, who no doubt would like to send his experiment to Mars. Unfortunately, that's probably not going to happen on JPL's watch.

Mac said...

Gordon,

If you can point me toward a website that confirms that JPL is including life-testing gear in the next round of rovers I'd appreciate it. The last I heard the next rovers were't going to have it.

Mac said...

Gordon,

I would be very interested to know if any life-detection experiments are officially slated to go to Mars aboard NASA probes. As I understood it, the closest thing we had was the proposed Sample Return Mission. I'd love to be wrong!

Mac said...

The actual experiments are to be incorporated in the Astrobiology Field Laboratory spacecraft, slated for launch 2013.

Thanks for the update. I'm crossing my fingers. Better late than never.