NASA scientist: We already found life on Mars

[UM-Bot]

Gilbert Levin, who worked on the two Viking landers, maintains that evidence of alien life was found in 1976.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/331216/nasa-scientist-we-already-found-life-on-mars

[Stiff]

Interesting. But I think if NASA had been as confident in the results they would have been more than happy to announce the finding of 'alien life'.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

1 hour ago, Stiff said:

Interesting. But I think if NASA had been as confident in the results they would have been more than happy to announce the finding of 'alien life'.

The problem is that the evidence is not unambiguous. The results can also be explained by chemical processes. Because there is an alternative explanation, scientifically, the Viking results can not be considered proof of life.

[Rolci]

10 minutes ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

The problem is that the evidence is not unambiguous. The results can also be explained by chemical processes. Because there is an alternative explanation, scientifically, the Viking results can not be considered proof of life.

Nothing, ever, can be considered proof, of anything. The human mind is always, ALWAYS capable of thinking of an alternative explanation. And no "proof" will ever be good enough. A flat-earther will always be able to "explain" why something presented as proof is not proof. Similarly, UFO sceptics (to simplify terms) will always be able to offer an alternative explanation, even where there are hundreds of wittnesses, radar and physical evidence "left behind".

What is proof? Non-believers first want a picture, "then I'll believe". Of course when a photo is presented it's called a fake, and it's just a photo anyway. Then they want video footage. Then they get video footage. Same story. And so on.

What would be proof for you? If you saw, in broad daylight, an alien spacecraft land on the grass in your own garden, the aliens walking into your room, and taking you to a ride to their home planet, show you around, and bring you back? Even if you recount all that under a lie detector, and re-tell the same story under hypnosis, it will still be maintained that you were dreaming or hallucinating, and if you even made photos and videos, it will be said that it's an elaborate hoax, and that you you learned to "beat the machine", etc.

Remember the movie Contact? Exact same story. They even qute Ockham's Razor, even though I have always thought the most elegant and simple explanation that wraps up all the milllions of reports is simply aliens visiting, while trying really hard to explain things with explanations that simply don't fit is the exact opposite of what Ockham's Razor suggests. Rising Venus this, swamp gas that, weather balloons here and Chinese lanterns there. In the movie they present alien life as something that's "impossible", the least likely explanation, to a scientist's first-hand experience, that they ALL worked together to allow to take place by building the travel mechanism.

Humans like to believe that as we are spreading life to other planets by contamination, and in a few decades by colonisation, we like to think that life in the Universe started with us. We are the center of it all. Good old geocentric world-view at its best, right here in the 21st century.

[+Hammerclaw]

Was the alternate explanation ever replicated under laboratory conditions?

[Waspie_Dwarf]

1 hour ago, Rolci said:

Nothing, ever, can be considered proof, of anything.

Which is why I used the word "scientifically". In science for something to be considered proven it has to be the only reasonable explanation that fits the observed facts. Sure anyone can invent an alternative explanation for anything, but if they have no supporting evidence those explanations can be discounted. That is not the case with the Viking results. Not only is there a viable alternative explanation but that explanation better fits the observed facts.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

1 hour ago, Hammerclaw said:

Was the alternate explanation ever replicated under laboratory conditions?

Absolutely. From wikipedia:

Quote

A CNN article from 2000 noted that "Though most of his peers concluded otherwise, Levin still holds that the robot tests he coordinated on the 1976 Viking lander indicated the presence of living organisms on Mars."^[15] A 2006 astrobiology textbook noted that "With unsterilized Terrestrial samples, though, the addition of more nutrients after the initial incubation would then produce still more radioactive gas as the dormant bacteria sprang into action to consume the new dose of food. This was not true of the Martian soil; on Mars, the second and third nutrient injections did not produce any further release of labeled gas."^[16]The 2011 edition of the same textbook noted that "Albet Yen of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has shown that, under extremely cold and dry conditions and in a carbon dioxide atmosphere, ultraviolet light (remember: Mars lacks an ozone layer, so the surface is bathed in ultraviolet) can cause carbon dioxide to react with soils to produce various oxidizers, including highly reactive superoxides (salts containing O₂⁻) When mixed with small organic molecules, superoxidizers readily oxidize them to carbon dioxide, which may account for the LR result. Superoxide chemistry can also account for the puzzling results seen when more nutrients were added to the soil in the LR experiment; because life multiplies, the amount of gas should have increased when a second or third batch of nutrients was added, but if the effect was due to a chemical being consumed in the first reaction, no new gas would be expected. Lastly, many superoxides are relatively unstable and are destroyed at elevated temperatures, also accounting for the "sterilization" seen in the LR experiment."

 

[geraldnewfie]

5 hours ago, Stiff said:

Interesting. But I think if NASA had been as confident in the results they would have been more than happy to announce the finding of 'alien life'.

 

Edited October 12, 2019 by geraldnewfie

[skookum]

If the experiment was so quickly deemed inconclusive why on Earth was it chosen for the mission? Seems ridiculous to include something that was known could produce false positives.

 

[qxcontinuum]

For them isnt all about the end results but the mission itself. It isn't necessarily what is out there but the agency itself. Get funding, create abstract missions just to put in orbit satellites, make scientific research, etc...its all politics hence why there is so much obscurity. 

 

Edited October 13, 2019 by qxcontinuum

[Waspie_Dwarf]

8 hours ago, skookum said:

If the experiment was so quickly deemed inconclusive why on Earth was it chosen for the mission? Seems ridiculous to include something that was known could produce false positives.

 

Total and utter rubbish.

Any experiment is capable of giving inconclusive results. The entire point of experimentation is that, until you try it, you don't know what results you are going to get... if you did know in advance there would be no point in the experiment at all.#

The results were unexpected because, at the time, no one knew what the soil chemistry of Mars was like, the high levels of percholrates in the soils which many now believe could have caused these results, were not discovered until 2008, 32 years after the Viking experiments, it was simply not possible to foresee the result that was returned.

You also ignore (or are ignorant of the fact) that this was only one of four experiments designed to look for life. These were also, when taken as a whole, inconclusive. The pyrolytic release experiment also gave inconclusive results. It could also be interpreted as a positive but can also be explained away by soil chemistry.

Probably the most crucial of these experiments in terms of most scientists believing that life was not responsible for the results was the GCMS. This looked for organic molecules. If life was present in the soil this experiment should have been positive... it found nothing. It is possible that life was present in such tiny amounts that it was below the threshold of detectability of the instrument, but without a positive result fron this instrument it is simply impossible to conclude that there is life on Mars as a result of the Viking experiments.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

5 hours ago, qxcontinuum said:

For them isnt all about the end results but the mission itself. It isn't necessarily what is out there but the agency itself. Get funding, create abstract missions just to put in orbit satellites, make scientific research, etc...its all politics hence why there is so much obscurity.

Also total and utter nonsense.

You are once again showing a deep lack of understanding of how science works. No scientist ever won a Noble prize for an inconclusive result. You once again mistake your own inability to understand what science is trying to achieve with that of the scientists. Just because you don't understand what they are trying to do doesn't mean that they don't either.

Edited October 13, 2019 by Waspie_Dwarf
typo.

[tortugabob]

Waspie_Dwarf is right. If NASA had positively found life Congress would have given them all the funding they needed.  We've have a Mars colony by now.

[qxcontinuum]

21 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

Also total and utter nonsense.

You are once again showing a deep lack of understanding of how science works. No scientist ever won a Noble prize for an inconclusive result. You once again mistake your own inability to understand what science is trying to achieve with that of the scientists. Just because you don't understand what they are trying to do doesn't mean that they don't either.

I am sorry but I have not seen genuinely the excitement other agencies have shown in these missions. I am not the only one believing that NASA's discoveries on Mars lack novelty and to some degree obscure. There are scientists and other experts pointing fingers too. 

One tiny example: https://www.scpr.org/news/2014/09/11/46647/mars-curiosity-team-responds-to-harsh-criticism-fr/

There is a reason NASA's ops was overhauled. 

 

Edited October 14, 2019 by qxcontinuum

[+Desertrat56]

How does something that isn't life "mimic life"?  It would be helpful to know what the actual tests were looking for.

[kobolds]

something very wrong with this people .

Spent so much money and time on mars and couldn't even find a **** . Now talking nonsense that evidence already found in 1976 

[skookum]

On 10/14/2019 at 5:37 AM, qxcontinuum said:

I am sorry but I have not seen genuinely the excitement other agencies have shown in these missions. I am not the only one believing that NASA's discoveries on Mars lack novelty and to some degree obscure. There are scientists and other experts pointing fingers too. 

One tiny example: https://www.scpr.org/news/2014/09/11/46647/mars-curiosity-team-responds-to-harsh-criticism-fr/

There is a reason NASA's ops was overhauled. 

 

Glad you said this. I don't follow every step of the Rover missions. But I have to admit I have no idea what even the basic objective has become. They are due to launch a far improved model. However there is nothing announced that would make me an non-fanatical NASA follower have much interest in the mission. 

[tmcom]

Good to see that one scientist has come forward, which is rare in NASA.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

11 minutes ago, tmcom said:

Good to see that one scientist has come forward, which is rare in NASA.

Yes, you hate NASA, we get it.

Yes, you don't understand science, we get that too.

The question is are you ever going to back up any of your anti-NASA nonsense with inconvenient things like evidence, facts, logic? You know the kind of stuff those pesky scientists you loathe so much use.