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The Viking 1 lander sent back America's first pictures from the Martian surface in 1976. This picture shows off the lander's U.S. flag and Bicentennial logo as well as the planet's landscape.
Thirty-six years after an experiment conducted by NASA's Mars Viking lander sparked controversial claims about the presence of life on the Red Planet, NASA's next Mars mission could conceivably hint that those claims were correct after all.
At least that's the hope held by the experiment's principal investigator, Gil Levin, who is keeping the Mars Viking flame alive even in retirement. He still thinks Viking was "the most remarkable unmanned mission ever," but he worries that its legacy will be lost amid the scientific shuffle.
"Twenty or thirty years from now, when the economy permits NASA to rise again, there will be missions to Mars, and they will find life, and they will take credit for it and not mention Viking at all," he told me.
It might not take 20 or 30 years to bring Viking back into the spotlight, however. NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission is due to deliver the car-sized Curiosity rover to the Red Planet in August — and although the space agency insists that Curiosity doesn't have the capability to detect life, Levin believes it could show that his experiment was on the right track when it detected the chemical traces of organic activity.
GilLevin.com
Gil Levin was principal investigator for the Mars Viking probe's Labeled Release experiment.
Hopes of confirming the presence of life on Mars were riding high when the twin Viking landers touched down on Mars in 1976. The scientific payload included the Labeled Release apparatus, designed by Levin and his colleagues, as well as three other life-detection experiments. The Labeled Release experiment, or LR, was set up to take a bit of Martian soil and add a drop of water containing nutrients tagged with radioactive markers. The air above the mix was then monitored to see if it gave off a radioactive gas such as carbon dioxide or methane. That could be read as an indication that organisms in the soil were metabolizing the nutrients.
If the experiment came up with a positive response, a duplicate soil sample — the control — was heated to a temperature that should have been high enough to destroy microbes, but not to destroy any strong chemicals that might have produced a similar response sans life.
The good news for Levin and the other life-hunters was that the LR experiment came out positive, and the control experiment came out negative. The bad news was that two of the other experiments came out negative, but they were based on different assumptions about potential Martian life. The really bad news was that the fourth experiment, conducted by Viking's Gas Chromatograph - Mass Spectrometer device, or GCMS, didn't detect any organic molecules in the soil.
The failure to find any organics led most scientists to assume that there was nothing living in the soil. Most scientists assumed that the LR findings were just a fluke. But not Levin.
"If these results are precisely the same as the results from biological entities on Earth, that's hard to get around," he told me. Dozens of explanations have been put forward for the LR results — for example, that the Martian environment is so chemically reactive, due to ultraviolet radiation, that the nutrients were broken down without life playing a part. Levin, however, says those explanations don't match up with the results produced during the LR experiments and the control experiments.
Hoping for new evidence
This might have ended up as one of those cold cases where nobody totally convinces everybody. But Levin says Curiosity's impressive array of scientific equipment could provide some hot new evidence. It has a suite of instruments known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, which is capable of detecting organic molecules in Martian soil or atmosphere. Another instrument suite, called ChemCam, can fire a laser blast at a soil or rock sample up to 23 feet (7 meters) away and use a spectroscopic imager to analyze the chemical composition of the vaporized material.
"I predict that one or more of these instruments, possibly all of them, will indeed find organic matter that the Viking GCMS missed," Levin said.
Finding organic molecules is not the same as finding life. After all, organic compounds have been detected within the interstellar stuff of distant galaxies, and it wouldn't be earth-shattering to detect them on Mars as well. But it would answer the main objection raised about the LR results.
Even more telling evidence could come from Curiosity's high-resolution cameras. Some of the pictures taken during the Viking mission showed colored patches on Martian rocks that were a fair spectrographic match for the color of lichen on earthly rocks. "The spectra were identical, but of course the images were not sharp enough to be able to make a conclusion, and everybody pooh-poohed it," Levin said.
Curiosity's color cameras will have much better resolution, and Levin said they "could detect sufficient detail to establish whether these might be lichenlike organisms." It might even be possible to take multiple looks at the same rocks, and track whether their appearance goes through the kinds of changes one would expect from lichen.
Levin said lichen, which is one of the hardiest types of organisms on Earth's surface, could conceivably have hitchhiked from Earth to Mars on meteorites. "Preserved, frozen, they could survive the entry to Mars and grow under Martian conditions," he told me.
The long search for life
The scientists who are in charge of Curiosity and the Mars Science Laboratory say that they're aiming for the same goal that Levin has in mind, but they argue that the search for life on Mars has to follow a step-by-step process.
"What the world needs to understand is that this is really the very beginning of a very systematic and deliberate form of exploration," Caltech's John Grotzinger, principal investigator for Mars Science Laboratory, told me. "The era of 'Star Trek' exploration is not over, but ... one must be more deliberate about it, because that's the way we do it on Earth, and we know that works."
Levin, however, thinks the evidence to come will show that Viking was working correctly 36 years ago. "To suggest that we should go back and start at a lower level ... means we throw away a billion dollars, in 1976 dollars. That's about $5 billion or $6 billion today that we don't have," he said.
He'd like to see a future Mars mission duplicate the LR experiment with a few added technological twists, including a check to see whether the active agent that Viking detected in the soil shows a preference for lefthanded or righthanded versions of the same molecule. Levin says that characteristic, known as chiral preference, would be strong confirmation of life, "since chemistry cannot distinguish chirality and reactions occur equally with both 'mirror images.'"
Levin also thinks the findings from Viking should be given another good, hard look.
"Let's convene a panel of astrobiologists," Levin said. "Let's have Levin present his data. Let's have the antagonists present their data. Let's examine this trove of data which we've never examined fairly."
Will that happen in Levin's lifetime? The researcher is now 88 years old, and nobody lives forever. But he's hoping that when the next episode in the saga of the search for life on Mars plays out ... maybe in the next few months ... the Viking missions will get their share of the spotlight.
"The stories increasingly omit any mention of Viking," Levin said. "I think Viking should be lauded rather than ignored."
More about Viking and the Mars saga:
- How the hunt for Mars life evolved
- Study suggests Viking found organics on Mars
- Were life's building blocks picked up on Mars?
- Did Viking probes find Mars life ... or kill it off?
- Did life on Earth actually come from early Mars?
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
If it were possible, it would be ever so cool to do a little fossil hunting on Mars.
At the time the Vikings were big news. They affected our imaginations in a way that just doesn't happen today. It was a mission directed at answering the big question about Mars. It didn't but as Levin correctly points out, don't completely dismiss the LR findings just yet. Science isn't done like that.
Finding authenticated life - or its remains - on another world has exciting implications for biogenesis and evolutionary theory. Science fiction author Ben Bova, in his "Grand Tour" series suggests that the generation of Life may be "just" a physical law; add the right ingredients, give it sufficient time, and, voilá! even under harsh environments.
In all these years, nobody has ever gotten a straight answer out of Gil Levin in resolving the myriad ambiguities of his experiments. Reviewing the old, cold data might be worth something if a fresh, full up Viking lander simulation was created to test various scenarios.
Probably though the only way to clear this up is to go back to Mars with a better set of experiments, which should certainly include thinks like labeled release.
The fact that he refers to opposing points of view as 'antagonists' is a clear indication of his opinion on a differing view from his own.
I'm still waiting for proof of intelligent life on Earth!
any advaced life on mars would be underground, where water can still exist.
Life walked on Mars
On how many legs ?
All of em.
This is a quote from someone too controversial to mention, so it seems. But let it suffice to say: It’s our Mars and our people (meaning original) so God taught me. He goes on to say, "Our Fathers made it (Mars) with some type of intelligent beings like
ourselves. They are not animals. They are intelligent people. ...They show signs
of civilization and they look something similar to us. Not exactly, but they
look similar. He also said in another lecture (as far back as the 1930s) that the people on Mars were 7 to 11 feet tall, and lived 1200 of our earth years. Concerning the vegetation on Mars, he said that if we were to eat it or drink any of its water it would kill us. Even before the Viking mission, he said that the civilization on Mars could "hide away" when approached by our space vehicles. I have long suspected that the dust storms of the planet could be a function of their means of evasion, and the recent mysterious cloud witness on Mars only bolsters this fact. If I even mentioned the name of who said this, this post would be taken down. Its such a shame, but I wont let what he said be swept under the rug. To all you scientist and the world at large, lets grow up folks. This is NOT science fiction.
You already quoted Elijah Muhammad on the "cloud on Mars" article, so I'm afraid your attempts to conceal your source are pointless...
Puff...puff...pass
Sum.1, did E.M. say anything about them being green, with 4 arms and tusks? I think I like the Edgar Rice Burroughs version better..
Hal:
The source that I quoted didnt get too much into how the Martians looked; he only mentioned that they were skinny and said a few things about their life span and their height. Secondly, the said that Mars showed "signs" of civilization. Though I never heard him mention it, I think that he was refering to the ruins in the Cydonia and other regions of the planet. Of course this was way before the writings of Richard C. Hoagland, a former NASA insider.
I think what is most important to this discussion are the new scientific findings about Mars, and now, Mercury. Although he said that there was life on all of our planets, he said that there was civilization on only seven of them, and subsequently mentioned Mars and Mercury in particular, as being inhabited. You never could conceive of a planet so close to the Sun as Mercury as having not only life, but civilization. What he said about this subject has been public record since the '30s'. There is civilization on Mercury RIGHT NOW. Obviously, he was not refering to microbes, but physical beings with their own culture. Although we here on earth have our home above the surface, this is not necessarily the case for the other seven inhabited planets in our solar system.
Just wait until you hear about what he said about rain, hail, snow, and earthquake. He said that this is all caused by an actual living person. You may laugh, but this is only because you can't imagine this ability to be within the physiological and biological makeup of man. It's kind of like the Unified Feild Theory of Einstein: small things that happen on a subatomic level in one place has instantaneous effects somewhere else. At the least, this subatomic activity within this individual coupled with neurons and emotion manifest itself in huge dynamic weather patterns, the steering of the jet stream, and even earthquakes. Once again, this is NOT science fiction. Sorry for the tangent.
#53 - Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:03 PM EDT
Since we've got a probe orbiting Mercury right now, and there's no sign of life or civiilization, I'd have to say this is science fiction. And Edgar Rice Burroughs was writing better fiction 100 years ago. There are better photos of Cydonia that show that the face is just a mesa.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46871204/ns/technology_and_science-space/
Why does it matter so much that life might exist (or might once have existed) on Mars? Isn't the real question "So what?" Has that question not been taken for granted?
No, you can't ask "so what?" until a definitive statement has been made. If it had been determined that life never existed on Mars, or that life once existed there, or that life now exists there, then you could legitimately ask, "so what?" Use your head, for God's sake.
The "so what?" is appropriate to all three alternatives that you mention. Since those are the only alternatives, at least as you have them mentioned, nothing really changes for dubina. I feel the same way. Is anything going to change if we determine that a three toed sloth lived on mars? If there was a place on earth that didn't host life would we have to rearrange our perspective? The persons whose perspectives should be changed by any new info are probably going to ignore the data anyway!
The whole point of finding life on another planet is to prove that life can exist on another planet. It is of course, very very highly likely that life can exist on other planets but we have no physical proof. If life was found to exist or have existed this would prove that life can live and grow on other planets.
I am still looking forward to the mission which will culture underground soil samples in sterile culture media, and ultimately examine the results under a remote microscope on Mars, and even possibly return those promising soil samples back here to the ISS for further analysis. This would be the best conclusive results we could hope for regarding primitive life on Mars, which I am fairly sure does exist. - RC
Andromeda Strain?
I like your microscope idea, the problem with culture is we can't grow 99% of the bacteria found on Earth, so these growth experiments even if negative do not mean there is no life, it may be we just don't know how to grow it....yet.
BTW. With what is known about the make up of Martain soil now, can't they make it in a lab and reproduce some form of the experiment?
We thank levine for the inspiration to send more probes to mars, Life was on mars, surely, may still be there. Getting a microscope up there may do more to prove his hypothesis right more so than more chemical experiments.....the gears we need to begin to change now are more the quantity of rovers, more so than the quality...the more focused our missions the higher the probability of missing something simple, the more general our focus the higher the probability we will miss something specific...I say get several swarms of AI bots on the ground now and start sweeping around general broad areas for three major data groups geology, biology and (no, NOT theology...darnit clowns)....aw forget it, go ahead and the third on your own (just don't call it fossilology.....please.)....aw, what the heck I'll come right out with it...palentology...there....find those darn dino egss so the mexicans can land there and name the new place LOS HUEVOS....ok?...good luck levine, your destined for fame either way....
Alan thanks for posting this article :-) I love it. I also want to thank you for giving one of the most famous men of all time a chance to speak (Gilbert V. Levin) on this Topic an what he has to say about life on Mars.
I have been interested in Mars since the first successful flyby by Mariner 4, in 1965, it just so happens to be the year I was born an came into this world.
My hopes, an my dreams, is that we will find life on Mars, it is just a matter of time before we find it.
Alan when I look at the vastness of just our own galaxy, the billions of stars that are there, an I look at the Hubble deep field, of billions of galaxies, an I look at "The Pale Blue Dot" of Carl Sagan, I have to ask myself one question, life is out there in some form or fashion, wether if we understand it or not.
Alan I have posted a few videos from Gilbert V. Levin, I hope they give some understanding to What he is talking about in our article .
HOW THE NASA VIKING MISSION FOUND MICROBIAL LIFE ON MARS - Part 1
http://youtu.be/jqiq3iCUAhM
HOW THE NASA VIKING MISSION FOUND MICROBIAL LIFE ON MARS - Part 2
http://youtu.be/K1_Gvdom2nw
HOW THE NASA VIKING MISSION FOUND MICROBIAL LIFE ON MARS - Part 3
http://youtu.be/guhmVDM7XII
HOW THE NASA VIKING MISSION FOUND MICROBIAL LIFE ON MARS Part 4.
http://youtu.be/R5g6vnhbI70
HOW THE NASA VIKING MISSION FOUND MICROBIAL LIFE ON MARS - Part 5.
http://youtu.be/YFE1xGhe5Os
Gilbert V. Levin commentary on the book MARS: THE LIVING PLANEThttp://youtu.be/xpoK1AZVPSE
Have a good day, Tom And Lyn.
roses are red,violets are blue,the martians are watching and they're looking at YOU!
I wonder why people are so interested in Mars. Of course it is very important to know and investigate new planet..but why do they want to fly there themselves..? It is crazy even to dream about that.
<a href="">m4a to mp3 convert er</a> | Ed
Was it crazy to look at birds in flight and want to see the world from their perspective? Tell that to the Wright Brothers. Our world has opened up tremendously since the invention of the airplane. What used to take people days and weeks can be done in hours. Geography no longer hinders us from moving throughout the world the way it used to. One day, I believe the same will be said of the stars. There is some discovery...some technological breakthrought that is coming and it will once more revolutionize how we think about travel and exploration and migration. Our technology has exploded in the last 100 years. Imagine what the next will 100 years will bring. If we can make it to Mars, then why not elsewhere? If we can find a way to stimulate the atmosphere on Mars and make it livable for humans, then we can improve the odds of our species survival. Who knows what benefits can be reaped from such endevors?
This is never ending; there is no life on Mars, and there is no evidence that there ever was life on Mars. In general there is a continuing promotion by scientists to feed the media with expectations of life on Mars so as to continue their research. The conjecture for favorable life conditions on Mars is contrary to all previous studies for the advent of life on Earth. While there have been many discoveries of life in extreme conditions, water is not only necessary but lots of water is essential for invading and providing an environmentally rich habitat for the progenies of life. For such an environment, you also need an atmosphere, of which Mars does not have a life-bearing mix, and there is no evidence that Mars ever had an atmosphere rich in the chemistry required to promote and support organic life.
Yes, every large mass body (i.e. planets) has an atmosphere by virtue of the gravitational attraction; whatever they can hold becomes part of their atmosphere. Even the Sun has an atmosphere. Mars even has a gaseous flow which is evident via dust storms and tornadoes seen traveling about. But this has never been proven to be an atmosphere that can promote or support organic life. History bears testament to my response; i.e. life on Earth and none on Mars (not even a fossil of previous life has ever been conclusively proven to have been found on Mars). And yes - water is definitely needed for the "magical creation of life", and lots of it. Water needs to permeate every corner of the planet to accidentally comingle elements to evolve for animate, organic life.
We've already sent several, what we believe to be, sanitized artifacts to Mars, but we really have no way of knowing if we have introduced Earth-borne life to Mars. If they were to find anything, the scientists would argue for decades as to which came first. And once we actually send people to Mars, we have already contaminated our research, if we haven't already. Sorry but I have been anti-SETI for years. Back in the 1970s, the two Viking probes scooped up, added Earth Water to Martian dirt and then heated the Martian dirt, then looked for organic molecules — the carbon-based building blocks of life as we know it — in the samples. The landers found little, aside from two strange chlorine compounds that researchers at the time attributed to contamination from cleaning fluids.
While I believe in life somewhere else in the universe, life should be self-evident and we should not have to go to great lengths to look for it. Despite what people may believe, the probability of finding life outside of Earth willl not increase with the number of dollars spent or the number of PHDs working on it. It's fun and exciting, but just not practical. Hey if scientists want to promote colonizing the Moon or even Mars, approach it from that angle. But to continually present the public with conjectures that go unproven just desensitizes people to what real science is all about. Is it really worth billions of taxpayer dollars to search for the possibility of life on Mars? Why not the Moon instead; there is supposed to be ice on the Moon as well? Both the Moon and Mars have the same problem - no real atmosphere to speak of (obviously more a problem for the Moon due to less gravitational attraction).
Stephen, while I do have a $50 wager with a colleague that proof of life will be found on Mars by 2050, that is the extent of my financial involvement. None of my professional work, past, present, or what I imagine to be in my future, is in any way dependent on whether or not there is life on Mars.
That said, the fact is - Mars is a tease. There is no scientific basis to preclude the possibility of life, past or present, on Mars. But yet the evidence is scant, which is why I bet no more than $50.
The origins of life is one of the greatest questions facing science. Closely related is the question as to whether there is life elsewhere in the Universe.
Looking for life on Mars is solid research, and you must allow that EITHER answer - yes there is, or no there isn't life on Mars - is scientifically profound, and will alter our understanding of the Universe.
This is a question that excites Science. That the public is "desensitized" (if that is really so) speaks less about the scientific significance than it does to the shallowness of public interest in deep questions.
(I still voted your comment up, tho....)
Cheers! ~Michael (Astronomy.FM★Radio)
And you've personally been to Mars, conducted tests, and discovered there has never been life on Mars!? None!? Not in any shape, form, or fashion!? I would love to see the test results you conducted on your trip, and any other information you have to support your findings! i will stop short of calling you ignorant because you do have a few intelligent facts, but to flat out say NO, NEVER! is beyond ignorant. I have no clue if there is life or not, but what i do know is neither do you! Not unless you've been there my friend. humans once thought the bootom of the ocean was too cold and there was too much pressure for life to exsist, yet it does. Personally I don't think there has ever been life on Mars, but in no way am I able to back that up with anything other than to say it's my opinion and opinions are like as.....you know where I'm going with this.
I'll bet $50 that the Martians don't have legs
Does it HAVE to be organic life that we are looking for? I have read that:
Not saying any of this is true, just wondering why we have to look for life that is exactly like us, could be a combination of any/all of these, could it not?
Michael - I won't live that long to collect on your bet, but thanks for the offer as I could always use the money.
Felipeuga - Fortunately I do not have to go to Mars to provide an opinion. As for backing up my opinion, NASA has already done that for me - After billions of dollars spent by federally supported NASA, they are no closer to the answer than they were 30+ years ago. And still they continue compromised their own experiment by sending even more vehicles up there.
And for your statement - "humans once thought the bootom of the ocean was too cold and there was too much pressure for life to exsist, yet it does", I have never encountered any documentation that claimed no life could exist at the bottom of the oceans. However, I have run into myth and fantasy media that claim only the largest of predators or the smallest of organisms would exist at the bottom of the ocean. Guess you're reading some different material than I am.
So because you've never "encountered" documentation, it must not exist!? Amusing, wrong but amusing. Try looking up Edward Forbes for the ocean life thing. I also find it amusing you think we've explored enough of Mars to totally rule out the possibility of life. Maybe when we explore more than the surface of Mars someone more intelligent than both of us can decide if life has ever developed on Mars.
While your comment might have been an opinion, you worded it as a statement so yes you need to go in person to make a claim such as this. So, my statement of you not having a clue is still valid and to think NASA has searched Mars enough to use them as a source is ignorant. As I said before, my opinion is somewhat the same as yours, yet I know for a fact humans have yet to explore enough of Mars to totally rule out past or present life! But if you think we have enough data to make such a claim then nothing I say will change your point of view, but that doesn't change the fact that no human has enough information to say yes or no about life.
Felipeuga - I find it equally amusing that you have this unsupported belief that there has to be life on Mars to prove there is life in the universe. Per your expectation - "Maybe when we explore more than the surface of Mars someone more intelligent than both of us can decide if life has ever developed on Mars." Indeed there are many more people more intelligent that either of us (or maybe more than both of us put together), but theories abound like the flowers of spring - when a scientist has an opinion or hypothesis for which he has unsupprted evidence, he writes it in a paper and it becomes a theory. Now other scientists look it over and decide that they can't rule it out without conclusive evidence, so they spend the next 100 years looking for evidence. And because they wrote it in a paper, it becomes a plausible factoid for the public to digest.
Per your statment - "So, my statement of you not having a clue is still valid and to think NASA has searched Mars enough to use them as a source is ignorant." I take it that you don't own a business and therefore have no idea when it is prudent to cut your loses. As I have stated before, we shouldn't have to look under every rock on and beneath Mars before we decide it is a lost cause. And with every exploration comes the continual ramification of introducing an organism from Earth on Mars. And since organisms tend to mutate quickly, the discussion of whether it is native to Mars or from Earth would then go on for even more decades.
Only America or North Korea would spend billions to find out whether there is a colony of bacteria living on a barren rock billions of miles from Earth and then tell its citizens "no" to tax-funded food and medical assistance.
"No" tax-funded food and medical assistance? Really?
So the trillions of dollars spent on food stamps / medicare / medicaid goes to where, exactly?
Whether the right amount is spent on social programs, and what social programs should be supported, is a different discussion. But the fact is that the U.S. spends 100's of times more on social programs than it does on science. If the entire amount spent on science (medical research, basic research, agriculture, all of science) were instead dedicated to social programs it would be only a minute percentage increase in the social welfare budget.
And, only a country like America would/could spend the small amount of money on science but gain as much as they do for the cost. As, Michael, pointed out cutting out the entire budget allocated to science in this country wouldn't amount to squat of a difference in making those 'less fortunate' fortunate.
However, if the table was turned and the amount of money allocated for social programs were shifted toward science then maybe a greater portion of those 'less fortunate' just might become 'fortunate'. The seemingly desire of the United States to promote 'idle hands' rather than the promotion of self advancement is a major factor in the downturn of this country. My last statement is my personal opinion and is for another thread all together rather than the topic at hand.
There is significant evidence that life on Mars exists but no one has the courage to say so publicly.
I do believe that the fascination with trying to find life on Mars has to be based in the H.G. Wells novel 'War of the Worlds'. I personally believe that maybe life once existed on the Martian surface. Any life that may currently exist will have be to subterranian.
We all know that Mars DOES have one inhabitant, MARVIN!!!!!!
Dear Alan Boyle,
Will you kindly stop leaving the French word "sans" hanging around in all the space articles you write. In English the correct word is "without"!
Thanks
DK
Definition of SANS
: without <my love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw — Shakespeare>
Origin of SANS
Middle English saun, sans, from Anglo-French san, sanz, modification of Latin sine without — more at sunder
First Known Use: 14th century
Apparently, it's been a word in English for a long time now...
Forty years after Viking with all the advances in bio-sciences, it's incredible that NASA can't figure out how to add any life-detecting instruments on their 2.5 billion dollar probe. Maybe that's one of the reasons NASA is having trouble with its budget. With the exception of Hubble and similar space telescopes, it's just not doing anything very interesting anymore but analyzing rocks and flying astronauts round in circles in low earth orbit.