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posted by martyb on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:44PM   Printer-friendly

https://themindunleashed.com/2019/10/ex-nasa-scientist-convinced-alien-life-was-found-on-mars-over-40-years-ago.html

A former NASA scientist has written that he is convinced that the U.S. space agency "found evidence of life" on Mars in the 1970s, but the data was largely ignored.

The stunning admission by Gilbert Levin—the former principal investigator for the Labeled Release (LR) experiment on NASA's Viking mission to Mars—came in an op-ed recently published in Scientific American.

In the article, the engineer and inventor is clear that he believes he found convincing proof of the existence of living microorganisms on Mars in 1976, but the agency has since been unwilling to acknowledge what he sees as a clear fact.

Levin is hardly a conspiracy theorist or fringe "UFOlogist," either—in addition to participating in that important 1976 NASA mission, he's a respected engineer and inventor who founded the successful research company Spherix.

In the op-ed titled "I'm Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

"On July 30, 1976, the LR returned its initial results from Mars.

"Amazingly, they were positive. As the experiment progressed, a total of four positive results, supported by five varied controls, streamed down from the twin Viking spacecraft landed some 4,000 miles apart."

Continuing, he wrote:

"The data curves signaled the detection of microbial respiration on the Red Planet. The curves from Mars were similar to those produced by LR tests of soils on Earth.

"It seemed we had answered that ultimate question.

Sour grapes from a disgruntled investigator or something worth further investigation?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:59PM (#943832)

    I've got blacked out drinking tequila last night.

  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday January 16 2020, @12:25AM (4 children)

    by looorg (578) on Thursday January 16 2020, @12:25AM (#943836)

    Sour grapes from a disgruntled investigator or something worth further investigation?

    I guess you could just add him to the ever growing list of former space agency scientists and astronauts that claim they have seen signs of aliens or alien life or whatnot but can't actually prove it. But they know and we should just somehow trust them on this one. It's not science then, it's faith.

    The data curves signaled the detection of microbial respiration on the Red Planet. The curves from Mars were similar to those produced by LR tests of soils on Earth.

    Did they rule out contamination? Do they even have the data around anymore? If they don't, or can't access it or if they have it but doesn't find the alien life (anymore) I guess this would just feed the conspiracy either way. With that in mind I look forward to his exciting episode of Ancient Aliens.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @12:41AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @12:41AM (#943837)

      Do they even have the data around anymore?

      Nope, NASA overwrote it. Just like the original moon landing tapes, just the most epic achievement of mankind ever. No biggie.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @12:45AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @12:45AM (#943839)

        It reminds me of when that roman shipwreck was found off the coast of Brazil in 1985 and the government was like "We like our history just the way it is, we don't need this" and sent the military to bury the site in silt. Then they banned undersea exploration in Brazil, and it remains banned to this day.

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by petecox on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:47AM (1 child)

          by petecox (3228) on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:47AM (#943859)
          • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:09PM

            by Freeman (732) on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:09PM (#944043) Journal

            Things like that make me sad. Here is one place, where it's likely to have been easy to find and work compared to many other places. Yet no one can legally do anything, because the finding will be unacceptable to the cultural history.

            --
            Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @12:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @12:46AM (#943840)

    I clearly remember seeing signs of Martian life in the 1970s. Spiders they were, from recollection, and a fellow named Ziggy.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:26AM (5 children)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:26AM (#943848) Journal

    This pops up every few years. The long and short of it is that the labeled release experiment was very interesting and the results inconclusive in a fascinating and tantalizing way. The leading non-life hypothesis consistent with the results was the possibility of perchloride chemistry interaction. LIBS on MSL confirmed the presence of perchlorides in the regolith, so until we get new evidence that's the most likely answer. That doesn't mean we aren't looking. The MSL chemcam has examined soil samples down to 15μm for signs of life. Nothing has popped up so far.

    I'd love to see an electron microscope experiment fly to image things down to 100nm or so, an experiment to look or life in deep drill cores, or even better to fly humans there to feed the dirt a cheeseburger and see if something cool grows. Until we do that all the signs point to it being a lifeless rock.

    I volunteer to go, if that helps.

    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:28AM (4 children)

      by driverless (4770) on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:28AM (#943849)

      Wasn't that also the lander that had faulty sensors, so that it wouldn't have been able to reliably detect life on Earth, let alone Mars? I know one of them had that problem, so they had to discard a pile of initially promising-sounding results.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:53AM (3 children)

        by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:53AM (#943861) Journal

        I'm not aware of any sensor malfunctions in the LR experiment. Viking 1 had a bunch of problems, but 2 cooked off very well. The final report on the LR experiment is here: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19790022948.pdf [nasa.gov]

        They did test it against earth soil samples and were able to detect life here, but there have been criticisms that it wouldn't have detected life in e.g. salt flats.

        We need more data, and I'm firmly in the camp that says we should send a meatbag to do it. :)

        • (Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:06AM

          by driverless (4770) on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:06AM (#943865)

          Sure, could easily have been a completely different lander, I just remember the comment about "not being able to reliably detect life on Earth, let alone Mars" that was made about it, but it was a long time ago so assume bit rot.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @06:02AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @06:02AM (#943913)

          if the meat bag gets digested by mars the evidence will be rather conclusive.
          it would be hilerious if the antidot to being eaten alive by mars microbes would be eating a McCheese urger before decent because they are famous for being ... indigestible.

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Friday January 17 2020, @03:45AM

            by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 17 2020, @03:45AM (#944398) Journal

            I can't tell you how excited I would be with that result, even if it came at the cost of my own life. In one (hopefully slow so I can get a bunch of data off) bite we'd learn that life exists on another planet (2/8) and thus is very likely ubiquitous throughout the universe. Additionally we learn that life can survive in conditions far harsher than what we'd imagined, extending our definition of the goldilocks zone from "liquid water" to "hellifiknow".

            I'd take that over a stupid death in traffic any day.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:36AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:36AM (#943873)

    The next lander is going to a location likely to have had life and will have instruments to test for it.
    https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-2020/ [nasa.gov]
    Btw the clock is running. Better finish all testing for life before Elon gets there.

    • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:08PM (3 children)

      by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:08PM (#943972) Journal

      Respectfully, Fuck the clock. Viking 2 landed two months before I was born and I have kids shopping colleges. "They" have had four decades to follow up on this research. If we wait for "them" to investigate it then the research won't be done until our species is a brief anecdote in the fossil record. My money is on Mr. Musk.

      • (Score: 2) by etherscythe on Thursday January 16 2020, @07:20PM (2 children)

        by etherscythe (937) on Thursday January 16 2020, @07:20PM (#944168) Journal

        I think the point was, once Musk gets there he's going to throw off all test results looking for life, since he has no profit motive to do otherwise. I tend to agree with that, although he might have other motivations which got him into the space/electric car markets to begin with.

        --
        "Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
        • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday January 16 2020, @08:07PM (1 child)

          by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 16 2020, @08:07PM (#944196) Journal

          That is how I read it as well, and I completely understand the search for a second biogenesis as a huge motivation for planetary protection.

          Where I stumble is with the calls, and I assure you they will come, to ban manned exploration of Mars for that reason.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @10:50PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @10:50PM (#944287)

            NASA already banned anyone from landing near the Apollo landing sites and taking pics.

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