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Shot in the dark: Killing organisms is not sufficient. The corpse of a bacterium is still a contaminant: It still has organic compounds that can be measured by
by lmkg 11y ago
Shot in the dark: Killing organisms is not sufficient. The corpse of a bacterium is still a contaminant: It still has organic compounds that can be measured by our equipment, and potentially interact with organic compounds on Mars. For our purposes, the bacterial corpses must be fully incinerated.
- czinck 11y agoI remember hearing something relatively recently about how they detected some complex molecules with one of the rovers (indicative of life creating them), but the leading theory was that they were leftover from when the rover was being built and weren't cleaned enough. So that's definitely a possibility, we aren't looking at a slide and seeing them move, we're just looking for some chemicals so dead bacteria trips the sensors just as well as live.
- qb45 11y agoThis happened with the Viking probes in '70s.