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JPL director: Curiosity may have found organic, not biological molecules

302 points by pitiburi 14y ago

pitiburi 14y ago
another link quoting Elachi http://www.getradardetectors.com/mars-quotfind-organic-moleculesquot/ http://www.getradardetectors.com/mars-quotfind-organic-molec...
netcan 14y ago
What exactly is the relationship between organic molecules & life?
- fijal 14y ago
  None. The life on earth as we know it in a traditional sense is based on carbon-based compounds. You can use anything else that forms polymers essentially, but carbon happened to happen.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Carbon is not just a little bit better than other elements at forming polymers and complex molecules it is many orders of magnitude better, and it's hugely abundant. Many complex carbon-based molecules are even formed in entirely non-biological processes in significant quantities. Ethanol, ribose, glycine, adenine, and others, for example. The overall nature of life in the Universe may prove to be quite a surprise to us humans but for now the overwhelming scientific consensus is that carbon based chemistry is by far the most likely route for life to develop anywhere.
    - fijal 14y ago
      there are lots of technical reasons that are perfectly valid, true, but it's not absolutely necessary.
  - oozcitak 14y ago
    It is safer to be a carbon chauvinist if you accept that ancient Mars was covered with oceans. A silicon-based microbe would be hard pressed to explain its distaste for water to its carbon-based neighbor.
fredley 14y ago
Can someone please explain the difference between an organic molecule and a biological molecule?
- yen223 14y ago
  Organic molecules simply refer to carbon-based compounds. They don't necessarily have to be biological in nature.
- jaggederest 14y ago
  Gasoline is an organic molecule. (Quoth wikipedia: An organic compound is any member of a large class of gaseous, liquid, or solid chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon.) DNA is a biological molecule - a molecule used more or less exclusively in biology and not spontaneously occurring outside the context of life.
  - simonh 14y ago
    That's all true, but gasoline is actually a biological derivative as it's formed from the remains of living things. So your two examples actually both occur within the context of life. We do know that organic molecules with non-biological origins do exist on other planets and even on asteroids. Titan has large quantities of organic compounds on it's surface that have non-biological origins, for example. It is believed that at one time Mars had a much thicker atmosphere and active geology which may have lead to the formation of organic compounds.
    - jaggederest 14y ago
      Right, I was actually thinking of synthetic hydrocarbons (for example motor oil), and thought gasoline was something people could relate to. Methane on Titan would be a better example, and I actually initially used methane - but most people have experience with methane in the context of biology, too.
- pilsetnieks 14y ago
  Organic compounds and organic chemistry are thus named for historical reasons, not that they necessarily have anything to do with organisms (although they can). Generally it's carbon-hydrogen based molecules, for example, methane (CH4) is the simplest organic molecule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compounds As to what is a biological molecule, well, that's a harder question. In a somewhat tautological way I'd probably say that's something coming from a biological organism.
CuriousityCure 14y ago
The majority of any existing life would be subterranean as the article states.
- mertd 14y ago
  Is the proper term subterranean or submartian in this case?
anigbrowl 14y ago
Organic in this context means carbon-bearing - a necessity for life (as we know it), but not direct evidence of it. Encouraging, though! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry
- macu 14y ago
  taking another of many possible perspectives, here is a strong case for hoping that we don't find life on Mars: http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
  - trendspotter 14y ago
    Damn, I have no time reading his entire article right now, but it looks very interesting.
  - rpm4321 14y ago
    Bit of a tangent, but does anyone know of a service where I can copy in a pdf url and get a rough approximation of the content as plain text html?
    - rpm4321 14y ago
      Here we go: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nickbostrom.com%2Fextraterrestrial.pdf&format= http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nickbostrom... I'm really paranoid about loading unfamiliar websites up (I've got a version of Chrome with js and plugins disabled that I use for random links), and pdfs are still a bit of a concern as an attack vector. It looks like this viewtext.org will come in handy. </tangent>
    - lloeki 14y ago
      Not a URL but arguably more useful: $ curl http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf | pdftotext - - Don't forget the two dashes, as it doesn't default to reading stdin, and doesn't default to writing to stdout when instructed to read from stdin. Also, pdftotext is part of poppler in Arch and poppler-utils in Debian.
dendory 14y ago
Edit: It seems more Italian newspapers are reporting this quote than just this one site, but for an announcement of this importance, I'm still not going to believe it until we get some more confirmation.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  Slate specializes in punditry rather than reportage, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If it's BS NASA will clarify or deny within a few hours, but there have been hints leaking from several sources about some exciting news that was still under embargo while they continue testing. I think it's OK to post since it includes a legit source/scientific forum.
- davidw 14y ago
  It's a newspaper, not a blog, and the cited source, ANSA, is "the leading wire service in Italy": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenzia_Nazionale_Stampa_Associata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenzia_Nazionale_Stampa_Associ... Ultimately, the weak link is the guy at the conference, not the site where it's reported.
- Facens 14y ago
  "La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno" is not a blog, it's a newspaper. The news was reported by other Italian newspapers too, quoting Charles Elachi's words during a speech held in Rome.
kamaal 14y ago
Strange that none of the mainstream media has covered this. Can anybody verify if this news is true? Or its from a trust worthy source?
- pitiburi 14y ago
  It was in a conference in Rome, that's why the first at reporting it are italian newspapers. It is on the BIG newspapers, so I think is trustwothy: http://www.repubblica.it/scienze/2012/11/28/news/curiosity_marte_forse_trovati_precursori_vita-47602504/?ref=HRER2-1 http://www.repubblica.it/scienze/2012/11/28/news/curiosity_m...
InclinedPlane 14y ago
This is just a regurgitation of a speculative statement by an uninvolved scientist. What is this, TMZ?
- pitiburi 14y ago
  I think that if something like this comes from a NASA director, it is not made up or speculative. A speculation like that not being true would mean the end of his career.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    I really doubt that a speculation made on some remote conference, containing the words "perhaps" could mean the end of his career if it doesn't come true. NASA is the agency that made a big prime time press conference for their "arsenic DNA" discovery not so long ago, which proved to be BS (and not well researched at that).
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    It's not a NASA director, it's the head of JPL. And it was abundantly clear from his comment of "perhaps Curiosity has found simple organic molecules" that he does not actually have any firm knowledge of what Curiosity has or has not found and is merely speculating along just like every other armchair scientist has been. And because that is abundantly clear to everyone with a gram of common sense, notably excluding those who want to hype this speculation into something it's not, whether or not it's actually an accurate prediction has about as much impact on his career at JPL as him speculating about whether or not it will rain in Pasadena tomorrow.
    - pitiburi 14y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi And he said, in fact, that that was what they found, but that it's still a "perhaps" because they have to check the data very very thoroughly. Read the news, and get your informations right. Please stop trolling all over the thread, thanks :)
Syssiphus 14y ago
The keyword here is 'perhaps'.
- pitiburi 14y ago
  You are right. But this "perhaps" is not the kind of "Perhaps it's that, perhaps it's something else". He is saying "perhaps" because they are still checking, double checking and extra checking the data. He says "It's preliminary data that must be checked (on) organic, not biological, molecules"
pitiburi 14y ago
Please keep in mind that Curiosity has not the capability to recognize biological molecules, only organic ones. That means that even if it finds current life, it will only be able to recognize the presence of organic compounds. That is why the "organic, not biological"; it may well be biological, but Curiosity cannot know.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Sigh. There is no difference between "organic" and "biological" molecules chemically. There is no "vitalism" force which makes a biological molecule special. Also, Curiosity is quite capable of unambiguously detecting life on Mars, the question is just a matter of how likely it would be. Curiosity can detect a wide array of organic compounds, and if a sufficient quantity of the right variety of compounds were detected it could be near incontrovertible proof of life. For example, if you fed a pile of fine wood shavings into Curiosity's SAM instrument you would be able to look at the data and go "yup, this is absolutely, definitely, wood, it couldn't be anything else". The difficulty is that realistically the amount of organic matter from some life form that is sampled by Curiosity could be fairly small and very difficult for the rover to get any useful data out of. That's why Curiosity was not designed as a "life detection mission", which would require other instruments. However, that doesn't mean Curiosity is incapable of detecting life, just that it would likely have to get fairly lucky to do so, and most of the evidence it would gather would likely be fairly circumstantial rather than definitive. This is all rather speculative though as there has been no information provided on Curiosity's new findings, merely more speculation from people who don't know the findings (in this case the manager of JPL).
  - pitiburi 14y ago
    "Curiosity - ha spiegato Elachi oggi - non è dotato di strumenti per trovare tracce biologiche", ossia molecole necessarie o prodotte da forme di vita, "ma ha la capacità di riconoscere molecole organiche". Già questa sarebbe una novità importante: tali molecole, composti a base di carbonio, non provano di per sé la presenza di vita, ma senza di loro la vita non può svilupparsi.
phreeza 14y ago
Organic molecules on mars are nothing new. Methane had been shown in very low concentrations using remote sensing (spectral) methods, but had not been detected directly on Mars so far by Curiosity. This might mean that it has now detected methane after all. The reason why methane would be exciting is that it is broken down by UV radiation, so there must be some persistent source of it on the planet for a sustained presence.
- rpm4321 14y ago
  Apparently, it's quite uncertain how much (if any) current volcanic activity there is, which would make organisms a possible source: http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-01/methane-may-point-life-mars http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/20... http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/mars-methane-changes-seasons-and-scientists-wonder-why http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/mars-methane-c...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mmariani 14y ago
More details here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/science/space/undisclosed-finding-by-mars-rover-fuels-intrigue.html?hp&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/science/space/undisclosed-...
Achshar 14y ago
If they found organic molecules in the very first test then it says something. The size of sample was very small and from an average patch of crust.
trafnar 14y ago
may have found
- pitiburi 14y ago
  You are right. But this "perhaps" is not the kind of "Perhaps it's that, perhaps it's something else". He is saying "perhaps" because they are still checking, double checking and extra checking the data. He says "It's preliminary data that must be checked (on) organic, not biological, molecules"
pitiburi 14y ago
Just to clarify. This guy -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi in a conference in Rome today said that what they found in Mars was organic molecules. He said it was a "perhaps" because they still have to check the data. He also said that Curiosity can not say if an organic molecule is biological or not, so all they can say is that there are organic molecules. Again, perhaps, until the data checking ends and full data is presented. All this reported by ANSA. PD: it was in a conference in La Sapienza, in Rome, hardly a remote and/or obscure university/place.
- pitiburi 14y ago
  For those who understand italian, here you have the news explained with details from the head of Scientific American in Italia, in video: http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/curiosity-sonda-marte/cattaneo-molecole-organiche-su-marte-se-confermato-ecco-cosa-significa/112121/110517 http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/curiosity-sonda-marte/cat...
- gus_massa 14y ago
  Without more details this is not a very interesting new. Methane is an organic molecule and we have found it everywhere in space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Extraterrestrial_methane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Extraterrestrial_methan...
  - pitiburi 14y ago
    In the soil. They found organic molecules in the soil. So no methane but something solid I guess. And remember, they couldn't find methane yet on mars, Curiosity results were negative. http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-rover-yet-to-find-methane-on-mars-1.11730 http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-rover-yet-to-find-methane-on...
    - hughw 14y ago
      It could be methane molecules bound to sand particles. It would be surprising not to find methane on a planet in our solar system.
codeulike 14y ago
They have Organic Farming on Mars! Oh, wait ...
fondue 14y ago
I guess I'm pretty naive in wishing they'd accidently rolled over a fossil.
zerostar07 14y ago
How can they be sure it's not earthly contamination?
HannibalLecter 14y ago
"_____Perhaps_____ Curiosity has found simple organic molecules,"
tokenadult 14y ago
This news was anticipated by an article in The Guardian as the speculation was building up, "Whatever the Curiosity rover has found, it's not evidence of life on Mars." http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2012/nov/23/curiosity-rover-life-mars http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2012/n... The author's evidence for that bold headline claim was earlier reporting on the issue as the speculation built up. "Whatever Curiosity has found, it is not evidence for life on Mars. It can't be. Curiosity is not designed to look for life. Grotzinger has stated this himself. In a Nasa video about the mission, he says, 'Curiosity is not a life detection mission. We're not actually looking for life; we don't have the ability to detect life if it was there.' "Following up the internet speculation, Jeffrey Kluger of Time talked to Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory spokesperson Guy Webster and was told, 'It won't be earthshaking, but it will be interesting.'" Organic molecules (molecules containing carbon) are commonplace in many lifeless places around the Solar system, so this is hardly surprising. It is moderately interesting, but certainly not earthshaking, as previously reported. AFTER EDIT: Replying to the first reply kindly posted to my comment, I'm not arguing whether Curiosity has found evidence for life on Mars or not but I would like to point out a logical fallacy in the cited argument; in particular, the statement "device X wasn't designed to do Y" does not imply "device X can't do Y". I take the statement made by the NASA planners at face value for a simple reason. While the Curiosity rover, with its cameras, would surely be able to detect Martian megafauna, if there were such a thing, for example a Martian elephant, I trust the statement that Curiosity is incapable of providing unambiguous evidence of microorganisms on Mars. I cited the Guardian article in my first posting of this comment. The issue of detecting life, or not, was surely discussed by the NASA mission planners, who included astute exobiologists. The mission profile of Curiosity does not include a task of detecting life on Mars, and the instruments on Curiosity are not reliable for distinguishing organic molecules made by living microorganisms from organic molecules made by purely physical processes. Whatever Curiosity detects with its molecular analysis instruments, it cannot be taken as evidence for life on Mars. That is the statement of the article, based on interviews with people knowledgeable about the planning of the mission, and that is a credible statement, given the amount of thought the mission planners must have devoted to this issue.
- DrJokepu 14y ago
forgotAgain 14y ago
This has become an example of an organization losing control of it's PR when it goes viral. This is damaging to the credibility of those involved. If / when the details are given they will be "historic" either for their scientific importance or the hit it has done to NASA.
rpm4321 14y ago
Does anyone know how this jives with Slate and The Atlantic reporting yesterday that the whole thing was a big misunderstanding and that no big discovery had been made? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4841107 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4841107 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4840905 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4840905 Edit: Here are similar stories from PC Magazine and Mashable, which was apparently the original source of all of these articles: http://mashable.com/2012/11/27/curiosity-rover-discovery-npr/ http://mashable.com/2012/11/27/curiosity-rover-discovery-npr... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412567,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412567,00.asp
- Tloewald 14y ago
  http://www.beedictionary.com/common-errors/gibe_vs_jibe_vs_jive http://www.beedictionary.com/common-errors/gibe_vs_jibe_vs_j... Sorry for the pedantry.
  - rpm4321 14y ago
    No problem, I love pedantry - except when I'm at the business end of it. :) Interestingly enough: "how does this jive with" - About 257,000 results "how does this jibe with" - About 234,000 results "how does this gibe with" - About 6,490 results
- nsxwolf 14y ago
  Perhaps it means Charles Elachi didn't read the articles you linked to, which could indicate he's not really in the loop.
goldfeld 14y ago
I want to summarize and add some commentary to the article[1] posted by macu as a reply to another comment. It's amazingly interesting and well argued. In short, the author says first that any sufficiently advanced civilization will at one point send self-replicating probes that will eventually colonize all of the galaxy and even universe. And it takes only one match to light a fire, and this is important--that is, for a sufficiently advanced planet, it would take only one rebel, one mad scientist, to set the colonization, by robots, of every habitable body in motion. Assuming the above is true, then why do we not see any sign of these probes? It follows that there must be a Great Filter that prevented them from ever being created. Things that qualify as such a filter are not plenty, and include the original formation of life and the transition from procaryotic to eucaryotic (taking a couple billion years). Thus if we find life so easily formed on Mars or anywhere else (especially eucaryotic cells), we can assume these past events are not really Great Filters. Then, the only reason we haven't found a single probe is that any sufficiently advanced civilization destroys itself before it ever gets to that point. If it's not nuclear weapons, then there must exist technologies that are sure on our path to discovery while at the same time guaranteeing our extinction--again, think in terms of things that only need one outlier to use it in a way that compromises the existence of all on Earth for good. So he concludes that we must pray that we never find life anywhere else, because it would in turn give us hope (but not assure us) that there might exist no Great Filter ahead of us, and the Great Filter was indeed in our conception as life--thus we are the one single unfathomably lucky planet to ever have harbored life. If nothing potentially impedes our expansion, we will be the one sending probes and expanding to everywhere. Adding my own expansion on this, I believe it's extremely unlikely that there is some irrevocably cataclysmical tech to be discovered before ever we are able to send self-replicating probes--ones who can mine the raw materials needed for unbounded expansion. I don't think we're that far from that point, and taking from our own anecdotal existence since it's the only one there is, even if we do annihilate ourselves before sending them out by chance, other civilizations might not have done so, if they existed. Thus indeed the only tech that would assure a Great Filter is the self-replicating technology itself. And that is a strong point--the author seems to ignore the fact that these probes wouldn't really be the expansion of humanity, it would be the expansion of drones. And what might the precursor techs for such a replicating machine look like? If superior AI is needed at any rate, we could think that the tech leading to sure extinction is indeed robots who decimate us humans. And since they would do this as early as chance would afford it, the robots eliminating us would be as dumb as possible--thus we can assume they would be incapable of advancing technology on their own; or of coordinating an event like launching themselves into space, and thus would never leave Earth. In this scenario, we can assume every civilization that ever got a shot in going to space ended up extinct, their planet ridden with dumb self-replicating robots who can never launch themselves into space. Since self-replicating robots are the hypothesis of the author's argument, then indeed it makes sense that every potential civilization either never reached this tech (the Great Filter is in life's conception, or otherwise somehow denies the existence of self-replicating robots), or it must absolutely reach it, in order to colonize space, but in doing so it declares it's extinction. So, like the author, I also hope[2] that we never find life elsewhere, that we might put our tiny hopes in thriving as a race, the only one that ever existed. [1]: http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf [2]: Just an hour ago, I would have jumped with joy if this NASA announcement was indeed confirming life.
forgotAgain 14y ago
NASA seems to be backing off this: Guy Webster, a spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which operates Curiosity, said the findings would be “interesting” rather than “earthshaking.” from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/science/space/undisclosed-finding-by-mars-rover-fuels-intrigue.html?hpw http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/science/space/undisclosed-...
- pitiburi 14y ago
  That is from yesterday, and was trying to calm down expectations after the first famous “This data is going to be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”. Today, the Director of the JPL (and so also Webster's) is the one saying that what they found are organic molecules. And he said it, by the way, as a way to calm down people, because what he was trying to explain was that it was not biological molecules, only organic ones. Of course, it's still a great deal, but it's not fossils or green little men.
  - forgotAgain 14y ago
    Today, the Director of the JPL (and so also Webster's) is the one saying that what they found are organic molecules. According to the article posted he said "perhaps" they found organic molecules. Or am I reading it wrong?
  - nollidge 14y ago
    He was talking about the data from the entire mission, not just recent findings. The whole thing has been blown out of proportion.
tubbo 14y ago
Amazing. Also somewhat amazing that I did not hear this on the NASAcast... :P
micahgoulart 14y ago
Actually it's been confirmed to be just a big misunderstanding. The NASA director was talking about the whole mission as being "one for the history books". More details here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/11/27/nasa_mars_discovery_misunderstanding_mission_leader_excited_about_entire.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/11/27/nasa_mars_...
politician 14y ago
I am quite annoyed with the shield of political correctness that the scientific community has to wield w.r.t the "life on Mars" issues in order to preempt yellow journalists who will, without a doubt, use any turn of phrase to rile up the various factions for and against to generate clicks, sales, and burnings-at-stakes. As if our opinions change the chemistry of a planet none of us have ever been to.

302 points by pitiburi 14y ago

another link quoting Elachi http://www.getradardetectors.com/mars-quotfind-organic-moleculesquot/ http://www.getradardetectors.com/mars-quotfind-organic-molec...

netcan 14y ago

What exactly is the relationship between organic molecules & life?

fijal 14y ago
None. The life on earth as we know it in a traditional sense is based on carbon-based compounds. You can use anything else that forms polymers essentially, but carbon happened to happen.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Carbon is not just a little bit better than other elements at forming polymers and complex molecules it is many orders of magnitude better, and it's hugely abundant. Many complex carbon-based molecules are even formed in entirely non-biological processes in significant quantities. Ethanol, ribose, glycine, adenine, and others, for example. The overall nature of life in the Universe may prove to be quite a surprise to us humans but for now the overwhelming scientific consensus is that carbon based chemistry is by far the most likely route for life to develop anywhere.
  - fijal 14y ago
    there are lots of technical reasons that are perfectly valid, true, but it's not absolutely necessary.
- oozcitak 14y ago
  It is safer to be a carbon chauvinist if you accept that ancient Mars was covered with oceans. A silicon-based microbe would be hard pressed to explain its distaste for water to its carbon-based neighbor.

fredley 14y ago

Can someone please explain the difference between an organic molecule and a biological molecule?

yen223 14y ago
Organic molecules simply refer to carbon-based compounds. They don't necessarily have to be biological in nature.
jaggederest 14y ago
Gasoline is an organic molecule. (Quoth wikipedia: An organic compound is any member of a large class of gaseous, liquid, or solid chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon.) DNA is a biological molecule - a molecule used more or less exclusively in biology and not spontaneously occurring outside the context of life.
- simonh 14y ago
  That's all true, but gasoline is actually a biological derivative as it's formed from the remains of living things. So your two examples actually both occur within the context of life. We do know that organic molecules with non-biological origins do exist on other planets and even on asteroids. Titan has large quantities of organic compounds on it's surface that have non-biological origins, for example. It is believed that at one time Mars had a much thicker atmosphere and active geology which may have lead to the formation of organic compounds.
  - jaggederest 14y ago
    Right, I was actually thinking of synthetic hydrocarbons (for example motor oil), and thought gasoline was something people could relate to. Methane on Titan would be a better example, and I actually initially used methane - but most people have experience with methane in the context of biology, too.
pilsetnieks 14y ago
Organic compounds and organic chemistry are thus named for historical reasons, not that they necessarily have anything to do with organisms (although they can). Generally it's carbon-hydrogen based molecules, for example, methane (CH4) is the simplest organic molecule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compounds As to what is a biological molecule, well, that's a harder question. In a somewhat tautological way I'd probably say that's something coming from a biological organism.

CuriousityCure 14y ago

The majority of any existing life would be subterranean as the article states.

mertd 14y ago
Is the proper term subterranean or submartian in this case?

anigbrowl 14y ago

Organic in this context means carbon-bearing - a necessity for life (as we know it), but not direct evidence of it. Encouraging, though! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry

macu 14y ago
taking another of many possible perspectives, here is a strong case for hoping that we don't find life on Mars: http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
- trendspotter 14y ago
  Damn, I have no time reading his entire article right now, but it looks very interesting.
- rpm4321 14y ago
  Bit of a tangent, but does anyone know of a service where I can copy in a pdf url and get a rough approximation of the content as plain text html?
  - rpm4321 14y ago
    Here we go: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nickbostrom.com%2Fextraterrestrial.pdf&format= http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nickbostrom... I'm really paranoid about loading unfamiliar websites up (I've got a version of Chrome with js and plugins disabled that I use for random links), and pdfs are still a bit of a concern as an attack vector. It looks like this viewtext.org will come in handy. </tangent>
  - lloeki 14y ago
    Not a URL but arguably more useful: $ curl http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf | pdftotext - - Don't forget the two dashes, as it doesn't default to reading stdin, and doesn't default to writing to stdout when instructed to read from stdin. Also, pdftotext is part of poppler in Arch and poppler-utils in Debian.

dendory 14y ago

Edit: It seems more Italian newspapers are reporting this quote than just this one site, but for an announcement of this importance, I'm still not going to believe it until we get some more confirmation.

anigbrowl 14y ago
Slate specializes in punditry rather than reportage, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If it's BS NASA will clarify or deny within a few hours, but there have been hints leaking from several sources about some exciting news that was still under embargo while they continue testing. I think it's OK to post since it includes a legit source/scientific forum.
davidw 14y ago
It's a newspaper, not a blog, and the cited source, ANSA, is "the leading wire service in Italy": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenzia_Nazionale_Stampa_Associata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenzia_Nazionale_Stampa_Associ... Ultimately, the weak link is the guy at the conference, not the site where it's reported.
Facens 14y ago
"La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno" is not a blog, it's a newspaper. The news was reported by other Italian newspapers too, quoting Charles Elachi's words during a speech held in Rome.

kamaal 14y ago

Strange that none of the mainstream media has covered this. Can anybody verify if this news is true? Or its from a trust worthy source?

pitiburi 14y ago
It was in a conference in Rome, that's why the first at reporting it are italian newspapers. It is on the BIG newspapers, so I think is trustwothy: http://www.repubblica.it/scienze/2012/11/28/news/curiosity_marte_forse_trovati_precursori_vita-47602504/?ref=HRER2-1 http://www.repubblica.it/scienze/2012/11/28/news/curiosity_m...

InclinedPlane 14y ago

This is just a regurgitation of a speculative statement by an uninvolved scientist. What is this, TMZ?

pitiburi 14y ago
I think that if something like this comes from a NASA director, it is not made up or speculative. A speculation like that not being true would mean the end of his career.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  I really doubt that a speculation made on some remote conference, containing the words "perhaps" could mean the end of his career if it doesn't come true. NASA is the agency that made a big prime time press conference for their "arsenic DNA" discovery not so long ago, which proved to be BS (and not well researched at that).
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  It's not a NASA director, it's the head of JPL. And it was abundantly clear from his comment of "perhaps Curiosity has found simple organic molecules" that he does not actually have any firm knowledge of what Curiosity has or has not found and is merely speculating along just like every other armchair scientist has been. And because that is abundantly clear to everyone with a gram of common sense, notably excluding those who want to hype this speculation into something it's not, whether or not it's actually an accurate prediction has about as much impact on his career at JPL as him speculating about whether or not it will rain in Pasadena tomorrow.
  - pitiburi 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi And he said, in fact, that that was what they found, but that it's still a "perhaps" because they have to check the data very very thoroughly. Read the news, and get your informations right. Please stop trolling all over the thread, thanks :)

Syssiphus 14y ago

The keyword here is 'perhaps'.

pitiburi 14y ago
You are right. But this "perhaps" is not the kind of "Perhaps it's that, perhaps it's something else". He is saying "perhaps" because they are still checking, double checking and extra checking the data. He says "It's preliminary data that must be checked (on) organic, not biological, molecules"

pitiburi 14y ago

Please keep in mind that Curiosity has not the capability to recognize biological molecules, only organic ones. That means that even if it finds current life, it will only be able to recognize the presence of organic compounds. That is why the "organic, not biological"; it may well be biological, but Curiosity cannot know.

InclinedPlane 14y ago
Sigh. There is no difference between "organic" and "biological" molecules chemically. There is no "vitalism" force which makes a biological molecule special. Also, Curiosity is quite capable of unambiguously detecting life on Mars, the question is just a matter of how likely it would be. Curiosity can detect a wide array of organic compounds, and if a sufficient quantity of the right variety of compounds were detected it could be near incontrovertible proof of life. For example, if you fed a pile of fine wood shavings into Curiosity's SAM instrument you would be able to look at the data and go "yup, this is absolutely, definitely, wood, it couldn't be anything else". The difficulty is that realistically the amount of organic matter from some life form that is sampled by Curiosity could be fairly small and very difficult for the rover to get any useful data out of. That's why Curiosity was not designed as a "life detection mission", which would require other instruments. However, that doesn't mean Curiosity is incapable of detecting life, just that it would likely have to get fairly lucky to do so, and most of the evidence it would gather would likely be fairly circumstantial rather than definitive. This is all rather speculative though as there has been no information provided on Curiosity's new findings, merely more speculation from people who don't know the findings (in this case the manager of JPL).
- pitiburi 14y ago
  "Curiosity - ha spiegato Elachi oggi - non è dotato di strumenti per trovare tracce biologiche", ossia molecole necessarie o prodotte da forme di vita, "ma ha la capacità di riconoscere molecole organiche". Già questa sarebbe una novità importante: tali molecole, composti a base di carbonio, non provano di per sé la presenza di vita, ma senza di loro la vita non può svilupparsi.

phreeza 14y ago

Organic molecules on mars are nothing new. Methane had been shown in very low concentrations using remote sensing (spectral) methods, but had not been detected directly on Mars so far by Curiosity. This might mean that it has now detected methane after all. The reason why methane would be exciting is that it is broken down by UV radiation, so there must be some persistent source of it on the planet for a sustained presence.

rpm4321 14y ago
Apparently, it's quite uncertain how much (if any) current volcanic activity there is, which would make organisms a possible source: http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-01/methane-may-point-life-mars http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/20... http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/mars-methane-changes-seasons-and-scientists-wonder-why http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/mars-methane-c...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mmariani 14y ago

More details here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/science/space/undisclosed-finding-by-mars-rover-fuels-intrigue.html?hp&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/science/space/undisclosed-...

Achshar 14y ago

If they found organic molecules in the very first test then it says something. The size of sample was very small and from an average patch of crust.

trafnar 14y ago

may have found

pitiburi 14y ago
You are right. But this "perhaps" is not the kind of "Perhaps it's that, perhaps it's something else". He is saying "perhaps" because they are still checking, double checking and extra checking the data. He says "It's preliminary data that must be checked (on) organic, not biological, molecules"

pitiburi 14y ago

Just to clarify. This guy -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi in a conference in Rome today said that what they found in Mars was organic molecules. He said it was a "perhaps" because they still have to check the data. He also said that Curiosity can not say if an organic molecule is biological or not, so all they can say is that there are organic molecules. Again, perhaps, until the data checking ends and full data is presented. All this reported by ANSA. PD: it was in a conference in La Sapienza, in Rome, hardly a remote and/or obscure university/place.

pitiburi 14y ago
For those who understand italian, here you have the news explained with details from the head of Scientific American in Italia, in video: http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/curiosity-sonda-marte/cattaneo-molecole-organiche-su-marte-se-confermato-ecco-cosa-significa/112121/110517 http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/curiosity-sonda-marte/cat...
gus_massa 14y ago
Without more details this is not a very interesting new. Methane is an organic molecule and we have found it everywhere in space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Extraterrestrial_methane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Extraterrestrial_methan...
- pitiburi 14y ago
  In the soil. They found organic molecules in the soil. So no methane but something solid I guess. And remember, they couldn't find methane yet on mars, Curiosity results were negative. http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-rover-yet-to-find-methane-on-mars-1.11730 http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-rover-yet-to-find-methane-on...
  - hughw 14y ago
    It could be methane molecules bound to sand particles. It would be surprising not to find methane on a planet in our solar system.

codeulike 14y ago

They have Organic Farming on Mars! Oh, wait ...

fondue 14y ago

I guess I'm pretty naive in wishing they'd accidently rolled over a fossil.

zerostar07 14y ago

How can they be sure it's not earthly contamination?

HannibalLecter 14y ago

"_____Perhaps_____ Curiosity has found simple organic molecules,"

tokenadult 14y ago

This news was anticipated by an article in The Guardian as the speculation was building up, "Whatever the Curiosity rover has found, it's not evidence of life on Mars." http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2012/nov/23/curiosity-rover-life-mars http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2012/n... The author's evidence for that bold headline claim was earlier reporting on the issue as the speculation built up. "Whatever Curiosity has found, it is not evidence for life on Mars. It can't be. Curiosity is not designed to look for life. Grotzinger has stated this himself. In a Nasa video about the mission, he says, 'Curiosity is not a life detection mission. We're not actually looking for life; we don't have the ability to detect life if it was there.' "Following up the internet speculation, Jeffrey Kluger of Time talked to Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory spokesperson Guy Webster and was told, 'It won't be earthshaking, but it will be interesting.'" Organic molecules (molecules containing carbon) are commonplace in many lifeless places around the Solar system, so this is hardly surprising. It is moderately interesting, but certainly not earthshaking, as previously reported. AFTER EDIT: Replying to the first reply kindly posted to my comment, I'm not arguing whether Curiosity has found evidence for life on Mars or not but I would like to point out a logical fallacy in the cited argument; in particular, the statement "device X wasn't designed to do Y" does not imply "device X can't do Y". I take the statement made by the NASA planners at face value for a simple reason. While the Curiosity rover, with its cameras, would surely be able to detect Martian megafauna, if there were such a thing, for example a Martian elephant, I trust the statement that Curiosity is incapable of providing unambiguous evidence of microorganisms on Mars. I cited the Guardian article in my first posting of this comment. The issue of detecting life, or not, was surely discussed by the NASA mission planners, who included astute exobiologists. The mission profile of Curiosity does not include a task of detecting life on Mars, and the instruments on Curiosity are not reliable for distinguishing organic molecules made by living microorganisms from organic molecules made by purely physical processes. Whatever Curiosity detects with its molecular analysis instruments, it cannot be taken as evidence for life on Mars. That is the statement of the article, based on interviews with people knowledgeable about the planning of the mission, and that is a credible statement, given the amount of thought the mission planners must have devoted to this issue.

DrJokepu 14y ago

forgotAgain 14y ago

This has become an example of an organization losing control of it's PR when it goes viral. This is damaging to the credibility of those involved. If / when the details are given they will be "historic" either for their scientific importance or the hit it has done to NASA.

rpm4321 14y ago

Does anyone know how this jives with Slate and The Atlantic reporting yesterday that the whole thing was a big misunderstanding and that no big discovery had been made? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4841107 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4841107 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4840905 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4840905 Edit: Here are similar stories from PC Magazine and Mashable, which was apparently the original source of all of these articles: http://mashable.com/2012/11/27/curiosity-rover-discovery-npr/ http://mashable.com/2012/11/27/curiosity-rover-discovery-npr... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412567,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412567,00.asp

Tloewald 14y ago
http://www.beedictionary.com/common-errors/gibe_vs_jibe_vs_jive http://www.beedictionary.com/common-errors/gibe_vs_jibe_vs_j... Sorry for the pedantry.
- rpm4321 14y ago
  No problem, I love pedantry - except when I'm at the business end of it. :) Interestingly enough: "how does this jive with" - About 257,000 results "how does this jibe with" - About 234,000 results "how does this gibe with" - About 6,490 results
nsxwolf 14y ago
Perhaps it means Charles Elachi didn't read the articles you linked to, which could indicate he's not really in the loop.

goldfeld 14y ago

I want to summarize and add some commentary to the article[1] posted by macu as a reply to another comment. It's amazingly interesting and well argued. In short, the author says first that any sufficiently advanced civilization will at one point send self-replicating probes that will eventually colonize all of the galaxy and even universe. And it takes only one match to light a fire, and this is important--that is, for a sufficiently advanced planet, it would take only one rebel, one mad scientist, to set the colonization, by robots, of every habitable body in motion. Assuming the above is true, then why do we not see any sign of these probes? It follows that there must be a Great Filter that prevented them from ever being created. Things that qualify as such a filter are not plenty, and include the original formation of life and the transition from procaryotic to eucaryotic (taking a couple billion years). Thus if we find life so easily formed on Mars or anywhere else (especially eucaryotic cells), we can assume these past events are not really Great Filters. Then, the only reason we haven't found a single probe is that any sufficiently advanced civilization destroys itself before it ever gets to that point. If it's not nuclear weapons, then there must exist technologies that are sure on our path to discovery while at the same time guaranteeing our extinction--again, think in terms of things that only need one outlier to use it in a way that compromises the existence of all on Earth for good. So he concludes that we must pray that we never find life anywhere else, because it would in turn give us hope (but not assure us) that there might exist no Great Filter ahead of us, and the Great Filter was indeed in our conception as life--thus we are the one single unfathomably lucky planet to ever have harbored life. If nothing potentially impedes our expansion, we will be the one sending probes and expanding to everywhere. Adding my own expansion on this, I believe it's extremely unlikely that there is some irrevocably cataclysmical tech to be discovered before ever we are able to send self-replicating probes--ones who can mine the raw materials needed for unbounded expansion. I don't think we're that far from that point, and taking from our own anecdotal existence since it's the only one there is, even if we do annihilate ourselves before sending them out by chance, other civilizations might not have done so, if they existed. Thus indeed the only tech that would assure a Great Filter is the self-replicating technology itself. And that is a strong point--the author seems to ignore the fact that these probes wouldn't really be the expansion of humanity, it would be the expansion of drones. And what might the precursor techs for such a replicating machine look like? If superior AI is needed at any rate, we could think that the tech leading to sure extinction is indeed robots who decimate us humans. And since they would do this as early as chance would afford it, the robots eliminating us would be as dumb as possible--thus we can assume they would be incapable of advancing technology on their own; or of coordinating an event like launching themselves into space, and thus would never leave Earth. In this scenario, we can assume every civilization that ever got a shot in going to space ended up extinct, their planet ridden with dumb self-replicating robots who can never launch themselves into space. Since self-replicating robots are the hypothesis of the author's argument, then indeed it makes sense that every potential civilization either never reached this tech (the Great Filter is in life's conception, or otherwise somehow denies the existence of self-replicating robots), or it must absolutely reach it, in order to colonize space, but in doing so it declares it's extinction. So, like the author, I also hope[2] that we never find life elsewhere, that we might put our tiny hopes in thriving as a race, the only one that ever existed. [1]: http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf [2]: Just an hour ago, I would have jumped with joy if this NASA announcement was indeed confirming life.

forgotAgain 14y ago

NASA seems to be backing off this: Guy Webster, a spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which operates Curiosity, said the findings would be “interesting” rather than “earthshaking.” from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/science/space/undisclosed-finding-by-mars-rover-fuels-intrigue.html?hpw http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/science/space/undisclosed-...

pitiburi 14y ago
That is from yesterday, and was trying to calm down expectations after the first famous “This data is going to be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”. Today, the Director of the JPL (and so also Webster's) is the one saying that what they found are organic molecules. And he said it, by the way, as a way to calm down people, because what he was trying to explain was that it was not biological molecules, only organic ones. Of course, it's still a great deal, but it's not fossils or green little men.
- forgotAgain 14y ago
  Today, the Director of the JPL (and so also Webster's) is the one saying that what they found are organic molecules. According to the article posted he said "perhaps" they found organic molecules. Or am I reading it wrong?
- nollidge 14y ago
  He was talking about the data from the entire mission, not just recent findings. The whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

tubbo 14y ago

Amazing. Also somewhat amazing that I did not hear this on the NASAcast... :P

micahgoulart 14y ago

Actually it's been confirmed to be just a big misunderstanding. The NASA director was talking about the whole mission as being "one for the history books". More details here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/11/27/nasa_mars_discovery_misunderstanding_mission_leader_excited_about_entire.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/11/27/nasa_mars_...

politician 14y ago

I am quite annoyed with the shield of political correctness that the scientific community has to wield w.r.t the "life on Mars" issues in order to preempt yellow journalists who will, without a doubt, use any turn of phrase to rile up the various factions for and against to generate clicks, sales, and burnings-at-stakes. As if our opinions change the chemistry of a planet none of us have ever been to.