Perchlorate on Mars Could be Potential Energy Source for Life; Phoenix Team Fires Back at Allegations
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It’s been a busy few days for the Phoenix Mars lander rumour-mill. On Friday, an article was published in Aviation Week reporting an undisclosed source from the NASA team analysing results from the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) had come forward saying Phoenix scientists were in communication with the White House. Apparently there had been new, “provocative” results to come from the MECA, possibly a bigger discovery than last Thursday’s announcement about the scientific proof of water in the Martian regolith. Naturally, the blogosphere went crazy in response to this news. Yesterday, the Phoenix team issued a press release focussing on conflicting results from the MECA and Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) instruments. A MECA sample was found to contain a toxic substance known as perchlorate, usually an oxidizing by-product from industrial processes here on Earth. However, a recently analysed sample from the TEGA turned up no supporting evidence for perchlorate. The study is ongoing. Today, the Phoenix team organized a press conference to discuss a more positive view on the possible discovery of perchlorate, and fired back at recent allegations that science was being withheld from the public…
The Phoenix mission has had an outstanding record of transparency and communicating its science into the public domain. So, one can understand the frustration mission scientists felt when “outrageous” stories (according to Peter Smith, Phoenix principal investigator) were circulated by Aviation Week alleging secrecy about Phoenix findings, strongly indicating that something huge had been discovered and the White House had to be notified. “We want to set the record straight…we’re not with-holding anything” NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown declared at the special press briefing today. The Phoenix team went on to say that the sketchy details in the Aviation Week article led to the huge amount of “speculation” that was thrown around in follow-up stories.
Indeed, there was a significant finding in the works, but the scientists needed more time to analyse the results before issuing a press release on finding perchlorate in the MECA sample. Although the Aviation Week article did specifically say Phoenix was not capable of discovering life, it didn’t stop a number of reports indicating that life had been discovered on the Red Planet (hence the need to communicate the discovery with the President’s Science Advisor first). These speculative claims reached fever-pitch, prompting Phoenix’s Twitter feed to state “Heard about the recent news reports implying I may have found Martian life. Those reports are incorrect.” The speed at which these rumours spread was startling and probably took NASA completely off-guard. This is probably why the perchlorate discovery was announced before a complete and rigorous study could be carried out.
So is perchlorate the death-nail for the possibility of finding suitable conditions for life to be seeded? According to Phoenix scientists, oxidizing chemicals are not always ‘bad news’ for life. “It does not preclude life on Mars. In fact it is a potential energy source,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona. Indeed, perchlorates have been found in Chile’s highly arid Atacama Desert, a location often used as an analogue for the Martian landscape. Organics in nitrate deposits associated with perchlorates have been found in these harsh conditions, possibly indicating life may form in similar circumstances on Mars.
Although the Phoenix scientists are fairly upbeat about this new finding, other scientists not associated with the mission are cautious. At first glance, perchlorate “is a reactive compound. It’s not usually considered an ingredient for life,” said Brown University geologist John Mustard. Regardless, we will have to wait until all the results are in, especially from the follow-up TEGA sample. Jumping to conclusions are obviously not very helpful to the Phoenix team currently trying to decipher what they are seeing from experiments being carried out by a robot, 400 million miles away.
Sources: Space.com, Phoenix, Space News Examiner
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Is that ‘alligators’ or ‘allegations’?
“Naturally, the blogosphere went crazy in response to this news.”
When all are one and one is all
To be a blog and not to fool
Woe oh oh oh oh oh
Essel – very well observed.
I hope, and I’m sure that NASA will have considered the contamination issue. After the hullabaloo over this finding, it would be an embarrasing turn of events if Phoenix had been analysing its own exhauset fumes!
It’s not really hard to test the same thrusters and analyze the residue here on earth.
Perchlorates certainly are used in rocketry and fireworks, esp military. Another compound Na-O2-Cl can deliver oxygen into organisms & is metastable, esp at cold Mars temps. The oxygen’s released within the warm body, hopefully deep into the intestinal track or tissues. Strange they found only the most saturated perchlorate, and no other chlorates, esp since the oxygen isn’t ubiquitous in Mar’s atmos.
Having chemistry as my major “blind spot”, so to speak, I am curious about one thing:
I guess photochemical reactions might, eventually, decompose some atmospheric CO2 making oxygen atoms available for reaction with whatever more reactive substances that might be found in the atmosphere or in the upper layers of the soil. There is the possibility that the soil includes plenty of salt, from the martian liquid past. Couldn’t the perchlorates form through this method? Couldn’t it have been slowly piling up over the dry ages of Mars? And wouldn’t that tell us basicly nothing about past habitability?
I attended a presentation at the American Chemical Soiety conference 2 years ago here in Atlanta when a gentleman from the University of Nevada presented a mechanism for perchlorate formation from chloride. The title of the presentation was “Photooxidation of chloride to perchlorate in the presence of desert soils and titanium dioxide” His paper focused on the possibility that soils with high natural chloride content could have a portion of the chloride oxidized by sunlight or UV light to perchlorate. He was able to reproduce this mechanism in the lab using soils from Death Valley.
http://oasys2.confex.com/acs/231nm/techprogram/P945888.HTM
http://www.unr.edu/idgrad/esh/faculty/gmiller.asp
Ahhhhhhhh! The blogosphere strikes again.
What they *should* be holding back is their unprofessional speculation on preliminary data !!!
I’ve said it before here: This project seems to have a problem of shooting their mouths off, then having to eat their words. This is like the third time!!!
They should take a lesson from Jack Webb: “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Simply waste of energy, resource, time and money.
Alright! What if there is/was life on Mars?
We are not alone… hum! Big F*king Deal!
Are we going to rush two more dozen missions? Is that it?
Ron,
It would make the Universe a whole new ball game. Especially if we find it on the very first planet we believe has a reasonable chance of possessing it.
This would fuel the drive and progress of mankind for the next 1000 years, especially if we found a way over the massive barrier in our way the naggingly slow speed of light.
“ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS” 1964 Film.
The main character of the movie finds he can burn yellow rocks that have their own oxygen source, “like solid rocket fuel”.
Interesting……..now where’s that darn monkey!
if NASA is keen to proove they have nothing to hide/keep from public than they should post all the photos and analyzer diagrams or other test results without delay on their site, available to the entire world, before even a proper examination from their side. Maybe other scientists at the other end of the Earth will be more fast in making a good interpretation/reading of the results and things will get a shape in weeks or months, not in years.
“Wonder why we never went back to the moon for 40 years”
Money.
NASA can’t do what Cogress won’t authorize the funding for. There are no votes in something the public lost interest in, espically when an unpopular war was going on.
Remember, we cancelled the last three missions, even thoug the hardware already existed. They’re lawn displays now, at KSC and JSC.
The same reason a great many other things do or don’t happen. Money.
Energy source? How? Like light in photoynthesis? Like NPK fertilizer?
Organics in Chile? Molecules, material?
This is so vague it’s as if they had’nt said anything.
sad but true? :
NASA =
N ever
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S traight
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Like oxygen in metabolism. Those molecules are oxidizers and that means they can, theoretically, replace oxygen in oxidation reactions. Not the same reactions we have in our bodies, of course, but analogues in a different biological path.
It’s a speculative possibility, though.