Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

Rxke · 2004-05-19 01:13:48

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natu … 73.stm]BBC Online Article

"The Great Salt Lake in Utah has an otherworldly quality to it. It is a pink-tinged hyper-saline lake trimmed with a halo of salt that encrusts everything it touches.

With water levels at a 30-year low, the salt load has reached a saturation point of 30%, giving it 10 times the salinity of seawater.

Life just should not be able to exist here, but scientists are finding that the lake is teeming with life. "

At last some comprehensive research being done on these halophiles. Interesting team.

atomoid · 2004-05-19 22:40:44

this is udderly fascinating. definately a must-read.

As the conditions on early Mars got colder and harsher, it lost liquid water through evaporation or sequestration into permafrost.
Remaining bodies of water would have been increasingly salty places, and then finally all liquid water disappeared, and the salt deposits eventually lithified into the evaporate rocks the rover sees today.
Any early Martian microbe would have had to withstand a high salt environment and intense UV radiation. Sound familiar?
...Many scientists have argued for some time that if bacteria can survive such conditions here, why not on Mars? Now, Opportunity has proved bodies of open water did once exist and so shown us that the Red Planet is prime real estate after all.
...In 2000, researchers actually managed to revive 250-million-year-old halo-tolerant bacteria found on Earth in underground salt crystals. Could we possibly do the same with Martian microbes?

Palomar · 2004-05-20 07:32:09

"Life just should not be able to exist here, but scientists are finding that the lake is teeming with life. "

*Cool. Says there are -dozens- of species of "so-called" (?) halophiles there. Interesting, too, about the carotenoids.

--Cindy

Rxke · 2004-05-20 11:49:34

... And those 250-mill yrs old bacteria... S. Rads? How could they otherwise stay viable? In that timeframe, their 'data' (DNA) must've gotten seriously corrupted by background radiation...

I guess we can fairly confidently state that when there's liquid water, there's life, count on life to be able to adapt to extreme situations.
Extreme is in our view, as finnicky humans. Life has proven to be *much* more flexible than we thought, the recent years...
So every day the possibility of life, active or dormant, on Mars gets a bit more realistic.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-05-20 23:07:09

Hi Rik!
I believe a lot of background radiation comes from igneous rocks and from space. (I'm prepared to be contradicted on this point.) Maybe bacteria/archaea, entombed in almost pure sodium chloride, might be relatively insulated from much of that radiation and be better able to withstand the passage of time in suspended animation(?).
???

Rxke · 2004-05-21 08:58:52

Even if shielded, they'd still would receie an awful lot of radiation in that timespan... And it's exactly the 'suspended' part that impresses me: living cells have a fighting chance to repair rad-damage, suspended cells not. So all rad-damage adds up over time. And then they're *still* able to 'wake up' despite being heavily damaged. Impressive.

Imagine receiving all radiation you'd normally get in your life in one go, but multiplied by roughly 3 million! (250mil yrs/80 yrs (average human lifetime)) Wow!

Palomar · 2005-02-07 09:11:10

*I remembered this thread, and thought I'd place http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/ … .html]this article here, as it focuses on EM's in very harsh Earth environments (like the Great Salt Lake, etc.).

These are certainly hearty critters. Mentions Mono Lake (with photo) being like Mars. Discusses the many environs EM's are found in.

Some of the microbes McGenity’s group found were completely unknown; including a new group of Archaea they have named MSBL-1. McGenity speculates that these microbes are methanogens because they are related to methane producing Archaea and no other methane-producing microbes were found in the basins, which are abundant with methane.

--Cindy

SpaceNut · 2005-02-07 10:47:16

While the article is not about microbes found in utah it however may explain why we may not find them on mars.

High Voltage Mars

Dust particles in a storm create an electrostatic charge whenever they strike one another or the ground. In field experiments led by William Farrell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, electrical fields of 10 kilovolts per meter were measured in dust devils on Earth. Such experiments suggest that dust devils on Mars could generate very large electric fields of about 5 to 20 kilovolts per meter.

ouch

Shaun Barrett · 2005-02-07 20:04:17

That "Wild Things" article serves to convince me even more, as though that were possible (! ), that life can, and more than likely does, exist on Mars.
I could quote so much of that piece in support of my contention that Mars hosts life but it would be better if you just read it yourselves!
Nice article, Cindy. :up:

Thanks, SpaceNut, for the "High Voltage Mars" article, too. It serves, once again, to underline the glaring inconsistency in NASA's approach to the Viking life-search results.

The lack of organics on Mars was first established by the Viking landers in 1976. The two landers conducted four experiments to try to detect life, and one of these experiments showed that the surface of Mars was entirely devoid of carbon compounds.

This quote refers to the results of the Mass Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) experiment, which appeared to show that Martian soil is devoid of organic material, down to parts per billion levels.
THE SAME GCMS INSTRUMENT, THOUGH, WAS LATER SHOWN TO BE INCAPABLE OF DETECTING ORGANIC COMPOUNDS IN ANTARCTIC SOILS KNOWN TO CONTAIN BREEDING COLONIES OF BACTERIA! i.e. The results it sent back to Earth in 1976 were useless!

Yet, the mantra goes on and on - even to this day - that Viking proved there was no organic material in the Martian soil. This now discredited GCMS data even forms one of the pillars of this article, and appears as part of its Summary in the first paragraph:-

Summary (Feb 07, 2005): Meteorites and comets should have delivered vast amounts of organic chemicals to Mars, yet the Viking mission found no organics in the red soil.

I cannot believe this is happening and I don't understand why this BS is being allowed to continue!
Why is nobody correcting this nonsense about the GCMS results?!! :realllymad:
Why are scientists like this Sushil Atreya (the researcher referred to in the article) still labouring under the burden of data known perfectly well by the whole scientific community to be inaccurate?!

This is real Twilight Zone stuff.
No wonder the Conspiracy Theory advocates are alive and well in La La Land - I can see their point of view! :bars:

SpaceNut · 2005-02-25 06:45:15

There has been more news of extreme biological life found even in ice and other very cold places as of late.
Frozen Bacterium Has Implications for Mars

A newly discovered life form that froze on Earth some 30,000 years ago was apparently alive all that time and started swimming as soon as it thawed, a NASA scientist reported on Wednesday, in a finding he said has implications for possible contemporary life on Mars.
The organism -- a bacterium dubbed Carnobacterium pleistocenium -- probably flourished in the Pleistocene Age, along with woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, said Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

Implication are that if life did start and was frozen in time that once thawed it would spring back to being alive once more.

The mechognism for survival must also be studied in that if we can put ourselves in that sort of staysis then we could make the long journey to the stars by doing so.

Palomar · 2005-02-25 07:55:49

That "Wild Things" article serves to convince me even more, as though that were possible (! ), that life can, and more than likely does, exist on Mars.
I could quote so much of that piece in support of my contention that Mars hosts life but it would be better if you just read it yourselves!
Nice article, Cindy. :up:

Thanks, SpaceNut, for the "High Voltage Mars" article, too. It serves, once again, to underline the glaring inconsistency in NASA's approach to the Viking life-search results.
The lack of organics on Mars was first established by the Viking landers in 1976. The two landers conducted four experiments to try to detect life, and one of these experiments showed that the surface of Mars was entirely devoid of carbon compounds.
This quote refers to the results of the Mass Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) experiment, which appeared to show that Martian soil is devoid of organic material, down to parts per billion levels.
THE SAME GCMS INSTRUMENT, THOUGH, WAS LATER SHOWN TO BE INCAPABLE OF DETECTING ORGANIC COMPOUNDS IN ANTARCTIC SOILS KNOWN TO CONTAIN BREEDING COLONIES OF BACTERIA! i.e. The results it sent back to Earth in 1976 were useless!
Yet, the mantra goes on and on - even to this day - that Viking proved there was no organic material in the Martian soil. This now discredited GCMS data even forms one of the pillars of this article, and appears as part of its Summary in the first paragraph:-
Summary (Feb 07, 2005): Meteorites and comets should have delivered vast amounts of organic chemicals to Mars, yet the Viking mission found no organics in the red soil.
I cannot believe this is happening and I don't understand why this BS is being allowed to continue!
Why is nobody correcting this nonsense about the GCMS results?!! :realllymad:
Why are scientists like this Sushil Atreya (the researcher referred to in the article) still labouring under the burden of data known perfectly well by the whole scientific community to be inaccurate?!
This is real Twilight Zone stuff.
No wonder the Conspiracy Theory advocates are alive and well in La La Land - I can see their point of view! :bars:

*Hi Shaun: How did I miss your post?? This is a hot-button issue, I know. ::shakes head:: I have NO idea, except to say "culture of the scientific establishment" -? (I've often wondered how professional scientists would regard some of my own viewpoints. Not that they would regard my ramblings, but you know what I mean).

People afraid to speak out what they really think, pressure to conform, going along with the perceived majority, etc. Except for a few lone, brave individuals who carry on regardless (and who face ostracization, ridicule, etc.).

I value science in and of itself, for itself. But as for the culture(s) within various scientific circles, it's any outsider's guess. :-\

But to ignore something that's right in front of one's face...

--Cindy

Shaun Barrett · 2005-02-25 19:16:18

Thanks for the reply, Cindy.
Yes, the situation re. organic compounds in the Martian regolith is puzzling, to say the least. O.K., the GCMS did prove that there weren't large quantities of organic material in the topsoil on Mars, but to say .. :-

" .. one of these experiments showed that the surface of Mars was entirely devoid of carbon compounds."

.. seems to me to be a clear case of wilfully ignoring the GCMS's shortcomings. (But why?! )

I would probably have accepted the report saying the amount of organic compounds was much lower than theory suggests should be there; that would make sense because the GCMS results did legitimately set an upper limit on the amount of organics. But subsequent tests have shown they're not sensitive enough at the lower end of the scale to justify the use of terms like "entirely devoid of carbon compounds".

The fact that NASA is preparing to launch the Mars Science Laboratory in 2009, to seek out organics in the soil and analyze them, serves to underline the inescapable conclusion that even they themselves(!) don't believe the very GCMS results they've been touting as fact for 30 years!!

They can't have their cake and eat it too.
But either nobody seems to notice the inconsistency or they're too nervous about funding to query it. :hm:

[By the way, thanks for humouring me as I carry on pounding the drum I've been beating for years now! :rant: ]

Palomar · 2005-02-25 20:06:31

[By the way, thanks for humouring me as I carry on pounding the drum I've been beating for years now! :rant: ]

*I'm not humoring you, sugar plum. I completely see your points on this. And it's gotten to where -I'm- tempted to grab a few necks and commence throttling. :laugh: (That, from a generally non-violent person).

--Cindy

dickbill · 2005-06-25 09:36:15

... And those 250-mill yrs old bacteria... S. Rads? How could they otherwise stay viable? In that timeframe, their 'data' (DNA) must've gotten seriously corrupted by background radiation...
I guess we can fairly confidently state that when there's liquid water, there's life, count on life to be able to adapt to extreme situations.

The way Deinococcus Radiodurans bacteria survives DNA fragmentation is by keeping copies of information.
You can imagine that after exposure to radiation or dessication one copy of chromosmal DNA is very fragmented, the other DNA copy is also fragmented but at other random sites. Radiodurans has 4 copies, thus increasing the chance of information redundancy.
This is well described here :
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.htm … ?pid=10359

Regarding the equation Water = Life, I beg to difer. This would be true only if you consider "Life" as nothing more than one long, very long, chemical reaction, with many intermediate products (like humans beings), and which final state we ignore.
If that was true, and it could be such, then as with any chemical reaction, it's just a matter to get the ingredients together and the cinetic, the thermodynamic, dictates what you get statistically after one billion year of reaction, two billion years of reaction etc. In this case, if there is water on mars, then life is granted.

But "We" are the molecules of this long reaction, it's difficult for us to know from within the reaction in the flask if this is actually a reaction.
Granted, everything that is observable from within the flask indicates that life is indeed just about chemistry, but philosophy doesn't necesseraly agree with that and even suggest that it could exist a world outside the flask that would deny us the title of chemical reactives agitated by brownian movement.
I am puzzled, why a chemical reaction would create a reactif intermediate (the mind) that would basically question it's own unminded, chemical, nature ? It seems that our mind allow us, through philosophy for example, to voyage out of the flask, which science doesn't allow, never. Indeed, until man and consciousness appeared, when only plants and animals were roaming earth, nobody could discuss the chemical nature of life and life was consistent with itself, being a chemical reaction. But now our existence threatens this interpretation and thus the presence of life on Mars.

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#1 2004-05-19 01:13:48

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#2 2004-05-19 22:40:44

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#3 2004-05-20 07:32:09

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#4 2004-05-20 11:49:34

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#5 2004-05-20 23:07:09

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#6 2004-05-21 08:58:52

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#7 2005-02-07 09:11:10

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#8 2005-02-07 10:47:16

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#9 2005-02-07 20:04:17

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#10 2005-02-25 06:45:15

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#11 2005-02-25 07:55:49

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#12 2005-02-25 19:16:18

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#13 2005-02-25 20:06:31

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

#14 2005-06-25 09:36:15

Re: Utah Microbes Point to Mars - Research into extremophiles

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