REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA—The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is suspected of having found extraterrestrial life (alien) the Planet Mars 50 years ago when the first two Viking landers were put on the red planet. But allegedly NASA accidentally killed him.
The claim was made by Dirk Schulze-Makuch of the Technical University Berlin, who believes experiments conducted in the 1970s that added water to the soil would smother any life lurking in the Martian landscape.
The test, known as the Viking Labeled Release experiment, initially yielded positive results for metabolism, but related investigations found no traces of organic matter.
Schulze-Makuch believes that the water containing dissolved nutrients in the soil may be too liquid and [kehidupan apa pun] die after a while.
While this theory may sound strange to some, it does happen to microbes that live in the rock salt of the Atacama, which has a Mars-like landscape, that doesn’t need rain to survive and too much water will wipe it out.
The two landers of NASA’s Viking mission landed on Mars on July 20, 1976 (Viking 1) and September 3, 1976 (Viking 2).
The lander is equipped with a number of instruments, including a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, a seismometer, meteorological instruments and a stereo color camera.
The device allows them to search for possible signs of life and study the physical and magnetic properties of the soil and atmosphere.
Schulze-Makuch called the results “confusing” in an opinion piece for BigThink, where he shared that one of the tests returned positive, and the other was negative for gas exchange. However, small amounts of chlorinated organic matter have been identified.
A positive test for life is adding water to the soil to see if products of respiration and metabolism appear.
The theory is that if there was life on Mars, the microorganisms would consume nutrients and release radioactive carbon in gaseous form.
In a 2007 study, the astronomy professor suggested that Martian life may have had hydrogen peroxide in its cells.
“This adaptation will have particular advantages in the Martian environment as it provides a low freezing point, oxygen source and hygroscopicity,” Schultz-Makuch and co-author Joop M. Houtkooper wrote in the study. Daily Mail, Thursday (31/8/2023).
He added that if we assume that native Martian life may have adapted to its environment by injecting hydrogen peroxide into its cells, this could explain the results obtained by Viking,” wrote Dirk Schulze-Makuch. If the Martian cells contained hydrogen peroxide, it would kill them.
In addition, this would cause the hydrogen peroxide to react with surrounding organic molecules to form large amounts of carbon dioxide, which is exactly what the instrument detected.
Another experiment, pyrolytic release, which was tested for organic synthesis also gave positive results. This test mixes carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide from Earth to see if the carbon gets incorporated into the soil.
The Viking lander detected chlorinated organic matter, but scientists think the untreated craft may have infected the planet with terrestrial ‘hitches’. “However, subsequent missions have verified the presence of native organic compounds on Mars, albeit in a chlorinated form,” wrote Dirk Schulze-Makuch.
Life on Mars can adapt to the dry environment by being buried in salt rock and absorbing water directly from the atmosphere. ‘The Viking experiments, which involved adding water to soil samples, may have overwhelmed these potential microbes, leading to their death.’
Dirk Schulze-Makuch isn’t the first scientist to come up with the idea that NASA discovered life on Mars 50 years ago. A study released in 2016 touted the same theory.
Experts from Arizona State University, Tempe, and National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, said the evidence gathered by the Viking mission was consistent with a biological explanation, showing that microorganisms on Mars adapted and evolved to meet harsh environmental conditions.
The researchers investigated the findings of the 1976 Viking Labeled Release Experiment and evaluated the ‘non-biological hypothesis’.
In the experiment, samples of Martian soil from the two landers were given nutrient injections and preheated and even kept in the dark for about two months.
The results show striking similarities to responses seen on terrestrial soil, including data from samples collected in California, Alaska, and Antarctica.
“Each of these characteristics is reminiscent of the response elicited by a summary of species of terrestrial microorganisms, including an initial positive response, heat control of 160C and 50C, reabsorption of gases produced on second nutrient injection, and death from long-term isolated storage,” the authors wrote. in the research.
The landers continued on their mission until the last transmissions to Earth on November 11, 1982 (Viking 1) and April 11, 1980 (Viking 2), but are still on Mars today.
2023-08-31 05:55:14
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