Maybe the Viking was right, after all...

[alexpgp]

Just over 25 years ago (September 3, 1976), Viking 2 landed on Mars. The first Viking spacecraft had already landed on the planet six weeks earlier.

Among the experiments on these vehicles was one to test for the presence of life on Mars. That experiment suggested evidence of life on the planet. However, the results of another experiment led researchers to dismiss such a conclusion...

Until a few months ago when a microbiologist named Joe Miller, who had been studying the old numbers, announced that the data from the Viking craft showed a circadian, or daily rhythm in the readings of that first experiment.

Rocks don't exhibit circadian patterns. Organisms do.

So, NASA has done the right thing: it's posted the original data on the Web. I'm not sure the data is necessarily all that interesting, in and of itself, but the fact that it was posted is.

* * *
Home after paying off some bills (including phone). Just over 3 hours to sleep time. Gotta work.

Cheers...

Comments

[papoose.livejournal.com]

thanks for the link

Data is ALWAYS interesting ;)

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

It's always nice (and somewhat of a novelty) to see a bureaucracy not try to cover up something. Maybe this will give them some leads for future experiments.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Well, it's truly amazing what things can be hidden in the most innocuous places.

Remember those pictures of Sojourner sent back from Mars? Pretty cool, huh?

Well, some amateur out there was playing around with the image, running it through Photoshop or something similar, when he found what basically amounted to a several-mile high dust cloud in the background of the picture!

Serendipity strikes more often when there are more targets to strike.

Cheers...