CellBioGuy comments on Astrobiology III: Why Earth? - Less Wrong

17 Post author: CellBioGuy 04 October 2016 09:59PM

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Comment author: DavidPlumpton 07 October 2016 06:33:06AM 1 point [-]

Have you ever seen this paper that claims a complexity analysis of the Viking lander experiment results can't be explained by chemistry alone? Interesting stuff...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257958533_Complexity_Analysis_of_the_Viking_Labeled_Release_Experiments

Comment author: CellBioGuy 07 October 2016 10:44:20PM *  1 point [-]

Now I have!

I think their case is weak but it is something to continue to be considered when analyzing any new data. There's weird soil chemistry there for sure, a good deal of which might be explicable from the interaction between perclorate and small amounts of organics, but the amount of data is tiny and I would not rule out soil microbes. A lot more work has to be done before you can say much with confidence.