WHO'S ON MARS? (continued)

Jim,

Regarding the ammonia story, this is the article I read:

Conditional signs of life on a distant planet
 
 
 
 
 
By STEPHEN STRAUSS
Globe and Mail Update  
 
 
Of all the activities journalists indulge in that readers never see, griping about stories we have slaved over which didn't make it into the newspaper might top the list.
 
The reasons for non-publication are myriad, but the strangest are the ones in which after much work you simply can't tell what is going on.
 
On Thursday of last week, David Whitehouse, the science editor for the online version of the British broadcaster BBC, wrote an article headlined ”Ammonia on Mars could mean life.”
 
In it he described as yet unreported readings taken by an instrument aboard ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, a craft which has been orbiting the red planet since December.
 
Mr. Whitehouse said the spectrometer had tentatively detected ammonia, a gas which would only survive in the thin Martian atmosphere for a few hours.
 
He further wrote that there were only two possible sources for the ammonia - active volcanoes or microbes - and no Martian volcanoes have ever been seen.
 
The piece then quoted an unnamed NASA scientist saying both that ”ammonia could be the key to finding life on Mars” and ”there are no known ways for ammonia to be present in the Martian atmosphere that do not involve life.”
 
The BBC article further said that Vittorio Formisano, the lead scientist for the Mars Explorer instrument which supposedly found the ammonia, would present his findings at a conference in Paris this week.
 
Now finding any sign of anything life-like on Mars is to space science what a cure for cancer is in medical research. Not only is the discovery big news unto itself, it would also lose billions and billions of dollars of future research funding.
 
Accordingly, hundreds of journalists began telephoning ESA for more information and were referred to Guido De Marchi, an astronomer who also works as a Holland-based press officer for ESA.
 
His corporate-approved response to the BBC report of microbe-produced ammonia was six degrees north of damning and 12 kilometres beyond dismissive.
 
”It is not true; it is a hoax,” he told me Friday.
 
”The instrument aboard the Mars Express has not looked for ammonia; ammonia has not been found, and the principal investigator for the instrument will not talk about it at a conference to be held in Paris next week.”
 
Mr. De Marchi also went on to castigate the article's use of an unnamed NASA scientist. ”This makes it of course impossible to trace how the information did surface,” adding slyly that the wrongness of the report means ”it must be very hot in England this week.”
 
He concluding by saying that this was not the first time Mr. Whitehouse had written an article based on speculation which later proved to be wrong.
 
Specifically he pointed out the British journalist also reported erroneously that oceans of liquid methane or ethane had been found on Saturn's moon Titan.
 
The notion that a journalist perpetrated a hoax is, of course, more than a little libellous and so merited a phone call to Mr. Whitehouse at the BBC. All I got was his telephone answering machine, and so I called the press office at the BBC who told me to send an email with my questions.
 
I did, but when I didn't hear back in a couple of hours, I called back and said, in essence, ”chums, if we print this, this isn't going to look good for the good, grey Mother Corp.”
 
Then I read Mr. De Marchi's incendiary remarks and that got the press people into vroom gear. They quickly called back and said: ”We stand behind the story 100 per cent.”
 
Why, I said, somewhat incredulously, and they referred me to Mr. Formisano abstract at the now almost infamous conference where he was indeed scheduled to speak.
 
The abstract has a sentence in it that states ”the high spectral resolution [of the instrument in question] allows us to identify a number of small signatures which possibly will bring us to the identification of minor compounds [at the moment a good candidate is ammonia].”
 
I wasn't sure what all that meant, but it sounded as if it is intimating: ”There is stuff that maybe/could be ammonia in the Martian atmosphere, and if it is, our instrument maybe/might allow us to find it.”
 
But as you can clearly tell this is science couched in the rabidly conditional tense. Maybe we will find something, but the dead as a dinosaur look of Mars to the naked eye also strongly suggests that the instrument will show us the reading isn't ammonia.
 
Given all the confusion, and unable to speak to the principals, the story never got written.
 
Well, on Monday ESA backed up from its hoax remarks. Mr. De Marchi says he wasn't aware of the abstract when he talked to me originally, but that doesn't make any difference.
 
Professor Formisano had written a précis of the talk months before when he thought he might look for ammonia. But since then his research has changed, and he hasn't and likely won't look for the gas.
 
And this is what the BBC reporter would have found if he had telephoned him directly, which he didn't.
 
I phoned Mr. Whitehouse and again got the answering machine. Ai-yi-yi. Still a news mess, but what I think is that I am completely fed up with ”would be, could be, might be” reports about life on Mars - or anywhere else in the solar system. Completely fed up.
 
I don't want any more speculation about living things based on rumour and four conditional tenses, once removed. I want real evidence. I want real data. I want a real living thing. And so should the BBC, and so should the European Space Agency, and so should NASA and so should you gentle readers.
 
And until it is there, you should turn the page on any article about life elsewhere when no actual life has been found.
 
 
www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM...0719.wstrauss0720/BN Story/Front

And more:

s Physicist Vittorio Formisano's Mars Data Being Suppressed by ESA?
 
 
© 2004 by Linda Moulton Howe
 
 
 
"Speculation is that already methane is a rather strong indicator life is probably present today on Mars. ...Formaldehyde (also detected?) is destroyed in the Martian atmosphere within 7.5 hours. There is no way that formaldehyde can exist and remain for a long time in the Martian atmosphere. If (formaldehyde) confirmed (in addition to the confirmed methane, possibly life on Mars today, yes."  
- Vittorio Formisano, Ph.D., Physicist , May 6, 2004
 
 
July 22, 2004 - Today I  was scheduled to interview physicist Vittorio Formisano at the COSPAR (Committee On Space Research) meeting in Paris where he was scheduled to hold a press conference to announce the final results of his Planetary Fourier Spectrometer mounted on the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express Orbiter.Vittorio Formisano, Ph.D., is the Principal Investigator of the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) which he built and designed to detect methane and other gaseous molecules. Dr. Formisano is based at the Institute of Physics and Interplanetary Science in Rome, Italy, and has been commuting to ESA offices in Darmstadt, Germany, to gather more data from the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer in hopes that he can confirm the location of one or more sources of the Martian methane, as well as molecular indications of formaldehyde, benzene and ammonia. The presence of those molecules in the Martian atmosphere, would most likely mean a life process of some kind, he told me in my previous May 6, 2004, interview with him while he was working in his Rome office. See: 05-06-04 Earthfiles.  
 
 
The Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) mounted on the Mars Express  
spacecraft in orbit around Mars has already confirmed a surprisingly large amount of methane
in the Martian atmosphere. See 03-31-04 Earthfiles. If molecules of formaldehyde, benzene  
and ammonia are also confirmed, it would probably mean biological life processes are  
at work on Mars. See 05-06-04 Earthfiles. ESA 2001 Illustration by Medialab.
 
 
This morning, the cell phone number he gave me to call him has only a recorded message in Italian and his office number in Rome is not being answered at all. Then I learned that his originally scheduled press conference at the Paris COSPAR meeting today has allegedly been canceled by ESA's Guido De Marchi, an astronomer who also works as a Holland-based press officer for ESA. According to Britain's Globe and Mail.com this week:
 
"David Whitehouse, the science editor for the online version of the British broadcaster BBC, wrote an article headlined 'Ammonia on Mars could mean life' (distributed by internet) on Thursday, July 15, 2004. In it he described as yet unreported readings taken by an instrument aboard ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, a craft which has been orbiting the red planet since December.  
   
"Mr. Whitehouse said the spectrometer had tentatively detected ammonia, a gas which would only survive in the thin Martian atmosphere for a few hours. He further wrote that there were only two possible sources for the ammonia - active volcanoes or microbes - and no Martian volcanoes have ever been seen.  
   
"The piece then quoted an unnamed NASA scientist saying both that 'ammonia could be the key to finding life on Mars' and 'there are no known ways for ammonia to be present in the Martian atmosphere that do not involve life.'  
The BBC article further said that Vittorio Formisano, the lead scientist for the Mars Explorer instrument which supposedly found the ammonia, would present his findings at a conference in Paris this week.  
   
Now finding any sign of anything life-like on Mars is to space science what a cure for cancer is in medical research. Not only is the discovery big news unto itself, it would also loose billions and billions of dollars of future research funding. Accordingly, hundreds of journalists began telephoning ESA for more information and were referred to Guido De Marchi, an astronomer who also works as a Holland-based press officer for ESA.  
   
His corporate-approved response to the BBC report of microbe-produced ammonia was six degrees north of damning and 12 kilometres beyond dismissive. 'It is not true; it is a hoax. The instrument aboard the Mars Express has not looked for ammonia; ammonia has not been found, and the principal investigator for the instrument will not talk about it at a conference to be held in Paris next week.'"  
   
   
When Dr. Formisano and I set today for my phone interview with him at the COSPAR Conference in Paris, he told me the original molecular data was firm from his point of view and he expected to announce that an organic source on Mars is producing the gases, probably from an underground source. By now, it was expected that Explorer's deep earth-penetrating radar would have been functioning in an exploration for underground water ice or even liquid water that might have helped pinpoint possible underground sites where organic processes could exist in conjunction with H2O. But the deployment of the radar has been delayed until this fall.  
   
Now, has a major European physicist been silenced simply because he might be the first scientist on Earth with hard evidence of a life process beyond Earth? If so, is the suppression linked to an unstated political pecking order in the American and European bureaucracies? Who would control the suppression beyond astronomer Guido De Marchi in Amsterdam?  
 
www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=749&category=Science
 

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Websites:
 
www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/
 
www.esa.int/export/esaCP/index.html
 
www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Dec96/LifeUnderground.html
 
marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
 
And this post (violet) from angular momentum:
   
"On Richard Hoagland's recent appearance on coast
he talked about a purported cover-up of evidence that proves life on Mars. He said Physicist Vittorio Formisano was scheduled to announce the final results of his Mars research at the COSPAR (Committee On Space Research) meeting in Paris; however, the meeting was mysteriously canceled. Hoagland said Formisano's research involved ammonia found on Mars. Since ammonia can only last a very short time on Mars, Hoagland theorizes that living things must be creating it. He believes that Formisano was going to announce this discovery, but has been ordered to remain silent under penalty of imprisonment."
__________________________

On the surface of it, it looks like the ammonia findings are being supressed or misrepresented. Trying to figure out what is really going on gets complicated. I suspect one of the above writers is involved in spreading disinfo or promoting certain agendas for the government. I am slightly suspicious of one of the other writers as well.

On one hand the government has seemingly been involved in a campaign for many years to foster popular belief in ET life, UFOs and aliens. The pace of this engineering of mass attitude has picked up quite a bit in the last few years.

On the other hand, obvious effort is being expended to hide what is really on Mars. Or at least give the appearance that they are trying to hide what is on Mars.

Maybe the botched image sanitizing job I pointed out in the post above wasn't really botched at all. Maybe it was meant to be found. Small mistakes of this sort would have the effect of gently leaking the possibility of intelligent life on Mars to the general public, slowly conditioning them to accept new realities.

The sudden and complete revelation of a shocking, new paradigm would challenge many wide-spread and deeply rooted belief systems. Panic could ensue and societal structures might crumble under the weight of such news.

The debate over the Face on Mars also serves this type of agenda very well. The ongoing debate conditions people to the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

On one side, Richard Hoagland and other researchers argue that the Face on Mars is an artifact created by intelligent beings. Those that are ready to believe and accept the existence of ET life can side with this point of view. On the other hand we have NASA referring to it as nothing more than "a hill of rocks" and those who feel threatened by the possibility of ET life can choose to accept NASA's views.

Gradually, as more and more "chunks" of the truth are revealed, society will adjust and calmly accept the new realities.

Trying to sort out what's true and what's not and if the agenda apparently in progress is what's really going on or if there is entirely some other hidden a genda in progress is enough to cause headaches and nosebleeds.

Pass the F

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aspiren. I'm tired of thinking about it.

I just hope that at some point they are planning on telling us the truth.
 
 
   

Thankyou for all the information about molecules found or suspected to exist on Mars. I hope these findings prove to be correct and I know complex molecules like these exist all over the known universe in clouds called of all things, molecular clouds. So, I'm very nearly convinced they do form without life also existing.

Jim, Your viewpoint that ammonia molecules could exist without life is intriguing. Do you have a speculation on how that might occur?

I know ammonia can be and is manufactured so why would nature not know how? I am not a chemical engineer but I know ammonia is three atoms of hydrogen bonded to one atom of nitrogen in a very exact geometric shape that is different than a carbon bond or methane which is four atoms of hydrogen bonded to one atom carbon also in an exact shape. Both of these molecules and a lot of other ones are found all over the universe-very common structures.

<i>Originally posted by Jim</i>
<br />I know ammonia can be and is manufactured so why would nature not know how?

If ammonia is created from nitrogen and hydrogen, the process requires very high pressure, elevated temperature and a solid catalyst. Catalyst is not an option; it is an absolute necessity. A typical catalyst will be a solid, hot metal oxide. Possibly these conditions could exist very deep within Mars, but it is difficult to imagine a "lava" environment which would include nitrogen and hydrogen with no oxidation.

Lifeforms can produce ammonia under different conditions in which ammonia is a "breakdown" product.

If ammonia is being detected, the odds are extremely high that lifeforms are producing it.

A Chemical Engineer


Gregg Wilson

Hi Gregg, There must be other ways to make ammonia because it is observed in molecular clouds where no life can exist due to cold and low pressure. Maybe at low temperatures the reactions can proceed in ways not fast enough to be of interest to engineers but should be to astronomers.