Ophiolite
Recalcitrant Procrastinating Ape
This is a peculiar reaction to my post where I stated "I . . suspect that the Viking Lander experiments did discover Martian life. (Not conspiracy theory - just a more cautious approach to the data.)" The key words here were "suspect" and "more cautious approach to the data". Why then, given those caveats, would you ask for "compelling evidence"? If I had compelling evidence I wouldn't just "suspect", nor would I need to be "more cautious in interpreting the data".Much like you, I'd like to think that there was life on Mars. However, I haven't seen any evidence that there was. Until I have access to evidence that there was, or maybe still is, I will continue to conclude that there isn't. If you can provide compelling evidence that the Viking Lander discovered Martian life, I'd like to see it.
You have access to the evidence ; NASA had access to the evidence; the world had access to the evidence. Two of the three experiments on the Viking Landers produced results that, prior to the landings, would have been taken to indicate/strongly suggest the presence of life. This was on both landers, separated by half a planet. Because the mass spectrometer (whose sensitivity has been questioned) showed no organics NASA and its research teams came up with an alternate explanation.
That was a reasonable interim solution. What was not reasonable was then taking that as a final conclusion and failing to devise more sensitive experiments for follow up missions. Instead we are left "looking for the water". Why? We know Mars was replete with water, perhaps not Earth standard, but seas and lakes and rain and snow.
I gave up following this lost argument a decade ago, but if you wish I'll dig out some references fo you.
And, by the way, I don't "like to think there was life on Mars", I just wish ambiguous evidence to be treated intelligently and investigated properly.
If you read carefully the conditions under which I think it probable that possible reactions will occur during the course of many millions of years you will see that those conditions implicitly convert the possible to probable. Which is why I said that I thought there was some crossed wires in what was meant by possible. (Or words to that effect.)I feel similarly about the idea that all possible reactions have necessarily already occurred here on Earth. It can be considered one data point.
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