Could Mars ever have supported life? This NASA challenge wants your help to find out

[Admin]

A new competition with HeroX asks for innovative ways to analyze data gathered on the Red Planet.

Could Mars ever have supported life? This NASA challenge wants your help to find out : Read more

 

[sam85geo]

Possibly, Mars did have a geological period analogous to Earth's Ediacaran period. i.e.; a slime world termed the Boring Billion. However, Mars today has no complex life which would indicate that any life on Mars never made it across an Ediacaran Mass Extinction.

 

[lfr2]

I'm not aware of any computational programs that can do this. Perhaps in the realm of AI it exists but the closest thing I can think of is filtering the EGA spectrum data with some sort of probability function against a database of known compounds (or a library of EGA spectra). Sounds easy if you have the software and data but I don't. If anyone enters this please let me know....I'd be interested to know more from a layman's standpoint. The contest details sound very complex.

 

[Helio]

I'm not aware of any computational programs that can do this. Perhaps in the realm of AI it exists but the closest thing I can think of is filtering the EGA spectrum data with some sort of probability function against a database of known compounds (or a library of EGA spectra). Sounds easy if you have the software and data but I don't. If anyone enters this please let me know....I'd be interested to know more from a layman's standpoint. The contest details sound very complex.

This challenge is interesting for a number of reasons:

Easy to use and learn, somewhat, VBA coding (Excel code) is useable for programming because the file format is csv.

There doesn’t seem to be many variables.

It seems to me they want a fast result when they get new data in order to draw attention quick enough to redirect subsequent work, rather than struggle getting likely excess data and having to process it.

It's like they want a way to get the sampler plate of the main menu, but only if it comes with meat. I like food metaphors.

Am I close?

 

[Catastrophe]

Possibly, Mars did have a geological period analogous to Earth's Ediacaran period. i.e.; a slime world termed the Boring Billion. However, Mars today has no complex life which would indicate that any life on Mars never made it across an Ediacaran Mass Extinction.

sam85geo, for general information: End-Ediacaran extinction - Wikipedia
QUOTE
Are you satisfied that our investigations into Martian life are sufficient to provide a definitive answer?

Cat

 

[lfr2]

Ok. Thanks Helio. Perhaps it might be simpler than I was thinking but then the question would be what compounds to look for. Phosphines are the only ones I know of associated with life on other planets.

 

[Helio]

Ok. Thanks Helio. Perhaps it might be simpler than I was thinking but then the question would be what compounds to look for. Phosphines are the only ones I know of associated with life on other planets.

My hope is that the actual chemistry won't be a problem since what they want in the programing is to search for spikes like the m/z ratio. I suspect it may be more two-dimensional but, regardless, no chemistry degree should be necessary -- just general data mining. If not, I'm toast.

 

[Helio]

This challenge is interesting for a number of reasons:

Easy to use and learn, somewhat, VBA coding (Excel code) is useable for programming because the file format is csv.

There doesn’t seem to be many variables.

It seems to me they want a fast result when they get new data in order to draw attention quick enough to redirect subsequent work, rather than struggle getting likely excess data and having to process it.

It's like they want a way to get the sampler plate of the main menu, but only if it comes with meat. I like food metaphors.

Am I close?

I fear I'm not close. After reading more about the contest, it seems to me they want a full-blown data analysis program that addresses the "whole enchilada". The data provided is simple: time, temperature, m/z, abundance.

But each sample is heated over time, so time and temperature are correlated. Some of this is intuitive. For instance, the m/z, for most compounds, will likely get binned (detected) only when they get hot enough since the greater the mass (and higher m/z ratio) the hotter it must be for it to get ionized enough for detection.

Identification of the compound falls into about 10 types (basalt, etc.), though you can add your own if you like. This suggests that weight (value) must be assigned to them and I think ratios of these can also play a big role.

This looks very involved, with only 5 weeks left. They do have a forum (here) that gets into it a little deeper, but you won't find much activity.

I hope someone will look at this closer and discover they really do want something that will snag key data points much quicker than they are accustomed, but it looks to me like they want something they already should have. These spectrometers have been around for a while and scientists, even those for the mfg., likely have these programs already. So what am I missing?

I did notice they do have 11 teams working on this, though one person might be an entire team. This is such a cool project and also very important, so I wish them the best.

 

[Helio]

If the NASA promoters happen to stop here and ask for someone to join their forum to ask all the dumb questions to illuminate issues others are afraid to ask, then I think I know someone who can assist with that, as well as add a component of perhaps humor, ironic stuff for the ionic stuff.

Here's my first dumb question -- to help the dump question asker on his or her way......

Notice that their "abundance" values are in units of roughly 1 part per million or 10 million. This value represents the number of ions per second. But this means that a million or 10 million seconds must pass in order to catch 1 ionized compound! Thus the rate is about 1 ion every 30 years or so. That seems a little off.