NASA Announcing Astro-Biology Discovery

As I posted on Salon.com a few minutes ago, here are my thoughts on the NASA announcement:

Thursday, December 2, 2010 04:29 AM ET
Life on Mars, but microbial

I first stumbled upon the story of a 2002 meta-analysis of the Mars Viking landers from 1976 on Slashdot.org, which found the likelihood of life on Mars being about 90%.

It seems there were 3 identical experiments on both Viking landers, and all three came back positive for signs of life (i.e. take two soil samples, irradiate one to sterilize it, incubate both samples and measure off-gassing: non-sterilized soil samples peaked daily (26 hour Martian day) for NINE weeks!

Unfortunately, it seems gas chromospectography became the new darling of science between the planning phase of Vikings and their landings, so Vikings never did such tests.

[^THIS^ IS INCORRECT, see Wikipedia page on Viking for details.]

Initial NASA protocol was that there was something like 75% likelihood of life on Mars if both landers' 3 experiments were all positive. The experiments were ALL positive. The BIG announcement was never made, however.

Another, more recent meta-analysis pushed certainty up to about 95%.

Further studies of meteorites found on Earth, positively identified of Martian origin, have also added to the weight of evidence in favour of life on Mars.

So I've been hoping for an imminent announcement from NASA for *years* confirming life on Mars, and that's what I hope it is.

However I'll agree that it's more likely the announcement is about arsenic vs phosphorous(?) in life discovered in said lake.

Which leaves me still waiting...