[meteorite-list] Mars life concerns

[MexicoDoug at aol.com]

Mark F. wrote:

>First off, the microbes on the Surveyor camera were most  likely
>introduced by the astronauts themselves during handling.
 
Mark, Where were you when the damage was supposedly done in Nov.  1969?  You 
speak quite authoritatively, as if you were sitting there in the  supervisor's 
chair watching the analysis being mucked up.  I don't  think you were the 
"unnamed member of Jaffe's staff", though, because  you say you are a 
post-doctoral student now...It's possible there was  a breach, but your concept of 
probability ("most likely") simply and  in your own words I borrowed: "is bunk." 
 
1 to 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376.
 
The above number represents the probability of a coin being  flipped 100 
times and yielding 100 tails in a row. Maybe I missed a factor  of two, but that 
is really not important.  (and for 50 times it is still on  the order of 
Avogadros's number).  The point being, the probability of  getting 100 organisms of 
all the same species from the zoo that lives in, on and  around humans is much 
worse than these odds, due to competition.  So maybe  double the amount of 
digits to the left of the decimal point?  Or maybe  with some dependence they 
improve...that's would be quite an improvement...to  "most likely".
 
Sure the experiment could have gone wrong, sure there are as many possibly  
explanations as an active imagination will conjure...and sure I will embrace  
completely Ron's evidence to the extent it is scientific (unfortunately not  
much of it is, though it is good to know), enough to form a question mark  here. 
 But your personal bias really is about as invalid as your  unscientific 
thoughts on panspermia.
 
And I still am unclear why the 1998 NASA page, illustrated with cultures  and 
paraphenalia, I cited outlining the history of the bugs is on the  NASA 
website with no mention of breaches of sterilization nor subsequent  contamination, 
if this is so obvious to some of you? 
 
Note: "No other life forms were found in soil samples retrieved by the  
Apollo missions or by two Soviet unmanned sampling missions, although amino  acids 
- not necessarily of biological origin - were found in soil retrieved by  the 
Apollo astronauts.)", So: why in the camera, inside what has been  described a 
virgin insulation material on its interior???  Were hundreds of  pounds of 
Moon rocks treated differently from the camera, or do we have a  reasonable 
control of "sorts"?  Surely other rocks and soil would have come  back positive, 
or is one of the astronauts playing a dirty joke against all  odds?
 
All the more power to you for your opinions, opinions are like eyeballs,  
everyone has a couple...as these are only mine - and I stand behind them.   
Hopefully opinions will not be too a-frothing for the palate in this hot  weather.

Saludos, Doug