dear all
there are relatively few instances of digital preservation in the news
although documented cases of the consequences of digital information loss
are gradually accumulating. This is quite a nice example for scientific data.
Don't ask how much it will cost to go back !
Many thanks to Ellis Weinberger for drawing this to my attention.
Neil
From Comp.risks:
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 23:31:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Aaron Dickey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: NASA data from 1970s lost due to "forgotten" file format
In 1999, USC neurobiologist Joseph Miller asked NASA to check some old data
the Viking probes had sent back from Mars in the mid-1970s. Miller wanted to
find out whether certain information on gas released by Martian soil, which
at the time had been dismissed as meaningless "chemical activity," was
actually evidence of microbial life. NASA found the tapes he requested, but
they didn't find any way to read them. It turns out that the data, despite
being only about 25 years old, was in a format NASA had long since forgotten
about. Or, as Miller puts it, "The programmers who knew it had died."
Luckily, Miller has been able to cobble together about a third of the data
and get some useful results, but only because some form of printed record
had been saved. (And yes, he does believe the Viking probes turned up
evidence of microbes.)
Source: Reuters. Original article is available, at least temporarily, at
<http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010727/sc/space_mars_life_dc_1.html>,
<http://news.excite.com/news/r/010727/19/science-space-mars-life-dc>,
<http://reuters.activebuddy.com/s?id=DS1DEKNG8BBN>, or
<http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=sciencenews&StoryID=137333>.
NASA Data Point to Mars 'Bugs,' Scientist Says
July 27, 2001 07:58 PM ET
By Kevin Krolicki
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Did NASA discover evidence of life on Mars and
then misplace it for almost 25 years?
A University of Southern California scientist argues that is just what
happened and that once-lost data collected by the 1975 Viking probes
suggest the existence of Martian microbes.
The significance of that finding was overlooked -- along with the data
itself -- after NASA concluded that its experiments showed only signs
of chemical activity on the surface of the "Red Planet," said Joseph
Miller, a USC neurobiologist.
But a careful reexamination of a fragment of the recovered NASA record
showed a surprising pattern: gas released by the Martian soil and
tracked by Viking followed the same kind of rhythms followed by all
Earth-bound organisms from humans to fruit flies in a cycle akin to
feeding and respiration by colonies of microbes.
"I think, basically, that it's bugs," said Miller, a neurobiologist
and an expert in the study of the circadian rhythms that regulate
biological activity.
Two Viking spacecraft were launched by NASA in August and September of
1975 and took almost a year to reach the Martian atmosphere. Once
there, both sent probes to the surface some 3,000 miles (4,828 km)
apart to conduct a series of experiments, several of which were
designed to look for evidence of life.
In one of those tests, a robotic arm on the probes scooped up soil
samples, which were dropped into a dish along with a shot of a
radioactive carbohydrate solution.
Scientists reasoned that any organisms in the Martian soil would
consume the nutrients and release radioactive carbon as a gas,
something the probe was equipped to measure, said Miller.
Viking found clear evidence that the Martian soil generated gas over
the nine-week experiment, but scientists concluded that was the
product of reactive chemical "superperoxides" in the soil, not
evidence of life, Miller said.
NASA LOST TRACK OF RESULTS
That closed the book on the Viking experiments until Miller, who had
worked with NASA in the early 1980s studying the sleep cycles of
monkeys in space, asked the agency to go back over the record of the
experiment in 1999.
"I figured this was going to be on a Web site somewhere," Miller said.
"Well, guess again. They had lost track of it."
NASA scoured its archives and turned up the long-neglected computer
tapes, only to discover they were coded "in a format so old that the
programmers who knew it had died," Miller said.
Working from a printed record that the initial NASA team had saved,
Miller has been able to assemble and analyze about a third of the data
and plans to present his initial findings on Sunday at a scientific
conference in San Diego.
Miller found the gas emissions from the soil sample fell into a cycle
of precisely 24.66 hours -- the length of the Martian day -- a pattern
that was linked to a slight variation in the temperature inside the
mostly insulated lander.
That pattern of heightened activity in the warmer daytime and
inactivity at night is akin to the kind of temperature-driven
circadian rhythm that simple terrestrial organisms such as bread molds
exhibit, Miller said.
Even more suggestively, the amount of carbon gas released rose over
the course of the experiment, but then also dropped sharply at one
point when the soil sample was heated to 160 degrees Celsius (320
degrees Fahrenheit).
"I think that what was happening there was that we were killing all
the bugs," said Miller, who is working to recover the full Viking data
record to see if it confirms the pattern.
Other recent studies have shown signs of climate change on Mars dating
back about 100,000 years, instead of millions or billions, and suggest
that there could be shallow ice reserves below the planet's surface --
a key to sustaining life there.
Miller said he hopes his unexpected findings will encourage both NASA
and European researchers to revive biological experiments in the next
generation of Mars probes.
"Over the years NASA has primarily been interested in geology," said
Miller. "But this is something out of the clear blue sky, or I guess I
should say the red sky."
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Neil Beagrie
Assistant Director JISC Digital Preservation Focus
JISC/DNER Office, Tel/Fax/Voicemail :+44 (0)709 2048179
King's College London email: [log in to unmask]
Strand Bridge House url:
www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/preservation/
138 - 142, The Strand, email list:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/digital-preservation
London WC2R 1HH
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