I sometimes wonder; what is the point of providing a corresponding author’s E-Mail address on publications? Has any one ever tried to actually correspond with them? I’ve attempted this more than a dozen times and got responses from 1 author.
The latest try to communicate (last week) was after reading the results reporting organic molecules on Mars, which appeared here, and is open access. (Quick note, I don’t know if it is Safari but this website is absolutely terrible). Gleaned from press reports suggesting the presence of organic molecules on Mars I wanted to see if I could find out exactly what these were, these organic molecules. Topical reports (which are non specific) and especially the blurb in the paper leads one to assume that there appear to be pools of chlorobenzene on the martian surface. No wonder the Martians tried to invade us. However, reading the paper further one, after several pages in, comes across actual amounts for this compound. It appears it’s in the ppb range. So no chlorobenzene metabolising martian fish, unless the stuff has evaporated over eons of time and the fish have moved on to something more tasty.
Anyway in the paper the authors briefly discuss the similarity of isotope ratios between Mars and here quoting the 36Cl/38Cl ratios. Quote: “The 36Cl/38Cl isotopic ratio found on Mars from HCl measurements is very similar to the one on Earth (3.19 ± 0.03 [Farley et al., 2014] versus 3.08 from NIST). However, due to the collection and processing of the data, a deviation from the 3:1 ratio is expected. It is explained by both coelution with other compounds sharing the same masses and by the scanning rates intrinsic to the SAM MS which requires the peaks area to be fitted in posttreatment. A ~3.8 ratio of the m/z 112 and m/z 114 ions was also observed in the EGA data during the boil-off segment of the JK-3 experiment, but because the GC temperature cut did not include volatiles released during the boil-off, the JK-3 EGA observation without GCMS confirmation is insufficient to support definitive identification of chlorobenzene at JK. This is nevertheless a secondary level observation that may suggest the presence of chlorobenzene (or precursors) in both JK and CB samples from the Sheepbed mudstone.” Just how this confirms the presence if chlorobenzene as a “secondary level observation” in these samples is a mystery to me!
Anyway should this not be the ratio of 35Cl/37Cl, which is 3:1, at least on earth? Perhaps martian chlorine is different. So I wanted to raise this point with the authors and sent them an E-mail. Still waiting for an answer. They, working for NASA and with a “nasa.gov e-mail address”, must be very busy people getting hundreds of mails/day or more. Perhaps mine got eaten by the spam filter, who knows. So I guess that I’ll just have to be patient or send it again.
While I’m on this paper I find the link between organic molecules of the martian surface and the detection of chlorobenzene somewhat tenuous. Wading through the paper the only source of organic molecules is their GC column, which is full of aromatic polymers. I know they did lab tests, blanks and everything, but still.
I must say that the amount of work involved just to carry out these experiments is tremendous. Think about the instrumental development that went into this project and then it all went to Mars, landed, lived and detected. That is a great achievement in itself.
Update 20.04.2015; Still waiting for a reply!
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