[Nettime-bold] Paper Wraps Computer

[David Mandl <dmandl@panix.com>]

[From RISKS-List, Volume 21, Issue 56...]

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Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 23:31:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Aaron Dickey <wnnaaron@yahoo.com>
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>.

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--
Dave Mandl
dmandl@panix.com
davem@wfmu.org
http://www.wfmu.org/~davem


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