Did space probes kill Mars life?
p2pnet.net News:- Is there life on Mars? The question has been occupying sc-fi writers and scientists for decades.
The two NASA Viking space probes launched 30 years ago may have come across it, a convention of astronomers has heard.
But their efforts to reveal its nature may have instead led to its demise.
It seems the search for life on the red planet, “may have actually snuffed it out,” says Associated Press. The probes may have found alien microbes on Mars and then, “inadvertently killed them”.
“It’s a plausible hypothesis that explains the Viking results quite well,” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University who studies the interplay of microbes, water and geology, saying.
He and German colleague Joop Houtkooper of Justus Liebig University, “suggest that the hydrogen peroxide detected by Viking could have come from killing Martian microbes that, like some peculiar creatures on Earth, use hydrogen peroxide the same way humans use water,” says the story.
“The Mars landers did all their chemical analyses by mixing samples with water – a step that would have prompted a powerful chemical reaction in any microbe full of hydrogen peroxide, killing it and releasing the peroxide.”
Schulze-Makuch’s research, “coincides with work being completed by a National Research Council panel, nicknamed the ‘weird life’ committee,” says AP, adding:
“The group worries that scientists may be too Earth-centric when looking for extraterrestrial life. The problem for scientists is that ‘you only find what you’re looking for,’ said geosciences professor Katherine Freeman, a reviewer of the NRC work.”
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Also See:
Associated Press – Probes may have turned killers on Mars, January 8, 2007
Associated Press – Study: ’70s Mars probes killed life?, January 8, 2006
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer – Life on Mars? We may have found it — and killed it, report says, January 8, 2006
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