'Life on Mars' Meteorite Rejected After 10 Years

An anonymous reader writes "Ten years ago, NASA announced that the Martian meteorite ALH84001 showed evidence of life on Mars. The announcement made headlines around the world, and even prompted President Clinton to make a statement. Ten years later, most scientists believe that everything in the meteorite can be explained by non-biological processes. "We certainly have not convinced the community, and that's been a little bit disappointing," said David McKay, a scientist behind the 'life on Mars' paper. Unfortunately, David McKay's own brother is one of his critics. "He [David] got a little testy about the results we were getting," said Gordon McKay. "What we have shown is that it is possible to form these things inorganically.""

Comments

Re:Only now?

[shawnce]

I think the tin foil hat is a little tight... it appears to be cutting off blood supply to your brain affecting your reasoning abilities. =P

Basically from the word go their has been many many scientist that questioned the theory presented for the origin of the features in the meteorite. A handful of those scientist did experiments over the _years_ since (research takes time) to see if any non-organic processes could have produced similar structures and they have found ones that can.

Tough Day to be a Martian

[DumbSwede]

Coming in the wake of this recent news about atmospheric hydrogen-peroxide possibly scouring Mars's surface of microbial life it looks like the odds of finding life easily on Mars are dwindling. Subsurface drilling still holds out hope.

Regardless of current life conditions I still hold out hope for past life fossil discoveries, multi-cellular past life. Several of the Mars rover pictures look to show fossils, but NASA is being very cautious in it assessments. Not sure what the ID camp or Creationists will make of bring back criniod like fossils from Mars estimated to be 1-2 billion years old. Actually I already pretty much do know, so consider the question rhetorical.

Re:The hard truth

[starseeker]

Science has to be skeptical about anything. For example, let's take two statements:

1. Life had its origins on Earth, and is not to be found elsewhere.
2. Life started elsewhere, and is only present on Earth by virtue of some metorite hitting the right spot.

Science will accept NEITHER of these without proof. Science (good science anyway) is always testing EVERY hypothesis. Anything in science is ALWAYS open to being challenged, revisited, updated, or thrown out if contradicted. If it isn't, it's not science.

This is a very uncomfortable thing for lots of people, who want certainties in their lives. But science is what it is - certainties last only as long as the evidence supports them. F=ma could go out the window tomorrow if conclusive experimental evidence indicates it isn't true. (Now, after a certain point, things are assumed to be correct until proven otherwise, in order to make progress possible. But EVERYTHING in science is ALWAYS subject to challenge. Your challenge had better be good for F=ma though, since there is a VERY large body of evidence suggesting that relationship is a useful description of part of the natural world.)

So I'd say that instead of it being hard for people to believe there is life beyond Earth, it is important that any evidence of such life be subject to skeptical and rigorous test. This is why you have people looking for ways something could NOT be a sign of life - to make sure we don't overlook something in our hope that there IS other life out there. Good science has no favorites, and the facts will ALWAYS overrule wishful thinking (one way or the other.) If someone gets a result they want, one of the best things for them to do is sit down and think of ways this result could NOT mean what you want it to mean.

If we have first contact with a superior race (what is superior, anyway? more advanced? more peaceful?) the consequences will likely be completely unpredictable. I doubt meaningful communication would be established for a VERY long time (if it even CAN be established) - science fiction grossly underestimates that difficulty, in my opinion. And no doubt a sizable percentage of the population wouldn't be able to handle it, particularly if it/they are really different from us. We have enough trouble handling ourselves, nevermind something REALLY alien.