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NASA May Have Killed The Martians
Sneakernets writes "CNN reports that NASA may have found life on Mars via the Viking space probes in 1976-77, but failed to recognize it and killed it by accident. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a geology professor at Washington State University, says that Mars microbes that the space probes had found were possibly drowned and baked by accident. Other experts said the new concept is plausible, but more work is needed before they are convinced. From the article: 'A new NASA Mars mission called Phoenix is set for launch this summer, and one of the scientists involved said he is eager to test the new theory about life on Mars. However, scientists must come up with a way to do that using the mission's existing scientific instruments, said NASA astrobiologist and Phoenix co-investigator Chris McKay.'"
There are fundamental chemistry issues (energy, stability, etc.) that limits the likely composition and needs of any kind of life. There is a Wikipedia article that does a decent job of describing why even the more plausible forms of non-carbon based life are unlikely. Yes, there are many possibilities for life, but the laws of physics still apply.
Carl Sagan wrote some great material on the topic as well. I particularly like his reasoning on why it makes sense that any alien life would have developed the ability to sense a similar portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
From the article:
Good reporting:
The Viking space probes of 1976-77 were looking for the wrong kind of life, so they didn't recognize it, a geology professor at Washington State University said.
Sensationatilism:
Two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years ago may have found alien microbes on the Red Planet and inadvertently killed them, a scientist is theorizing.
To show how full of crap it is:
Schulze-Makuch acknowledges he can't prove that Martian microbes exist, but given the Martian environment and how evolution works, "it makes sense."
So if there are microbes left, NASA was lucky, and if there are none, NASA has killed them all.
And if there are microbes, Schulze-Makuch is happy because NASA didn't kill them all and his name is in history again, while if there are none, it would be exactly how Schulze-Makuch had predicted it!
bash$
Life also acts against entropy. You take in simple molecules and synthesize them into more complicated ones and arrange them in ordered structures. Fire (burning wood) takes those ordered structures and breaks them down into minimum energy molecules.