30 August 2023 , 18:22
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Space agency NASA may have accidentally destroyed any evidence found of alien life on Mars, an expert has claimed.
Any delicate forms of life may have been over-watered or over-heated, according to Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a professor at the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Technical University Berlin.
The federal US agency sent two probes to the Red Planet in the 1970s in a bid to find life there after millenia of humans looking up and wondering.
Although trace amounts of chlorinated organics were found, this was written off as contaminants ferried over from Earth. Writing in BigThink, Prof Schulze-Makuch has said these organic compounds found by the two Viking landers could have been misunderstood forms of life, reports the Sun.
The view south from Viking 2 (Getty Images)He argues that when the landings first happened, scientists didn't understand the environment on Mars. He explained: "Since Earth is a water planet, it seemed reasonable that adding water might coax life to show itself in the extremely dry Martian environment.
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"In hindsight, it is possible that approach was too much of a good thing."
For example, organisms living inside salt rocks in the incredibly dry Atacama Desert in Chile do not need any rain to survive, just a little moisture from the atmosphere. The Atacama Desert has been compared to Mars in terms of inhospitality
"Now let’s ask what would happen if you poured water over these dry-adapted microbes," the professor continued. Might that overwhelm them? In technical terms, we would say that we were hyper hydrating them, but in simple terms, it would be more like drowning them."
The inhospitable surface of Mars (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/IRAP/SWNS)He compared humans saying that although we need water to live, putting us in the middle of the ocean wouldn't work.
"Many of the Viking experiments involved applying water to the soil samples, which may explain the puzzling results," Prof Schulze-Makuch.
He believes Martian microbes may have thrived on a little bit of moisture but drowned when water was poured over it. His views are shared by other experts in the field, including colleague Joop Houtkooper. They believe microbial life on Mars might have hydrogen peroxide in their cells to let them draw water directly from the atmosphere.
Mars, which is often visible with the naked eye from Earth, has long fascinated humanity (Getty Images)Another way the earlier experiments may have destroyed evidence of extraterrestrial life is through heating the samples. The instrument on board the probes heated up the soil before analysis, which may have killed any organisms that contained hydrogen peroxide.
The process would have also created large amounts of carbon dioxide, which is what was detected at the time. A 2016 study, from scientists at the Arizona State University, Tempe, and the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, said the evidence collected by the Viking mission is "consistent with a biological explanation."