Looking For Life In All The Wrong Places

摘要

In 1976, scientists anxiously waited for the first data streaming back from the Viking 1 and 2 landers, sent to search for signs of life on Mars. The results were frustratingly inconclusive; for decades researchers have been debating whether the Vikings detected life. Then last January, two scientists presented a paper arguing that Mars may indeed harbor life, but that the landers' life-detecting equipment may have killed it. They theorized that Martian microorganisms might contain a mixture of water and hydrogen peroxide; if so, a Viking experiment that doused Martian soil samples with water would have drowned such life-forms.