Are We All Martians?

摘要

Legend has it that in 1938, a radio broadcast about a Martian invasion of New Jersey incited panic; not everyone realized it was a fictional drama - Orson Welles' adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Nowadays, people might regard the notion of Martians taking over our planet as pure fantasy. But Steven Benner, a levelheaded scientist of some repute, suggests that perhaps the invasion already occurred billions of years ago. Maybe Martians are not merely among us - maybe they are us. Benner - a Harvard-trained chemist who started the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, an associated research institute and two bioscience companies - wasn't trying to be provocative when he presented the idea at a geochemistry conference last August.