Mars attracts

摘要

Mars the warmonger is stirring up trouble again. When researchers announced in 1996 that they had found the remains of Martian life inside a 3.9 billion-year-old meteorite, the reaction was passionate. Some people were excitedly optimistic, many were sceptical, and the debate between the two sides was fierce. But most of the evidence from the meteorite became discredited, and within a few months most scientists felt the case was insupportable. Now the debate has returned with a vengeance. In March, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) at NASA's Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston, the new champions of life on Mars set out to settle the matter—and met ferocious resistance. For most of us bystanders, the argument was both fascinating and embarrassing. "It was too emotional on both sides," says Frances Westall, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.