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A former NASA scientist has written that he is convinced that the U.S. space agency "found evidence of life" on Mars in the 1970s, but the data was largely ignored.
The stunning admission by Gilbert Levin—the former principal investigator for the Labeled Release (LR) experiment on NASA's Viking mission to Mars—came in an op-ed recently published in Scientific American.
In the article, the engineer and inventor is clear that he believes he found convincing proof of the existence of living microorganisms on Mars in 1976, but the agency has since been unwilling to acknowledge what he sees as a clear fact.
Levin is hardly a conspiracy theorist or fringe "UFOlogist," either—in addition to participating in that important 1976 NASA mission, he's a respected engineer and inventor who founded the successful research company Spherix.
In the op-ed titled "I'm Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
"On July 30, 1976, the LR returned its initial results from Mars.
"Amazingly, they were positive. As the experiment progressed, a total of four positive results, supported by five varied controls, streamed down from the twin Viking spacecraft landed some 4,000 miles apart."
Continuing, he wrote:
"The data curves signaled the detection of microbial respiration on the Red Planet. The curves from Mars were similar to those produced by LR tests of soils on Earth.
"It seemed we had answered that ultimate question.
Sour grapes from a disgruntled investigator or something worth further investigation?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @12:45AM (2 children)
It reminds me of when that roman shipwreck was found off the coast of Brazil in 1985 and the government was like "We like our history just the way it is, we don't need this" and sent the military to bury the site in silt. Then they banned undersea exploration in Brazil, and it remains banned to this day.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by petecox on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:47AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:09PM
Things like that make me sad. Here is one place, where it's likely to have been easy to find and work compared to many other places. Yet no one can legally do anything, because the finding will be unacceptable to the cultural history.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"