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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: 2) by driverless on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:28AM (4 children)
Wasn't that also the lander that had faulty sensors, so that it wouldn't have been able to reliably detect life on Earth, let alone Mars? I know one of them had that problem, so they had to discard a pile of initially promising-sounding results.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:53AM (3 children)
I'm not aware of any sensor malfunctions in the LR experiment. Viking 1 had a bunch of problems, but 2 cooked off very well. The final report on the LR experiment is here: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19790022948.pdf [nasa.gov]
They did test it against earth soil samples and were able to detect life here, but there have been criticisms that it wouldn't have detected life in e.g. salt flats.
We need more data, and I'm firmly in the camp that says we should send a meatbag to do it. :)
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:06AM
Sure, could easily have been a completely different lander, I just remember the comment about "not being able to reliably detect life on Earth, let alone Mars" that was made about it, but it was a long time ago so assume bit rot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @06:02AM (1 child)
if the meat bag gets digested by mars the evidence will be rather conclusive.
it would be hilerious if the antidot to being eaten alive by mars microbes would be eating a McCheese urger before decent because they are famous for being ... indigestible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Friday January 17 2020, @03:45AM
I can't tell you how excited I would be with that result, even if it came at the cost of my own life. In one (hopefully slow so I can get a bunch of data off) bite we'd learn that life exists on another planet (2/8) and thus is very likely ubiquitous throughout the universe. Additionally we learn that life can survive in conditions far harsher than what we'd imagined, extending our definition of the goldilocks zone from "liquid water" to "hellifiknow".
I'd take that over a stupid death in traffic any day.