Reconsidering Viking on Mars
Now a new paper argues that the Viking methodology was flawed. In fact, similar experiments don't even find organic molecules in the Atacama Desert between Chile and Peru, where dry conditions seem conspicuously Mars like, and where experiments on remote life detection have continued at a robust pace. Yet updated testing reveals carbon at these sites.
And Rafael Navarro-González (National Autonomous University, Mexico) says in the new study that if the Viking scientists had known these results thirty years ago, they would have interpreted Viking's work differently.
3 comments:
This is the most detailed thing I've seen so far. I've come across vague sort of suggestions that "one of the viking tests" was "sort of ambiguous". And remember, the Viking landing sites were chosen for safety - not because they were promising sites to look for life, or even the remnants of life. Mars is going to surprise the hell out of us over the next five to ten years.
Weirdly, one of the primary landing sites -- ditched for safety reasons -- was Cydonia Mensae, home of the Face.
As it turns out, the sites in Chryse and Utopia were at least as rocky as Cydonia. So it goes.
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