In 1975, NASA’s Viking programme made historical past when its twin landers turned the primary American spacecraft to efficiently attain the floor of Mars. These landers carried out pioneering experiments, gathering and analysing Martian soil samples for over six years in a quest to find out whether or not microbial life existed on the Purple Planet. Nonetheless, a provocative new principle means that the very strategies utilized in these experiments might have unintentionally killed potential life on Mars.
Life Detection Strategies Beneath Scrutiny
Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist on the Technische Universität Berlin, has proposed that the Viking experiments might need encountered Martian microbes however destroyed them by introducing liquid water. In a commentary revealed in Nature Astronomy, Schulze-Makuch argued that Mars’ hyperarid surroundings, drier than Earth’s Atacama Desert, seemingly harbours lifeforms tailored to extract moisture from salts within the environment. These organisms, if current, could possibly be fatally overwhelmed by the addition of liquid water, as used within the Viking experiments.
Misguided Assumptions About Water
The Viking programme assumed that Martian life, like life on Earth, would rely upon liquid water. The experiments added water and vitamins to the soil samples, monitoring for metabolic reactions. Whereas preliminary outcomes confirmed potential microbial exercise, they have been later dismissed as inconclusive. Schulze-Makuch believes these findings would possibly as an alternative point out the destruction of lifeforms tailored to Mars’ arid situations. He has advised adopting a “observe the salts” technique, which focuses on detecting organisms thriving in salt-driven moisture environments.
Shifting the Seek for Life
Highlighting parallels with Earth’s deserts, Schulze-Makuch pointed to proof of microbes in salt-rich areas surviving via a course of known as deliquescence, the place salts soak up moisture to create brines. His proposal requires a number of life-detection strategies, together with AI-assisted motility evaluation and superior microscopes, to keep away from counting on water-based assumptions.
This principle challenges NASA’s longstanding strategy of looking for water as the important thing to extraterrestrial life, urging a broader exploration technique. Whereas controversial, it opens a essential dialogue about refining strategies to uncover life on Mars.
