AN ASTROBIOLOGIST has warned that scientists may have already found life on Mars and then killed it by accident.
Dirk Schulze-Makuch from the Technical University Berlin has revealed how experiments involving water and an intent to detect microbial life could have been deadly.
GettyA scientist thinks Nasa may have found life on Mars and then accidentally killed it during experiments[/caption]
He explained in an article for Big Think: “Life may have been discovered on Mars almost 50 years ago, but it could have been unintentionally destroyed.
“This theory arises from the ambiguous results of life detection experiments conducted by NASA’s Viking landers in the mid-1970s.”
According to Live Science, two Nasa Viking landers arrived on Mars in 1976 and had a range of tasks to conduct.
One of these tasks involved looking for biosignatures in the Martian soil that indicated alien life.
No such biological experiments have been performed there since.
One of these tests found something called chlorinated organics.
This was thought to come from cleaning products and contamination rather than Mars itself.
However, future research has found that chlorinated organics are native to Mars but it’s yet to be confirmed if the substances are made from biological processes.
It’s not just this experiment that Dirk Schulze-Makuch is questioning.
He wrote: ” The results of those tests were very confusing at the time and remain so today.
“While some of them — particularly the labeled release experiment (which tested for microbial metabolism) and the pyrolytic release experiments (which tested for organic synthesis) — were initially positive for life, the gas exchange experiment was not.”
The expert highlighted how many of the experiments involved adding water.
He suspects this water could have actually killed any microbial life that was used to living in the extremely dry Martian soil.
Any microbes may have been overwhelmed by the water and died before a positive test result for life could be produced.
It should be noted that some of the experiments were run under dry conditions.
Dirk Schulze-Makuch hopes there will be a new mission to Mars that is solely dedicated to detecting life.