“Life on Mars” is not just a song but a possible 50-year-old discovery; a scientist claims

“Life on Mars” is more than just a piece of work by the famous singer David Bowie! Well, possibly yes.

According to a professor of astrobiology, life on Mars was first found 50 years ago but was immediately wiped out. A faculty member at the Technical University of Berlin named Dirk Schulze-Makuch has made the astounding allegation that humanity may have accidentally destroyed extraterrestrial life after being lucky enough to find it.

To find out if there is life on Mars, NASA deployed the Vikings 1 and 2 spacecraft there in 1976. Three experiments, including one known as the Labelled Release (LR) apparatus, were carried by the probes and were created especially for the task.

An investigation indicates that in 1976, robots found microorganisms.

In order to conduct the LR experiment, a small amount of Martian soil was scooped up and combined with a drop of water containing nutrients and radioactive carbon atoms.

According to the theory, if there were bacteria in the soil, they would metabolise the nutrients and release radioactive carbon dioxide or methane gas, which might be detected by a radiation detector on the probe.

Initial findings suggested the emission of this radioactive gas, but later findings were not definitive.

According to Schulze-Makuch, it’s possible that we killed off these potential germs by outnumbering them.

Numerous geological formations in the mission’s findings were compatible with the results of significant water flows. The Martian volcanoes and the slopes on them were very similar to those in Hawaii, suggesting that they had formerly been wet.

Small amounts of chlorinated organics were also found by the landers, which were initially thought to represent contamination from Earth. The presence of native organic molecules on Mars has been confirmed by later Mars missions, however they are present in chlorinated form.

“Many of the Viking experiments involved applying water to the soil samples, which may explain the puzzling results. Perhaps the putative Martian microbes collected for the labelled release experiments couldn’t deal with that amount of water and died off after a while,” In a column for Big Think, he wrote.

“It would be as if an alien spaceship were to find you wandering half-dead in the desert, and your would-be saviours decide, ‘Humans need water. Let’s put the human in the middle of the ocean to save it!’ That wouldn’t work either,” he added.

Control studies included heating some Mars soil samples to various degrees and keeping other samples in the dark for months—conditions that would kill bacteria that are photosynthetic or that depend on photosynthetic organisms for survival. The nutrition solution was included with these control samples as well.

The debate over whether or not life on Mars was discovered 50 years ago is likely to continue for some time. However, Navarro-González’s claim has reignited the search for life on Mars, and it is possible that future missions to the Red Planet will be able to provide definitive answers about whether or not life ever existed there.

To the surprise of many biologists present at the time, the LR experiment revealed the presence of life, whilst the control experiments did not. Unfortunately, the probes’ other two experiments, which also found no evidence of life, did not support the results of the LR experiment, therefore the space agency ruled out the possibility.

One of astronomy’s favourite mysteries, life on Mars, continues to be debated.

In order to determine whether we are capable of colonising other planets, humanity has been looking for life there. Mars has long been suggested as a location where this would be feasible.

The Perseverance rover is currently navigating Mars’ challenging terrain. It is a member of a global, interplanetary relay team established to discover the mysteries of our neighbouring planet. 

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