Life on Mars (or not)?

Question

I remember when the Viking missions landed on Mars in the mid 70's, there were reports in the media that one of its experiments had found life on Mars.

Does anyone know what this was all about? Was the experiment wrong, or were the results misinterpreted?

Answer 1

The results were misinterpreted. Upon contact with the "chicken soup" oxygen started coming out but the output quickly stopped. At first this was interpreted as little organisms thriving in the sudden water/nutrient rich environment of the nutrient solution. But the sudden stop in output couldn´t be explained. Living organisms would thrive for much longer and they would die off much slower. The current explanation for these results is that the martian soil contains some oxidizing agent, like hydrogen peroxide, that has formed as ultraviolet rays from the sun reacts with water molecules and the soil. Hydrogen peroxide would cause a similar reaction and explains the sudden drop off in oxygen production.

Answer 2

>Life on Mars (or not)?

The not part.

>I remember when the Viking missions landed on Mars in the mid 70's, there were reports in the media that one of its experiments had found life on Mars.

That debate has been going on between mainstream scientists and conspiracy buffs for about thirty years now. The plain fact is, as of right now, the scientific world does not recognize any compelling evidence of any particular planet (other than Earth) ever having evolved its own life forms. In other words, no extraterrestrial life has ever been conclusively found, and most scientists don't believe we've accidentally passed it by either. Trust me, if life really had been conclusively found, it would have been HUGE news and everyone would have heard about it. The fact that the 'Viking might have discovered life' articles are just a few paragraphs embedded at the bottom of some random news site already shows you that no, Viking did not discover life.

>Was the experiment wrong, or were the results misinterpreted?

I'm not sure what the exact explanation for it was, but the NASA scientists determined that given the inconsistency of their results and the fact that all the actually definitive results said 'no', in the end it was their equipment that wasn't entirely suited to the job, and there wasn't any life on Mars. You can read more about the results of the experiments here:
http://www.resa.net/nasa/mars_life_viking.htm

Answer 3

Possibly micro-organism in the soil there which can stand the climatic conditions there and receive basic needs for their life from the soil or atmosphere there. Just few days back I viewed on TV a programme about life on Mars. Some scientists believe that the kind of geometrical shapes given to the rocks there is not possible by any kind of activity of nature and can be human made only. If that is true, intelligent life existed there. I'm not able to digest this argument. My argument is that there has to be many more things if there was advanced civilisation there. They also argue that a time is bound to *** when earth too would look like mars,

Answer 4

*Chuckles* I was there, Kid!

The experiment was sound- but the samples were so small, and the tests so primitve compaired to todays tests, that even a positive reading would be more like a "??++" rather than a "!!LIFE!!+++" kind of reading.

There was life on Mars once- we've found evidence of it- some kind of a fosslized microbe from some 500 million to 1 billion years ago.

Answer 5

As yet we have not found conclusive proof that life does or has existed on Mars.

Answer 6

yeah, the experiments sounded like a good idea...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_biological_experiments