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This story was updated at 5:56 p.m. ET.
Despite new media reports that NASA found justification forlife on Mars, the U.S. space group says explanation that we are not alone is still aways off.
A Wednesday essay in the U.K.s The Sunnewspaper entitled, NASA: Evidence of Life on Mars, reported thatthey group had denounced constrained justification for Martianorganisms. But NASA officials and maestro Mars mission scientists sayno.
This title is intensely misleading, pronounced DwayneBrown, a orator for NASA shaped at the agencys domicile in Washington,D.C. This creates it receptive to advice similar to we voiced that we found hold up on Mars,and that is absolutely, definitely false.
The square claimed that the MarsExploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, that have been wheeling aroundthe aspect of the red world given Jan 2004, found pool scum, that thepaper calls the construction blocks of hold up as we know it.
I think they have taken this things out ofcontext, Brown said.
Such a find would indeed have been groundbreaking, sincepond scum, scientifically well known as cyanobacteria, are essentially a form of lifethemselves, not usually construction blocks for it.
I can usually pretence that the Sun reportermisunderstood, pronounced Cornell University heavenly scientist Steve Squyres,principal questioner of the Mars Exploration Rover project, who was quoted inthe story. What Spirit and Opportunity have found is sulfate minerals...not organic materials, not pool scum, and not the construction blocks of hold up as weknow it.
Water = life?
The article, that has been at large quoted opposite the Web,appeared after NASA scientists spoke to reporters from an astrobiologyconference celebrating the 50th anniversary of investigate directed toward searchingfor lifebeyond Earth.
The square claims, The new missions have gatheredevidence of sulphates on Mars, a clever denote there is H2O on the planetand thus life.
But usually since there competence be H2O does not meant thatlife follows.
Evidence of H2O does NOT meant that there waslife, Squyres wrote in an email. We hold that H2O isnecessary for life, but not that it is enough to assure life. The...and thus hold up piece of the matter thus is simplywrong.
While scientists have not nonetheless detected explanation of livingthings anywhere in the star over Earth, they are removing closer toknowing where to see and how to commend the signs of hold up if they arepresent.
And Brown pronounced that NASAs assorted Mars missions, includingthe rovers and booster such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the 2001Mars Odyssey � both now in circuit around the red world � are divulgence awealth of clues about the probability of hold up there. Its usually as well shortly to knowfor certain.
Past hold up controversies
Claims of anticipating hold up on Mars are not new.
In Aug 1996 NASA researchers presented a Martian rockthat they pronounced showed transparent signs of being influenced by life. The rock, whichhad landed in Antarctica, contained holes and markings that appeared to havebeen shaped by bacterial colonies vital on it.
The proclamation done a outrageous splash, but in the decade thatfollowed, majority researchers have discharged the claims of life, and foundnonliving explanations for the rocks markings.
There has further been debate over pronouncements thatMars could not presumably bay life. In 1976, NASAs Viking 1 and 2 landerstouched down on the Martian aspect and achieved 3 apart experiments tosearch for signs of life. Despite carrying sensitivities to acknowledge organicmolecules of a couple of tools per billion, no organic compounds were ever detectedby possibly lander. Many scientists spoken that Mars thus contingency not havemicrobial organisms on the surface.
Yet a morerecent investigate found that maybe the Viking experiments were not sosensitive after all, and expel disbelief on the end that microbes aren"tthere.
Besides Mars, a little quite earnest spots in the solarsystem embody the Saturnianmoons Titan � with the lakes of methane and ethane � and Enceladus, withits plumes of H2O vapor, and Jupiters moon Europa, that is thought toharbor an subterraneous ocean.
The Top 10 Mars Rover Discoveries Ten Alien Encounters Debunked Alien Life on Titan Would Stink| _______________________ |
