Great...we go off to scientifically explore Mars, and may have murdered some of its residents with our carelessness (and our nuclear-powered death machines of nuclear death!!!):

In the '70s, the Viking mission found no signs of life. But it was looking for Earth-like life, in which salt water is the internal liquid of living cells. Given the cold dry conditions of Mars, that life could have evolved on Mars with the key internal fluid consisting of a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide, said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, author of the new research.

That's because a water-hydrogen peroxide mix stays liquid at very low temperatures (-68 degrees Fahrenheit), doesn't destroy cells when it freezes, and can suck scarce water vapor out of the air.

The Viking experiments of the '70s wouldn't have noticed alien hydrogen peroxide-based life and, in fact, would have killed it by drowning and overheating the microbes, said Schulze-Makuch, a geology professor at Washington State University.

One Viking experiment seeking life on Mars poured water on soil. That would have essentially drowned hydrogen peroxide-based life, Schulze-Makuch said. A different experiment heated the soil to see if something would happen, but that would have baked Martian microbes, he said.

"The problem was that they didn't have any clue about the environment on Mars at that time," Schulze-Makuch said. "This kind of adaptation makes sense from a biochemical viewpoint."

I'm just being a little sensational to parody the lurid headlines on other news articles on this topic (oddly enough, the less-sensational one I link to was written by Seth Borenstein, he of the sneering, slanted article on the Orion award back in August). This is actually pretty interesting, not least because the NRC has a panel charged with thinking outside the box on how truly different extraterrestrial life might be.

Posted by T.L. James on January 7, 2007 09:13 PM | TrackBack