An astrobiology professor has claimed that life on Mars was discovered 50 years ago but quickly eradicated. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a faculty member at the Technical University Berlin, has made the sensational claim, saying we may have got lucky with discovering extraterrestrial life, only to destroy it unintentionally.
Prior to the Curiosity rover, NASA had launched the Viking programme in the mid-1970s - sending two landers to the Martian surface. The mission, ahead of its time, managed to offer the first glimpses of the Martian surface to humankind. Not only that, but the mission also performed biological analysis of its soil, with the primary aim of unearthing indications of life.
The findings in the mission contained numerous geological formations that were consistent with the effects of substantial water flows. The Martian volcanoes and the slopes on it bore close resemblances to those in Hawaii -hinting at their prior exposure to rain.
The landers also identified small amounts of chlorinated organics, initially believed to be contamination from Earth. However, the subsequent Mars missions have confirmed the presence of native organic compounds on Mars, although in a chlorinated form.
One of the Viking experiments involved adding water to soil samples. Water infused with nutrients and radioactive carbon (carbon-14) was introduced to the red Martian soil. The hypothesis stated that if there were potential microorganisms on Mars, they would consume the nutrients and release radioactive carbon as a gas. Initial results indicated this radioactive gas' emission but the remaining results remained inconclusive.
Schulze-Makuch posits that we might have overwhelmed these potential microbes, leading to their demise.
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