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Viking landers may have missed Martian life
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post Oct 24 2006, 12:25 AM
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http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/d...rtian-life.html

NASA’s twin Viking spacecraft may have missed signs of life during their examination of the Martian surface 30 years ago. Researchers now say that the landers’ experiments were not sensitive enough to find life and in any case may not have been able to spot the strange forms that Martian life might take.
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nprev
post Oct 24 2006, 02:24 AM
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Interesting...will be even more interesting to see what Gilbert Levin will have to say about it. cool.gif

Still think that positive detection of Martian life (if there is any currently extant) will require a multipronged approach: microscopy, metabolic analysis, and DNA/RNA genome decoding (the latter needed to positively determine non-terrestrial origin). After all, who knows who might've sneezed on Mars 2 just before encapsulation & launch?... rolleyes.gif


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A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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- Sunspot   Viking landers may have missed Martian life   Oct 24 2006, 12:25 AM
- - AlexBlackwell   I gave the link to the paper, to which PNAS is off...   Oct 24 2006, 12:27 AM
- - nprev   Interesting...will be even more interesting to see...   Oct 24 2006, 02:24 AM


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