Did NASA discover life on Mars… 36 years ago?

Discovery of life on Mars… 36 years ago?

In New Scientist this month it was reported that Gilbert Levin, a former NASA scientist, is restating his claim that the mission he worked on, Viking, did discover life on Mars way back in the 1970s. Levin is a bit out on a limb here (most of his colleagues disagree with him) but I think he may – just may – have a point.

The two Viking Landers were static probes which arrived on the surface of Mars in the summer of 1976. What they were equipped with – and Curiosity is not – was a series of experiments designed to see if living bugs existed in the Martian soil.

The experiment mixed Martian soil with a nutrient containing radioactive carbon. The idea was simple: if bacteria were present in the soil, and metabolised the nutrient, they would emit some of the digested molecules as carbon dioxide.

The experiment did indeed find that carbon dioxide was released from the soil, and that it contained radioactive carbon atoms.

A second experiment with Viking’s Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS), looking for carbon-based molecules was not successful and they found nothing. NASA chiefs said that life couldn’t exist without these organic molecules, and declared Levin’s result moot.

(Astrobiology Magazine: Interview with Dr. Gilbert Levin)

But Levin insists there is a problem. It turns out the carbon-detectors aboard the Viking Landers were not sensitive enough to detect organic molecules even in Earthly soil samples known to contain microbes.

That is why Levin wants a reanalysis of his original data of 1970s if Curiosity finds organic molecules. “I’m very confident that MSL will find the organics and possibly that the cameras will even see something,” he says. Taken with his 36-year-old results, that would constitute a discovery of life on Mars, Levin says.

New Scientist tried to reach NASA for comment on Levin’s claim, but without success.