NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars

From: William Elliot (marsh_at_privacy.net)
Date: 02/18/05 

Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 04:08:31 -0800

NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_life_050216.html

WASHINGTON -- A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space
officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong
evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and
sustained by pockets of water.

The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASAs Ames Research
Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted
their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their
paper currently is being peer reviewed.

What Stoker and Lemke have found, according to several attendees of
the private meeting, is not direct proof of life on Mars, but methane
signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably
similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth.

Stoker and other researchers have long theorized that the Martian
subsurface could harbor biological organisms that have developed
unusual strategies for existing in extreme environments. That
suspicion led Stoker and a team of U.S. and Spanish researchers in
2003 to southwestern Spain to search for subsurface life near the
Rio Tinto river, so-called because of its reddish tint, the product of
iron being dissolved in its highly acidic water.

Stoker told SPACE.com in 2003, weeks before leading the expedition
to southwestern Spain, that by studying the very acidic Rio Tinto, she
and other scientists hoped to characterize the potential for a
chemical bioreactor in the subsurface an underground microbial
ecosystem of sorts that might well control the chemistry of the
surface environment.

Making such a discovery at Rio Tinto, Stoker said in 2003, would mean
uncovering a new, previously uncharacterized metabolic strategy for
living in the subsurface. For that reason, the search for life in the
Rio Tinto is a good analog for searching for life on Mars, she said.

Stoker told her private audience Sunday evening that by comparing
discoveries made at Rio Tinto with data collected by ground-based
telescopes and orbiting spacecraft, including the European Space
Agencys Mars Express, she and Lemke have made a very a strong case
that life exists below Mars surface.

The two scientists, according to sources at the Sunday meeting, based
their case in part on Mars fluctuating methane signatures that
could be a sign of an active underground biosphere and nearby surface
concentrations of the sulfate jarosite, a mineral salt found on Earth
in hot springs and other acidic bodies of water like Rio Tinto that
have been found to harbor life despite their inhospitable
environments.

One of NASAs Mars Exploration Rovers, Opportunity, bolstered the
case for water on Mars when it discovered jarosite and other mineral
salts on a rocky outcropping in Merdiani Planum, the intrepid rovers
landing site chosen because scientists believe the area was once
covered by salty sea.

Stoker and Lemkes research could lead the search for Martian biology
underground, where standing water would help account for the
curious methane signatures the two have been analyzing.

They are desperate to find out what could be producing the methane,
one attendee told Space News. Their answer is drill, drill, drill.

NASA has no firm plans for sending a drill-equipped lander to Mars,
but the agency is planning to launch a powerful new rover in 2009 that
could help shed additional light on Stoker and Lemkes intriguing
findings. Dubbed the Mars Science Laboratory, the nuclear-powered
rover will range farther than any of its predecessors and will be
carrying an advanced mass spectrometer to sniff out methane with
greater sensitivity than any instrument flown to date.

In 1996 a team of NASA and Stanford University researchers created a
stir when they published findings that meteorites recovered from the
Allen Hills region of Antarctica contained evidence of possible past
life on Mars. Those findings remain controversial, with many
researchers unconvinced that those meteorites held even possible
evidence that very primitive microbial life had once existed on Mars.

The Rio Tinto Investigation
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_caves_030905.html

Evidence for Underground Water on Mars
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_aquifer_041112.html

Evidence for Methane in Mars' Atmosphere
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/express_methane_040920.html 

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