RAGLANDMYCOOL@AOL.COM wrote:

The original probe was rather heavy. Perhaps when it landed it crushed
the last remaining Martian, a small creature the size of a field mous
with two heads and eye stalks.

And all the poor little fellow wanted was to see what was coming down.

Bob Kolker

The Schultze-Makuch team has sadly understated the problem. The
methods that we have to detect life won't even work on most of the
microbes on earth, let alone exotic creatures (like the peroxide
microbes). Detecting small concentrations of microbes is a key part of
many problems, few of which have been found. The molecules of life are
too complicated to identify by a simple and reliable test. The
background environment is too complex, even in the most barren places
on earth, to allow easy extraction of a biological sample. Biodetection
is such a complex field, if not a quagmire. False alarms and low
senstivity plague currently available biodetectors, even in a "known"
environment. However, false alarms are the worst possibility. This is
true even if the extraterrestrial life is mundane from an earth
standpoint. If it is exotic from an earth standpoint, biodetection will ...

Bob Kolker wrote:

Scientist Suggests NASA Probes Killed Life on Mars
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP

WASHINGTON (Jan. 8) - Two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years
ago may have stumbled upon alien microbes on the Red Planet and
inadvertently killed them, a scientist theorizes in a paper released
Sunday.

The problem was the Viking space probes of 1976-77 were looking for the
wrong kind of life and didn't recognize it, the researcher said in a
paper presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in
Seattle.

This new report, based on a more expansive view of where life can take
root, may have NASA looking for a different type of Martian life form
when its next Mars spacecraft is launched later this year, one of the
space agency's top scientists told The Associated Press.

Last month, scientists excitedly reported that new photographs of Mars
showed geologic changes that suggest water occasionally flows there -
the most tantalizing sign that Mars is hospitable to life.

Fred of UrlBit.Us wrote:

Watch the skies! Watch the skies!

Bob Kolker

johnwl4@aol.com pwi.net> wrote: