Scientist-Turned-Professor Says Instruments May Bear Out His
Finding Of Microorganisms On Mars
While NASA has repeatedly stated that its new mission to Mars,
Curiosity, carries no life detector, Gilbert V. Levin, an
experimenter on NASA's 1976 Viking Mission, disagrees. He says
instruments aboard Curiosity can confirm his published claim that
his Labeled Release (LR) experiment detected living microorganisms
on Mars.
Curiosity NASA Artist's Concept
Dr. Levin and Dr. Patricia Ann Straat were part of the team
which conducted an experiment that Levin says produced evidence of
life on Mars. Because another Viking instrument failed to find
organic matter, the stuff of life, NASA discounted the LR results.
Since Viking, Mars missions have sought only evidence of
habitability, not life itself. Levin now claims the organic
analyzers and the high-resolution camera on Curiosity as his
"stealth life detectors."
After twenty years of analyzing the LR data, reviewing flaws in
Viking's organic detector, and studying new information on life
obtained from Mars and Earth, Levin finally announced his "life
claim" in a 1997 publication. Today, he said that, should Curiosity
detect organic matter, the last obstacle to his claim to life on
Mars will vanish. Co-Experimenter Straat agrees with Levin, saying,
"I look forward to Curiosity data that may confirm our life
interpretation of the LR."
Levin's other "virtual experiment" is Curiosity's
high-resolution camera. It might determine whether "lichen-like"
colored patches Levin found on rocks at the Viking sites might be
living organisms. Patricia Straat, and JPL's William Benton
assisted him in the study which subjected images of the Mars rocks
and terrestrial rocks bearing lichen to the Viking Imaging System.
Visible and infrared spectral analyses found the same responses
from the Mars and terrestrial images (Levin, G. V., P. A. Straat
and W. D. Benton, "Color and Feature Changes at Mars Viking Lander
Site," J. Theoret. Biol., 75, 381-390, 1978 – available at
gillevin.com, tab "Mars Research"). Levin has now written Dr. Mike
Malin, designer of Curiosity's camera, asking him to seek and take
high-resolution pictures of any such patches, hoping to determine
whether Viking found living organisms on the rocks.
Viking On Mars NASA Image
Levin started his Mars life-seeking efforts in 1958. Funded
by NASA, he began developing the LR. In 1969, NASA appointed Levin
as Team Member of the IRIS experiment aboard the 1971 Mariner 9
Mars orbiter. Dr. Straat joined that effort in 1970. They sought
organic gases in the Martian atmosphere. None were found, but
recent observers of Mars have claimed detecting methane, possibly
of microbial origin. Following Viking, Levin was appointed Team
Member of NASA's MOx experiment aboard the Russian '96 Mission to
Mars, converting that soil analysis instrument to give it life
detection capability. However, the spacecraft crashed after
launch.
"This is a very exciting time," says Levin, now an adjunct
professor at Arizona State University, Tempe, "something for which
I have been waiting for years. At the very least, the Curiosity
results may bring about my long-requested re-evaluation of the
Viking LR results." Levin says this is especially important
because Viking was sterilized to prevent contaminating Mars with
hitchhiking terrestrial microorganisms. Since then, none of the
many NASA and ESA Mars landers, including Curiosity, have been
sterilized. Thus, any new findings of life might be questioned as
to whether the life was indigenous to Mars or came from Earth.
Levin stresses, "The Viking LR life detection data are the only
data that will ever be available from a pristine Mars. They are
priceless, and should be thoroughly studied."