Originally published March 2 2005
NASA states that two scientists have found ways of looking for life on Mars, not life itself
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Recent press reports saying that two NASA scientists have discovered life on Mars were exaggerated, according to NASA. While the work of Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke do provide possible methods for discovering life on Mars, their work does not prove the existence of life. One of the key components to their theory, changing methane levels, could be explained by volcanic activity as well as living organisms.
WASHINGTON -- In response to Space News' original article "NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars" posted Feb. 16 on SPACE.com and spacenews.com and picked up by other Web outlets, NASA issued a statement calling the reports incorrect.
The work by the scientists mentioned in the reports cannot be used to directly infer anything about life on Mars, but may help formulate the strategy for how to search for martian life.
Their research concerns extreme environments on Earth as analogs of possible environments on Mars.
In the original story, Space News reported that a pair of NASA scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke, told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they had found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars.
Some attendees later had conflicting recollections about what exactly Stoker said about her plans to publish her research.
While some said Stoker claimed she had submitted a paper to the journal Nature for publication in May, others said Stoker only mentioned that she was preparing a paper for submission to Nature.
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.
The two scientists, according to sources who attended the Feb. 13 event, said Mars' fluctuating methane signatures 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, could be a sign of an active underground biosphere.
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