The greatest scientific question 50 years ago was "does Mars have life?". It's 2009 and it's at least conceivable that someone is dragging their feet. Of course the big question is "why"? The book is a somewhat speculative attempt to put together the pieces. If UniverseToday chooses not to review it, I suppose they have their reasons.

It all costs money $$$, and that is where the real trick lies. If we put a few probes down on Mars with each Hohman transfer orbital window (about once a year) we might be able to detect for the presence or absence of martian life directly.

As far as I'm aware, not one single instance of the rules having to be enforced has even played out yet. I don't even remember there being a warning. Stop crying about censorship – it's called moderation and it needed to be done. Tell us the name of your book, what it's claims are and stop whinging.

"For decades we were told the follow-the-water strategy was the trail to looking for life on Mars…..now we are in for decades of follow-the-chemistry? Pathetic."

Well, considering the only life we're aware of uses chemistry to exist, particularly the action of water, then I don't really think you can fault the logic used to this point. If you're not basing your search off water or chemical markers, then what are you left with? Sending a probe to mars with the sole objective of looking for life based on entirely ambiguous spectroscopic data (chemical markers in themselves) with extremely poor spatial resolution that may or may not suggest organics somewhere on the planet would likely end up being the most expensive flop of all time.

And what if it plonks down and finds nothing – a null result? That wouldn't appease anybody – people would simply say it's in the wrong place. So then you have to build a mission that could travel and somehow thoroughly sample the Martian soil over a large area and in a diverse range of places. This would take many years on the martian surface, even assuming that we had the technology to keep some sort of rover or other robot alive on the surface for that long. That means big $$$.

NASA and the ESA will only send a dedicated 'life-hunter' when they are sure they have nailed down a location that seems extremely likely to have once harboured life. And that's the way it should be.

Bravehart Says:
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:07 pm

"Wish they think these objectives thru, before
putting an expensive piece of garbage on an
planet that is not ours."

I wish you'd think your comments through before posting a rambling piece of garbage like this, but hey – we can't all have what we want, eh?

If I'm not mistaken, there is a book out there (which, due to censorship policies on this site, cannot be mentioned) with a small but steadily growing following that takes a serious look at these issues. I wish UniverseToday.com would review this book.

Goint a little further.. it IS possible, although unlikely, that the entire universe belongs to US….. That'd be nice.

"The heating in ovens did not drive off any water vapor at temperatures lower than 295 degrees Celsius (563 degrees Fahrenheit), indicating the soil held no water adhering to soil particles."

….this information does not mention the 'clumping' of materials seen at the oven intake grates and how eventually that material seemed to 'dry out' and finally reach the oven(s). Could that have been an atmospheric condensate of water mixed in the sample?