Is NASA ignoring proof of Martian life from the 1970s?

[Judi Lynn]

One of the scientists with the Viking missions says yes.
ROBBY BERMAN
13 October, 2019

All the proof we need could be in these old data boxes.

A former NASA consultant believe his experiments on the Viking 1 and 2 landers proved the existence of living microorganisms on Mars

Because of other conflicting data, his experiments' results have been largely discarded.

Though other subsequent evidence supports their findings, he says NASA has been frustratingly disinterested in following up.

Gilbert V. Levin is clearly aggravated with NASA, frustrated by the agency's apparent unwillingness to acknowledge what he considers a fact: That NASA has had dispositive proof of living microorganisms on Mars since 1976, and a great deal of additional evidence since then. Levin is no conspiracy theorist, either. He's an engineer, a respected inventor, founder of scientific-research company Spherix, and a participant in that 1976 NASA mission. He's written an opinion piece in Scientific American that asks why NASA won't follow up on what he believes they should already know.

More:
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/life-on-mars-proof?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1

[lapfog_1]

1. Well, if Mr. Levin used that old data to prove something...

he can thank me.

My very first job at NASA in 1989 was to rescue all of the Viking data - it was stored on 7-track 256BPI tapes in cardboard boxes... and the oxide was falling off the tapes. Just finding a tape drive that could read the tapes was a challenge. Fortunately, for most of the damaged tapes, we had backups at JPL.

[exboyfil]

2. It is an interesting question

why they haven't done cultures and some sort of high powered SEM and DNA sequencing given our technology today. I think the problem is that on the edges of chemistry it is difficult to truly classify life. The suspected fossils in the Martian meteor were much smaller than our bacteria.

Another consideration may be we may have already contaminated Mars or we have shared a biome for quite some time. If we do find life, it might turn out to have a common origin to our life.

[get the red out]

3. Thanks for posting!

Fascinating!