After the UFO congressional hearing, we have another episode where another scientist has claimed that alien life exists. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiology professor from the Technical University Berlin, claims that 50 years ago, scientists discovered alien life on Mars. However, this life form was unintentionally destroyed by NASA, according to him.
This Viking Labeled Release experiment initially provided signs of metabolic processes. However, upon a subsequent examination, no signs of organic substances were discovered.
Schulze-Makuch proposed, as part of the initial Viking experiments, water was infused with nutrients and radioactive carbon was introduced to the red Martian soil which could have created unfavourable conditions by overwhelming them for any potential life forms, leading to their eventual demise. And by life forms, he meant potential microbes.
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In an op-ed for BigThink, Schulze-Makuch described the outcomes as 'puzzling'.
Nonetheless, trace quantities of chlorinated organics were detected.
He added, "Perhaps the putative Martian microbes collected for the labelled release experiments couldn’t deal with that amount of water and died off after a while... It would be as if an alien spaceship were to find you wandering half-dead in the desert, and your would-be saviours decide, 'Humans need water. Let’s put the human in the middle of the ocean to save it!' That wouldn’t work either."
The Viking mission, involving two landers named Viking 1 and Viking 2, landed on July 20, 1976, and September 3, 1976 respectively.
Both were equipped with an array of instruments, including a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, seismometer, meteorology instrument, and stereo colour cameras.
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