These rocks are present on Mars, which does have some level of humidity that could hypothetically sustain such microbes. In very dry Earth environments, such as the Atacama Desert in Chile, there are extreme microbes that can thrive by hiding in hygroscopic rocks, which are extremely salty and draw in tiny amounts of water from the air surrounding them. The Atacama Desert is home to extreme microbes that require almost no water to survive. ![]() "In hindsight, it is possible that approach was too much of a good thing." "Since Earth is a water planet, it seemed reasonable that adding water might coax life to show itself in the extremely dry Martian environment," Schulze-Makuch wrote. (The labeled release, pyrolytic release and gas exchange experiments all involved adding water to the soil.) Too much of a good thing However, the gas exchange experiment, which was deemed the most important of the four, produced a negative result, leading most scientists to eventually conclude that the Viking experiments did not detect Martian life.īut Schulze-Makuch believes most of the experiments may have produced skewed results because they used too much water. (Subsequent landers and rovers have since proved that these organic compounds occur naturally on Mars.) The GCMS also found some traces of chlorinated organic compounds, but at the time, mission scientists believed the compounds were contamination from cleaning products used on Earth. ![]() The labeled release and pyrolytic release experiments produced some results that supported the idea of life on Mars: In both experiments, small changes in the concentrations of some gases hinted that some sort of metabolism was taking place. The results of the Viking experiments were confusing, and have continued to perplex some scientists ever since. A model replica of one of the Viking landers.
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