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Monday July 30, 2001

For the kickoff session of the International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology, scientists came from the United States, Russia, Portugal, England, France, Austria, Belgium and Puerto Rico to provide what a conference statement called "the strongest evidence to date for primitive life forms on Mars."

Their data come from ancient graphite in the Ukraine, Antarctic depths, extraterrestrial meteorites found on Earth, dust in the upper atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope and especially from Mars itself.

"Physicist Serge Pershin, from the Russian Academy of Sciences, has analyzed images from the Hubble Space Telescope spectroscopically and found evidence of chlorophyll on Mars," Spherix Corp. chief executive officer and conference leader Gilbert Levin told United Press International from Beltsville, Md. "Pershin has found large regions that look like a film on the planet surface."

Levin told UPI recent NASA statements disputing the presence of water on Mars are contradicted by evidence from Michael Hecht, of Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"Hecht has evidence that melting pools of water are the best explanation for the presence of gullies on the planet surface, which we've seen in numerous images from the planet," Levin said. This Martian water, Levin said, would melt and freeze on a seasonal basis on a planet surface that has an unusual temperature dynamic.

"The atmosphere on Mars is really extraordinary," Levin said. "The Viking Explorer showed (that temperatures) a yard above the surface might be freezing, while the surface itself would be at room temperature. If you were standing there, your feet would be comfy, while your head would be frozen."

This vast difference in temperature from surface to air might explain why life on Mars would be primitive and confined to rocks and soil.

"Viking and Pathfinder images show dark, shiny surfaces on Mars rocks that resemble something they call rock varnish," Levin said. "As it was explained to me, rock varnish is a microbial precipitate of mineral oxides. That's something Barry DiGregorio, from the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology in Wales, will be addressing."

DiGregorio, Levin said, believes the dark shiny spots on Mars have been produced by living or extinct microbial communities because it protects microbes from the dangers of ultraviolet radiation on the fourth planet from the sun, where such protection would be crucial in a thin atmosphere.

Claims of life on Mars draw true believers and vocal skeptics - a dividing line that can fall along scientific disciplines.

"SPIE is considered a good meeting," American Chemical Society editor Alan Newman told UPI from Washington. "It's been my experience, however, that physicists tend to be much more optimistic about life on other planets than biologists."

"Different scientists can arrive at opposite opinions when critical evidence is lacking," said David Deamer, a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Gil Levin and the SPIE group have taken a data set and arrived at an extraordinary opinion that microbial life now exists on the Martian surface. Well, maybe so, but as Carl Sagan warned long ago, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to be convincing."

Levin directed the so-called "labeled release experiment" on the Mars Viking mission in 1976. "A nutrient laced with radioactive carbon-14 - they call that labeling - was applied to the Martian soil," Levin said. "The space just above the soil was monitored. If carbon-14 gas was released into the air, we knew something on the ground was consuming the nutrient, just like if you ate radioactive carbon-14 glucose and respired radioactive carbon dioxide."

Carbon-14 gas was detected just above the Martian surface, which Levin called convincing proof of life. Subsequent tests on similar samples by other instruments failed to confirm the finding, however.

"Those other instruments had detection limits of 10 million microorganisms per gram; our test could detect just 10," Levin said. "We are just now finding this out, through the work by Dr. David Warmflash at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston."

All of this evidence would seem to add up to a convincing argument, at least according to Levin and the scientists in the Mars pro-life camp.

But not according to Deamer.

"The majority of the scientific jury are not convinced by the evidence and can think of less extraordinary explanations for the results," Deamer said. He said the most convincing counter argument for him is a comparison to the Antarctic high deserts, a relatively mild version of the Mars surface, with very dry, low temperatures and no liquid water present. Even though life on Earth has had more than 3 billion years to learn to live under such conditions, he said, no living organism goes through its life cycle in the Antarctic deserts.

"Why should we think that life can survive on Mars under much harsher conditions?" Deamer asked.

Deamer was quick to point out his pessimistic speculations involve the Martian surface.

"As a biologist and biophysicist, I would think that microbial life could easily survive in sub-surface Martian environments," he said. "(There) residual water is heated and melted by geothermal energy still remaining from the volcanism associated with the early history of Mars. The best we can hope for on the surface is microbial fossils in sedimentary rocks, not live microorganisms."

Regardless the position of these opposing camps, astronomer Stephen Maran, of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, understands the fascination.

"The possibility that life exists on Mars or once existed there remains tantalizing and highly controversial," Maran said.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

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