I want to believe

On the wall behind Fox Mulder's desk in the basement of the X-File's version of the FBI headquarters in DC was a poster of a UFO photograph atop the phrase "I Want To Believe." Which pretty much sums up how a lot a people, scientists included, feel about the possibility of life on Mars. So it was no surprise that among the first pieces of news to slip out of the recent American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle was a theory that we have already, in fact, discovered evidence of just that.

Now, I'm no organic chemist. I even struggled a little bit in the second half of organic chem back at university (who doesn't?). But this theory that Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University and Joop Houtkooper of Justus-Liebig-University have proposed seems like a bit of a stretch. Basically, they suggest that the "labeled release experiment" conducted by the Viking probe back in 1976 actually produced a positive result, even though just about everyone decided at the time that it was negative.

The test added water and radiolabeled carbon to a soil sample. If Viking detected the production of CO2 containing the radiolabeled carbon, that would mean something is metabolizing the stuff, ergo: life. And while the tiny lab did detect an increase in the radiolabeled O2, levels stopped increasing pretty quickly, which did not point to life at all. What Schulze-Makuch and Houtkooper are saying now is that:

...the initial increase could have been due to metabolism by hydrogen peroxide-containing organisms, and the leveling off could have been due to the organisms dying from exposure to the experimental conditions.

In theory, I suppose -- it is possible the organisms drowned in the water. But this idea has been kicked around in various forms before by, among others, Gilbert Levin of the original Viking team. And there haven't been many takers, for good reason. It's an explanation for a lack of evidence, not actual evidence. Their press release reads:

The researchers acknowledge that their hypothesis requires further exploration. "We might be mistaken," said Schulze-Makuch. "But it's a consistent explanation that would explain the Viking results."

So is this really news? Editors and news directors think so. This morning's Google news search produced 337 items containing "Mars" and "life."

But I think we all just want very much to believe that there's life out there. And if it arose -- independently -- as close as the next planet out, you safely assume that the universe is full of it. I, too, find myself rooting for the outside chance that Levin, Schulze-Makuch and Houtkooper are right. But my skepticism meter is jumping wildly on this one.

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