NASA Killed Life on Mars”.. Space Scientist Reveals Surprise 

A German space scientist has claimed that the US space agency NASA discovered “alien life on the planet Mars and then accidentally killed it.”

The German space scientist, Dirk Schulze-Makuch from the Technical University of Berlin, stated that humans may have actually found alien life on Mars 50 years ago, but we inadvertently drowned it.

Schulze-Makuch believes that an experiment conducted in the 1970s, involving adding water to Martian soil, might have drowned any life that potentially existed there.

The test known as the “Viking Labeled Release Experiment” was one of three biological experiments conducted by the lander spacecraft “Viking” on Mars in 1976.

The experiment was designed to detect the presence of microorganisms in Martian soil by measuring the release of radiolabeled carbon dioxide from a sample of soil mixed with a nutrient solution.

The theory was that if there were life on Mars, microscopic organisms would consume nutrients and release radiolabeled carbon dioxide as a gas.

Schulze-Makuch believes that the water containing the nutrient solution in the soil might have been more fluid than necessary, causing any life to die after a period of time.

NASA’s Viking mission landed on the surface of Mars on July 20 and September 3, 1976.

Investigations were carried out at the landing sites of “Viking 1” and “Viking 2”. Both sites showed positive results from the experiment indicating the release of radiolabeled carbon dioxide from soil samples.

According to a report by “Metro”, the interpretation of these results is controversial. Some scientists believe that the positive results were due to the presence of microscopic life in Martian soil, while others think the results were due to non-biological processes, such as the oxidation of organic compounds by Martian soil.

Schulze-Makuch stated in an opening article for “BigThink” magazine that scientists during the Viking era had very limited understanding of Mars’ environment. Since Earth is a watery planet, it seemed reasonable that adding water could lead to the emergence of life in Mars’ extremely dry environment.

He explained how in severely dry places on Earth, such as the Atacama Desert in Chile, there is a gradual evolution of life forms as the environment becomes drier.

The scientist called for a new mission to Mars “primarily dedicated to the search for life” and to test this hypothesis.

He added, “Potential habitats on Mars should be explored, such as the southern highlands, where life could persist in salt-rich rocks near the surface… I can’t wait for such a mission to begin.”