Word: exobiologist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...landing and the first photographs, none of the Viking scientists seemed particularly disappointed that the pictures showed no obvious signs of life-no lichen, bushes or trees, nothing even remotely resembling an animal or the monsters or little green men beloved by generations of science-fiction writers. Said Exobiologist Carl Sagan: "The pictures do not suggest that the planet is filled, pole to pole, with living things." But, noted Sagan, nothing in the pictures ruled out the existence of life on the planet either. Soffen added that the lander's immediate vicinity held half a dozen niches in which...
Questioned recently about what he thought any strange creature who stepped out of a flying saucer might look like, a celebrated astronomer quipped: "A miniature Carl Sagan." It was not a bad guess. Exobiologist Sagan has long been the prime advocate and perennial gadfly for planetary exploration. He is also this country's leading believer in the possibility of communicating with civilizations on other worlds. With Soviet Astronomer I.S. Shklovskii, Sagan wrote Intelligent Life in the Universe, a recent book that presents the classic argument for the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. As the current director...
That possibility was suggested in a recent study of Titan, the largest of Saturn's ten moons, by a team of Cornell University scientists under Astronomer-Exobiologist Carl Sagan. From infra-red and other telescopic measurements of the satellite, a body as large as the planet Mercury, Sagan and his colleagues conclude that Titan is relatively much warmer (about-100° F.) than previously estimated. It also has a thicker atmosphere than had been suspected and is leaking small quantities of hydrogen gas into space. Pondering these surprising conditions on Titan, the Cornell group has evolved a picture...
...Exobiologists do not insist that life exists on Mars; they argue only that the harsh conditions on the planet do not necessarily preclude life. On earth, they point out, organisms have managed to thrive in environments ranging from the icy wastes of Antarctica to the windblown summits of high mountains to the enormous pressures of deep-sea trenches. Adds University of Maryland Exobiologist Cyril Ponnamperuma: "We have even found life in boiling hot springs and strong acids...
...scientists. They indicated that Mars had at one point in its history undergone melting and that lighter elements had floated to the surface, later hardening into an earthlike crust. Included among the lighter elements are carbon compounds that were necessary for the development of life on earth. Said NASA Exobiologist Jerry Soffen, who is project scientist for the Viking program that will make a purposeful attempt to find life on Mars in 1976: "There can't be biological evolution if there is not geological differentiation...