Word: exobiologist
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...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...
...between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But previous claims have invariably been discredited because the amino acids were suspected to be of terrestrial origin; they could easily have contaminated the meteorites during or after their plunge through the earth's atmosphere. Even Ponnamperuma, a highly respected exobiologist (extraterrestrial biologist) at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, admits that only a thumbprint on a beaker could introduce amino acids into a meteorite sample. But his conclusion about the Murchison meteorite is strongly buttressed by other impressive evidence...
Others are more concerned. Although he agrees that organisms might survive a moon fragment's entry into the earth's atmosphere, Cornell Exobiologist Carl Sagan is less confident that they could live through the heat generated by a meteor impact on the moon. For that reason he has doubts that lunar organisms have ever reached the earth and that terrestrial life has already proved its immunity. Sagan, like most other scientists, believes that the odds are high against life existing on the moon. But he cautions that there is "an exceedingly small risk of possibly great harm...
Just the same, say Astronomer and Exobiologist* Carl Sagan and Biophysicist Harold Morowitz, it is conceivable that earth's nearest planetary neighbor could be home to living organisms. In balloonlike form, Venusian life could float in the dense atmosphere, never approaching the searing surface...