Word: jastrow
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...unsure. In a Washington press conference summarizing the Viking findings, they announced that the results made it impossible to say that there was or was not life on Mars. That has remained NASA's official position. But unofficially, a handful of scientists support the view of Physicist Robert Jastrow, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Says he in a forthcoming article in Natural History magazine: "Although the Viking experiments have contradictory elements, they seem to indicate that life, or some process closely imitating life, exists on Mars today...
Complex Reaction. Jastrow and those who hold similar views base their judgment not on new evidence but on an analysis of the biology experiments conducted by the Viking landers. The gas exchange test, based on the fact that terrestrial organisms give off gases as waste products, involved dropping a pinch of Martian soil into a warm, moist test chamber. The aim was to determine whether the sample would give off carbon dioxide, as animals would, or oxygen, as plants do. Scientists were surprised when the sample began releasing oxygen far more rapidly than plants would be expected...