Word: marse
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At first, the data sent back to earth by two Mariner spacecraft more than 60 million miles away seemed to offer as little hope as the lunar rocks that life would be found elsewhere in the solar system. Flying past the planet Mars, the small, instrument-packed spacecraft detected no...
Or is it? At week's end the infra-red spectrometer on board Mariner 7, the second of the two vehicles that flew past Mars, detected two gases-ammonia and methane-that could indicate the presence of primitive life. Both are produced on earth by biological decay. George C...
Biological Origin. Pimentel conceded that the gases he detected might have been produced on Mars by such nonbiological processes as "outgassing" from Mars' interior. But, he added, "One cannot restrain the speculation that the gases might be of biological origin." If that is the case, he theorized, they may...
Other scientists at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) hotly dispute the idea that the polar caps are largely frozen water. Most investigators are now convinced that they are mostly frozen carbon dioxide, otherwise known as dry ice. Mariner 7 helped their argument. Its infra-red radiometer measured the...
Even so, scientists are not quite ready to dismiss the possibility of life there altogether. Investigators think that microbes or other primitive forms of life may yet be discovered on Mars. In a number of studies, biologists have already shown that algae, plant seeds and even beetles can survive temperatures...