Word: martian
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...found absolute proof that there is life on Mars. But impressive evidence has been mounting for years. Among the red areas that give the red planet its name, astronomers can see darker patches that change and fade through the Martian year in a manner that strongly suggests the seasonal growth of vegetation. When the thin icecaps at the planet's poles disappear with the coming of the Martian spring, belts of darker color creep toward the equator, sometimes crossing it. This effect might be caused by some nonliving chemical change under the influence of drifting water vapor, but biological...
...likely, in fact, that a group of eminent astronomers, physicists, biologists and chemists last week urged the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to underwrite an elaborate Martian research program that will find out for sure...
More from the Sun. Martian life, said the panel headed by Princeton Biologist Colin S. Pittendrigh and Stanford's Nobel-prizewinning Geneticist Joshua Lederberg, must be hardy enough to survive long periods of extreme dryness and cold. Martian organisms may concentrate water vapor the way earthly plants collect small traces of carbon dioxide; they may even make their own water by chemical action. There is a possibility that they need no water at all, using some other liquid as a fluid medium...
Oxygen is known to be scarce on Mars, but many forms of earthly life live without free oxygen, and Martian life may do the same. The ultraviolet light from the sun that freely penetrates the thin Martian atmosphere would probably kill earthly plants and animals, but Martian life may have found some means to protect itself...
Telescopes at the bottom of the earth's thick and turbulent atmosphere cannot learn many details about Mars, but the biggest of them, says the report, should give more attention to the Martian problem. Telescopes carried aloft by balloons should study Mars intensively through the transparent upper layers of the atmosphere, and satellite-carried telescopes should take the work another step forward...