Dirk Schulze-Makuch - How The “Face On Mars” And Other False Positives Impact The Search For Alien Life

Dirk Schulze-Makuch - How The “Face On Mars” And Other False Positives Impact The Search For Alien Life

We may have discovered alien life already but rejected the evidence too quickly because it seemed false at first glance.

Key Takeaways

• Perhaps the most famous "evidence" of life on Mars came from a photograph that supposedly depicted a face on the Red Planet. It was subsequently shown to be nothing but a mountain.
• The Viking Life Detection experiments and Martian meteorite ALH84001 were both thought to prove the existence of life on Mars, but these were also false positives.
• Once a claim is judged to be a false positive, it’s difficult to change people’s minds, even if new evidence comes along.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The following in foecast is a presentationof the Xoon Broadcast Network, x Soon
TV Channel and Roma McConnell Media Company, broadcasting from Canada to the world and
beyond. How false positives impact thehunt for alien life. The holy grail

(00:22):
for astrobiology is to discover extraterrestrial life. So it may come as no surprise
that scientists, even very good,careful scientists, have announced that startling discovery
more than once, only to beproven wrong later. We call such findings
false positives, and it happens alltoo often. Some of the most easily

(00:46):
dismissed claims are based soul in appearances. Alien artifacts, ranging from quarrels to
doorways, have been reported by selfappointed Internet sleuths, only to be explained
away easily, and just on Mars. The most famous of these is the
face on Mars, spotted in Vikingimages taken in the nineteen seventies. In

(01:08):
those early low resolution pictures, arock formation in Sidonia showed a strong resemblance
to a human face. NASA waslobbied to take a closer look, but
upon closer and higher resolution inspection,it turned out to be an ordinary mountain.
Looks can deceive because our brain isalways trying to extrapolate a familiar structure

(01:30):
or pattern from anything we observe.I receive quite a few emails every year
from people claiming to have found alizard, fossil bone, or some other
large scale evidence of biology on anotherplanet. It's a common pitfall to jump
to conclusions when a new object lookslike something familiar, but that will almost

(01:51):
never be enough to prove the existenceof extraterrestrial life. Well need additional evidence,
for example, geochemical analyzes to verifywhat our eyes are telling us Martian
meteorite ALH eight four zero zero one. Some readers may remember the famous nineteen
ninety six paper in the journal Scienceby David McKay from NASA's Johnson Space Center,

(02:15):
which motivated President Bill Clinton to announcein a memorable press conference the possible
discovery of fossilized life on Mars.Images contained in McKay's paper were widely circulated
by the press purporting to show theMartian fossils. Nowadays, no one,
or at least no one I know, really thinks these wormlike structures are microbes.

(02:38):
They're more commonly interpreted as products ofmineralization. Not biology, and as
a result of the controversy over themisinterpreted fossils, most scientists lost interest in
ALH eight four zero zero one.Yet there are good scientific arguments that the
meteorite does in fact contain evidence ofpast life. The close spatial association of

(03:04):
reducing and oxidizing regions within the rock, which is typical of microbial interactions,
and the presence of magnetite chains ofhigh purity, which are indicative of a
certain type of bacteria called magnetotactic bacteria, are intriguing. Some of the Mackay
team's lines of argument have weakened whileothers have grown stronger, but I still

(03:25):
find it plausible, as Mackay saysthat the most parsimonious explanation for their findings
is biology. One point even thecritics agree on is that the interior of
the meteorite was never heated above fortydegrees celsius during its journey from Mars to
Antarctica. In other words, fossilsor even dormant life could conceivably have made

(03:49):
the journey from one planet to anotherintact. However, given the apparent misinterpretation
of the fossil images, you don'tfind many scientists who will give ALH eight
four zero zero one a second lookViking life detection experiments. A similar case
is the controversy surrounding the Viking lifedetection experiments of the nineteen seventies. NASA's

(04:14):
twin Mars landers carried three such experimentsand another instrument called a gas chromatograph mass
spectrometer GCMs to look for organic molecules. The mission scientists agreed prior to the
landings that if even one of theseexperiments was positive, it would mean life
on Mars was detected. The labeledrelease experiment, led by Gil Levin,

(04:36):
designed to detect metabolic activity, yieldedpositive results, although later data from the
same experiment cast some doubt on that. The first result coming in from the
pyrolytic release experiment, designed to measureorganic synthesis reactions associated with life, was
also positive, but later ones werenegative. The gas change experiment, designed

(05:00):
to measure the exchange of gases resultingfrom biological activity, provided confusing results and
showed no evidence of biology. Whatto do with these mixed results, the
mission scientists were under pressure the publicwanted to know. Project scientist Jerry Soften
waited for the results from the GCMs. The instrument did detect trace amounts of

(05:26):
organic compounds, but they were interpretedby the experiment's principal investigator, Klauss Beaman
to be contamination from Earth. Onereason for his interpretation is that the type
of organics detected, chlorinated hydrocarbons,were not at the time expected to exist
on Mars. Based on all thisconflicting evidence, Soften concluded in his famous

(05:48):
words, no bodies, no lifeWithout organic molecules, there just couldn't be
life on Mars. Ergo, thered planet was afficially dead. That line
of logic has always seemed to mesomewhat odd, because we should expect to
find organic compounds on Mars, ifnot from native life, at least from

(06:10):
infalling comets. Fast forward more thantwenty years, when Nassa's Phoenix Lander found
exactly the same type of chlorinated hydrocarbonson Mars as did the subsequent Curiosity and
Perseverance rovers It is now generally acceptedthat Viking did in fact find indigenous organics
on Mars. One may wonder whatJerry Soften would say if he were alive

(06:34):
today. More importantly, how hasthis changed the scientific interpretation of the Viking
results not much. Surprisingly, perhapsa few scientists would change the mission's verdict
on Martian life from negative to inconclusive, but most stick with the no answer.

(06:54):
Levin himself insisted right up until hisdeath two years ago that Viking discovered
life, yet his protestations were invain the danger of crying wolf. The
lesson here is that once a claimis judged to be a false positive,
it's difficult to change people's minds,even if new evidence comes along that puts

(07:15):
the previous interpretation into question. Whatto do? We have to stay steadfastly
open minded and be willing to reevaluatecases when new evidence becomes available. Who
knows. We may have discovered extraterrestriallife already but rejected the evidence too quickly
because it seemed false at first glance. To listen to all the shows on

(07:45):
the x zoone broadcast network, visitwww dot xzbn dot net. To watch
the x zoone TV channel. Exclusiveto SIMULTV, visit www Dot similtv dot
com Channel thirty two. Our mottois dare to believe, dare to be
heard. The x Zone searching foranswers, demanding the truth. Do you

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have any comments, suggestions, showideas, send them to admin at RAHLHEIFENMA
dot com for RELMA McConnell Media Companyin London, England. I am Brook Maguire