Life on Mars?

When Dr. David Balamuth, chairman and professor of physics and associate dean of SAS for the natural sciences, heard the news about the Mars rock, he went to the Internet to read the NASA scientists' full argument in their published Science paper. His reaction? On the intellectual level, appropriately cautious: "...the authors have considered a wide variety of possibilities and advanced the most interesting interpretation of their results. Much more work will be needed to reach any final conclusion."

But "on an emotional level, I found the results thrilling. If the rock ultimately proves to contain fossilized Martian bacteria, it would suggest that life arose on an isolated system (a planet) more than once. This would be very strong support for current theories that regard the emergence of life as inevitable, given certain broad conditions. The importance for our understanding of biology and evolution would be enormous."

Confirmation would be "a beautiful example" of how the methods of one science - in this case, the history and provenance of rocks - can be applied to an important general problem like the origin of life. To study the Martian meteorite, geoscientists also needed new ultra-sensitive techniques like precision mass spectrometry. Their work, and that of many scientists, depends on the continuing development of such new investigative tools, including "the powerful accelerator-based techniques of Middleton and Klein."

Return to Table of Contents