On 06/08/2012 21:25, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Adrian C wrote:



What organisms? And even if there were any, how're they gonna manage
with no liquid water?

James Lovelock had the right idea when he was asked by NASA to develop a
test for life, to be incorporated into the 1976 Viking Landers. He
pointed out that a characteristic of life is to keep its environment far
from chemical equilibrium. So, Earth's atmosphere contains large amounts
of oxygen, a very reactive gas. Mars' atmos contains none, and is mostly
CO2, indicative of an atmos *in* chemical equilibrium. QED there is no
life on Mars.

The NASA engineers whose careers depended on this investigation were not
best pleased with him.

Indeed, but to be fair to NASA now they are not looking for current
life, but for life 3.5 billion years ago when there were obviously large
rivers of water, if not seas, and temperatures must have been much more
amenable.