News on Campus

NO MARTIAN LIFE AFTER ALL?

ew analyses of the famous Martian meteorite, ALH84001, have cast doubt on the likelihood that it contains the fossilized remains of ancient Martian microbes.

Two studies published in January find that much of the organic material in the meteorite appears to be terrestrial, rather than extraterrestrial, in origin.

Related Information:

• Martian life: 1/21/98
• Martian life: 5/29/97
• Martian life: 8/7/96
• Martian life: 12/13/95
• Richard Zare’s home page

Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Chemistry at Stanford, who headed the team that discovered organic material of possible Martian origin in the meteorite, says that the new findings do not directly refute the original research. One of the analyses, however, suggests that the meteorite contains more terrestrial contamination than he had originally thought.

ALH84001 was thrust into the limelight in August 1996 when a team of scientists published a controversial analysis in the journal Science, arguing that they had discovered organic material, unusual mineralogical features and electron microscope images showing tiny oval and worm-shaped features that provided compelling circumstantial evidence that the meteorite had been inhabited by Martian microorganisms more than three billion years ago.

Life on Mars (Plain text)

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