The Search for Extraterrestrial Life

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Abstract
Current theories about the history of the solar system and the origin of life suggest that conditions on primitive Mars may have been sufficiently like those of the primitive Earth to have made possible an independent origin of life. The present environment of Mars is extremely harsh, but our knowledge of it does not permit the conclusion that, if life ever existed there, it is now extinct. Certain phenomena associated with the change of seasons suggest the growth of vegetation of Mars, although other explanations are not excluded. A number of automatic devices designed to detect microbial life, or the products of microbial activity, in Martian soil are currently being developed. It is hoped that these instruments, combined with high-resolution photography, will give an answer to the question of life on Mars in the next decade. It is not optimism about the outcome that gives impetus to the search for extraterrestrial life; rather, it is the immense importance that a positive result would have. The argument of this article is that the value so obtained is high. Even a lifeless Mars could be of great biological value if it yielded fossils or yielded organic chemicals of a prebiological era. In respect to the latter point, the Moon, too, may be of considerable interest. Mariner IV neither proved nor disproved the existence of life on Mars, but it did demonstrate that we now have the technology necessary to get the answer.

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