By David L. Chandler, Boston Globe Staff
Some scientists think Aug. 7, 1996, could go down as one of the most important dates in human history. It was the day when, some believe, humans discovered what may be the first signs of alien life.
The discovery announced that day is still very controversial among scientists, and it may take many years before the finding is confirmed - if it ever is. But on that day, a team of scientists from NASA and three universities claimed they had found evidence of fossils of ancient Martian life hidden inside a rock that came to Earth from Mars 13,000 years ago.
The tiny round blobs and wormlike shapes they found inside cracks in the 5-pound meteorite are far smaller than any form of life that is definitely known to exist on Earth. But their shapes and chemical makeup are very similar to those of fossilized microbes found in some of the earliest known Earth rocks.
The meteorite itself was found in Antarctica 12 years ago, but it was only in 1993 that scientists figured out it had come from Mars.
Astronomers used to think it was impossible for rocks to be hurled from one planet to another, but the discovery of meteorites that clearly came from the moon changed all that.
The rocks were such a perfect match for rocks picked up by astronauts on the moon, and so different from any rocks on Earth or any that came from comets or asteroids, that there was little doubt they had been blasted away into space by a huge meteorite impact and then made their way through space to Earth.
The tiny shapes found inside the Mars rock (which is called ALH84001, meaning that it was the first meteorite found in 1984 at Alan Hills in Antarctica) were formed 3.6 billion years ago - about the same time that scientists believe the first microscopic life was beginning on Earth.
The most exciting thing about the possibility of ancient microbes on Mars, according to many scientists, is that if life got started independently on two worlds in the solar system, that probably means the origin of life is an easy, maybe even inevitable, process. That, in turn, could make it even more likely that the universe is teeming with life, and therefore that some other planets may have evolved advanced, intelligent life that may someday be able to communicate with us.
But there's another possibility: Now that we know that rocks can travel from Mars to Earth, and presumably the other way as well, it may be that once life started in one place, it quickly spread to the other.
In other words, Martian life may not have started independently at all; it may have grown up from microbes that were blasted all the way to Mars after life began on Earth.
Or, equally likely, life may have started on Mars and then been carried to Earth. As one of the scientists said on the day the discovery was announced, we may all be Martians.
Do you think there is life elsewhere in the universe besides here on Earth? Why? What do you think it looks like or acts like? Is it more advanced than life on Earth? Or are we as good as it gets? Write to us!
This story ran on page a13 of the Boston Globe on 09/16/96. Email Comments to UFO Folklore !
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