# Killer aliens lurking on Mars?



## Johnny Thunder (Feb 24, 2006)

*Top scientist says Mars lurking with killer aliens 
'frozen' in subterranean 'oceans'*
London, Dec 12:

A top UK space scientist Dr. John Murray has said that Mars could be lurking with killer aliens lying frozen beneath its surface. He has said that bringing them to Earth will be catastrophic, as they will wipe out humanity.

Now Dr. Murray, who is also UK lead scientist with Europe's Mars Express mission, has said he has overwhelming evidence of the life surviving in the frozen ocean near its equator, where simple life could thrive as microbes.
Prospects for life on Mars were boosted last week by NASA's discovery of running water on the Red Planet, reports The Sun.

Dr. Murray believes the aliens are all lying in a dormant state. As such, a rocket should be used to blast a crater into ice floes in the region - named Elysium - allowing access to the aliens and water should be sprinkled on the dormant creatures to revive them. "Then we could land a follow-up probe to scoop up the soil, put it under a microscope and add water," he said.

However, the danger was in bringing them to Earth, he said.

"Both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) plan to bring samples of Mars 48million miles back to Earth in the next decade to be studied in a lab. That is where the danger lies," he said. "It is going to be extremely primitive life. We are talking about bacteria. The only danger is if we brought it back and it escaped, we could have a War Of The Worlds situation," he added.

"Earth bacteria killed the invading Martians in that. The Martians brought to us could kill off humans. We'd best have a good look at things on Mars before bringing anything back," he said.


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## Johnny Thunder (Feb 24, 2006)

*Report suggests Mars microbes overlooked *
2007/1 
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer 5 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years ago may have stumbled upon alien microbes on the Red Planet and inadvertently killed them, a scientist theorizes in a paper released Sunday.

This new report, based on a more expansive view of where life can take root, may have NASA looking for a different type of Martian life form when its next Mars spacecraft is launched later this year, one of the space agency's top scientists told The Associated Press.

In the '70s, the Viking mission found no signs of life. But it was looking for Earth-like life, in which salt water is the internal liquid of living cells. Given the cold dry conditions of Mars, that life could have evolved on Mars with the key internal fluid consisting of a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide, said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, author of the new research.

The Viking experiments of the '70s wouldn't have noticed alien hydrogen peroxide-based life and, in fact, would have killed it by drowning and overheating the microbes, said Schulze-Makuch, a geology professor at Washington State University.

"The problem was that they didn't have any clue about the environment on Mars at that time," Schulze-Makuch said. "This kind of adaptation makes sense from a biochemical viewpoint."

Schulze-Makuch acknowledges he can't prove that Martian microbes exist, but given the Martian environment and how evolution works, "it makes sense."

Schulze-Makuch's research coincides with work being completed by a National Research Council panel nicknamed the "weird life" committee. The group worries that scientists may be too Earth-centric when looking for extraterrestrial life. The problem for scientists is that "you only find what you're looking for," said Penn State University geosciences professor Katherine Freeman, a reviewer of the NRC work.

"Logical consistency is nice, but it's not enough anymore," McKay said.

"I'm open to the possibility that it could be the case," said astrobiologist Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, Mass., and a member of the National Research Council committee. But he cautioned against "just-so stories about what is possible."

On the Net

American Astronomical Society: http://www.aas.org/ 
NASA's Phoenix mission: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/future/phoenix.html 
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.onelocalnews.com/howelltimesandtranscript/ViewArticle.aspx?id=40616&source=2


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## kevin242 (Sep 30, 2005)

Jeez, didn't these scientists ever see "The Thing"? Nooo, they spent all of their time "studying" and "hypothesizing".
8)


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