Water and the Search for Life on Mars (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration)

Book Description

Mars has long been believed to have been cold, dead and dry for aeons, but there is now striking new proof that not only was Mars a relatively warm and wet place in geologically recent times, but that even today there are vast reserves of water frozen beneath the planet’s surface. As well as casting fascinating new insights into Mars’ past, this discovery is also forcing a complete rethink about the mechanisms of global planetary change and the possibility that there is microbial life on Mars.

David Harland considers the issue of life on Mars in parallel with the origin of life on Earth. At the time the Viking instruments were designed, it was thought that all terrestrial life ultimately derived its energy from sunlight, and that the earliest form of life was the cyanobacteria with chlorophyll for photosynthesis. It was assumed the same would be the case on Mars and that microbial life would be on or near the surface that the Vikings had sampled.

No sooner were the results from the Viking instruments in, than it was discovered that there was an even older type of microbial life on Earth when, in 1977 ‘black smokers’ were found in volcanically active parts of the ocean floor, at depths of several kilometres. Removed from sunlight, these archaea (literally, ‘the old ones’) live off the minerals released by the hydrothermal activity. Subsequently our view of life was further revised when ‘extremophiles’ were discovered thriving in acidic, salty, alkaline, very hot, very cold and radiation soaked environments previously considered lethal. Although the Vikings had found no sign of organics, and the surface was extremely hostile, suggesting that life had never gained a foothold, the discovery of microbes living far beneath the surface of the Earth raised the possibility of life below the surface of Mars, where there may be water-ice and/or hydrothermal activity. Perhaps, because the microbes were beyond the reach of the Vikings’ instruments, the negative result was premature.

Following the negative tests for biological activity by the Vikings, NASA – in the belief that Mars was once warm and wet, as the erosional features on the surface suggest – decided to ‘chase the water’ in the hope of establishing that conditions on Mars were once suitable for life, although this would not prove that life had developed. The targets selected (from many) were what seemed to be an outflow channel, a dry lake and a patch of minerals emplaced by hydrothermal activity. In 1997 Mars Pathfinder landed in an outflow channel where it released the small Sojourner rover to perform chemical analyses of nearby rocks. NASA followed up in 2004 with the much larger Mars Exploration Rovers, which were equipped to act as mobile field geologists. One was landed in what seemed to be a dried up lake bed inside a crater, and the other set down in an area that a remote-sensing orbital survey had identified as haematite, a likely indicator of hydrothermal activity. Both of these missions have yielded evidence that conditions were once conducive to the development of life.

In parallel with these NASA projects, the European Space Agency developed the Mars Express remote-sensing orbiter, which has detected traces of methane that may have been released by microbes. If microbial life is found on Mars, will it be based on DNA? Will this indicate that life developed independently? Or that it has characteristics in common with the most ancient forms of terrestrial life? If life is found on two planets in the same planetary system, this would favour the panspermia hypothesis. And if martian life is radically different, then in light of the discovery of planetary systems around other stars, this would, as remarked by Philip Morrison of MIT, "transform life from the status of a miracle to that of a statistic". These are all questions that the exploration of Mars for life are aimed to answer.

Customer Reviews:

Stuck in the details.......2007-08-24

The author clearly has a problem of not being able to focus on the big picture. With a name like "Water and the search for life on mars," one would expect the main theme of the book to specifically be about the characteristics of Mars that point to the possibility of life. However, this is not the case. Harland consistently gets stuck in mundane details such as how NASA actually lands its probes, the different stages of a specific landing, and what are the different gadgets on each probe and lander. Furthermore, he goes on for about 30 pages trying to lecture the reader about the biology of DNA, proteins, and amino acids. He simply tries to cover too many topics at once and this leaves the reader exhausted, confused, and frustrated.

I picked up this book because I was intrigued about why scientists actually believe there might have been life on Mars in the past or if there currently is life on the planet. Instead I found myself reading uninteresting details about how a crater is formed and why there are mechanical failures on NASA probes. Harland spends a significant amount of time discussing how NASA conducts their missions instead of actually focusing on the much more interesting topic of life on other planets.

Overall, I do not recommend this book for anyone that is specifically interested about the possibility of life on Mars. You will lose yourself in the technical details and get frustrated by the book's lack of focus.

Mars as we now know it.......2007-02-28

David Harland has done an excellent job summarizing the results of international efforts to explore Mars with telescopes and, now, robotic spacecraft. Our understanding has increased dramatically in recent years thanks to high-resolution mapping from orbiting spacecraft and, primarily, to the astonishing discoveries of the Mars Exploration Rovers: Spirit and Opportunity. I found some of the geological discussion in the middle part of the book a bit challenging, but well worth the effort because I think I now have at least a passing appreciation for overall context of the Rover missions. The preliminaries occupy the first 130 pages of Harland's book and the real meat is in the 90 pages or so that follow, detailing the traverses and results of Spirit and Opportunity during their first 350 or so martian days on the planet. The evidence for wet periods in the history of Mars is clearly presented and of great value to a non-expert like me. My only reservation is that more attention could have been paid to cross-referencing and labeling of the maps. Highly recommended.

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Not as easy as you might think
Looking for life on Mars

The Search for Life on Mars
Malcolm Walters , M. R. Walter , and Malcolm Walter
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Astrophysics & Space Science | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

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Red Mars (Mars Trilogy)

ASIN: 073820367X

Amazon.com

Who's afraid of little green men these days? We've got more pressing (and realistic) worries now, but recent evidence points to the red planet as a possible source of living matter, so while we might not have to worry about the war of the worlds, it does behoove us to be neighborly and check it out. Astrobiologist Malcolm Walter wrote The Search for Life on Mars to explain what we know and what's at stake in this interplanetary reconnaissance mission. His writing is relaxed and personal; he shares his early experiences observing the space program with the readers and builds in us a sense of the magic felt by the pioneers in extraterrestrial exploration. He goes on to describe our current state of knowledge--and ignorance--about life elsewhere and on Mars in particular, then explains what we're currently doing to investigate and why.

The fabled "Martian meteorite" renewed interest in both Mars and the search for alien life, and Walters tells us its history and probable origin, though much still remains unknown. The excitement of working with NASA comes through in his writing about his own work; it's fascinating to read of space research divorced from the old context of nationalistic pride. Walters ends the book with a beautiful, lucid description of what the first Martian explorers will see, and argues gently for the importance and relevance of this work to our lives and those of our descendents. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

A timely and provocative account of one of the most thrilling topics in science today-the search for life on Mars--and how it may ultimately lead us to the origins of life in the universe.

Hidden beneath the sterile surface of Earth's neighboring planet may be the keys to unlocking the origins of life in the universe. An expert on extreme-life environments, Malcolm Walter argues that the best place to find evidence of life on Mars is out of reach of telescopes and space probes--it's in the rocks and subsurface water of the Red Planet. In this engaging and authoritative book, Walter unveils his dramatic plan-already adopted by NASA--for finding these elusive traces of life.

Customer Reviews:

Not as easy as you might think.......2001-05-26

This book is a little like "Here be Dragons," (Koerner, LeVay, Oxford University Press, 2000) and "Rare Earth," (Ward, Brownlee, Copernicus, 2000) except that it is more focused and specific than the others. While Koerner, LeVay, Ward, and Brownlee consider the possibility that life exists outside the solar system, Walter limits the scope of his book to the question of whether microbes exist, or once existed, on Mars.

Life outside of earth has never been unambiguously observed and verified. Consequently, discussions about the possibility of life beyond earth inevitably begin with thoughts about how life originated here. There seems to be an emerging sense that life is the result of a universe that is naturally self-organizing (Stuart Kauffman is in this camp. See his book "At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, 1995). According to this point of view, life is all but certain to arise on any planet having the basic chemicals and physical conditions found on earth 4 billion years ago. Given this hypothesis - that life arises quickly and naturally in the proper environment - it's natural to ask if any other planets in the solar system have (or had) the necessary ingredients. If they did, we should look to see if life evolved there. Since there is growing evidence that Mars had a distant past with some of these conditions, it seems more and more important that we look for life on Mars. Finding evidence of life there would buttress the concept that life readily evolves given the proper environment. Obviously, if that's the case, it holds enormous consequences for modern science.

Walter has a nice chapter on the tree of life, and describes recent information showing that "all the lowest branches of the tree are occupied by hyperthermophiles." The discovery that life exists on earth under extreme conditions (like those of deep-sea thermal vents) has increased the hope among scientists that it might also have evolved and flourished on Mars many thousands of millions of years ago. He also shows how genetic transfer between species happens today, and was probably common among our earliest ancestors, so that the whole concept of a "tree of life" becomes somewhat tangled during the earliest stages of the evolution of life. Instead of a tree, the topology looks more like a web, with the roots of the tree (consisting of Bacteria, Eucarya, and Archaea) rising out of this web.

The expectation of finding evidence of life on Mars depends on the type of environment that Mars supported in the distant past, and the circumstances under which life arose on earth. It also depends on how easy it is to ascertain the evidence of fossilized ancient microbial life. It turns out that identifying evidence of microbes in very old rocks is a pretty hard thing to do. To illustrate this, Walter describes the difficulty of identifying stromatolites in ancient rocks. This was new information for me, and a real insight into the nuts and bolts of making these sorts of identifications. I'd thought that stromatolites were easy to identify, but in the very oldest rocks, they're not. When identifying stromatolites in rocks 3000 million years old, there can be (and often is) a great deal of controversy regarding the conclusion. Walter's point in making this so clear is that stromatolites are large colonies of microbes, yet even they are not unambiguously identified in the oldest rocks. The problem of identifying evidence for individual microbes in rocks 3000 to 3500 million years old is even tougher. The point being that even with Martian rocks in our hands, it's not going to be easy to affirmatively state whether there is evidence of ancient life on Mars.

To drill the point home, Walter points to the fact that we do have chunks of Martian rocks on hand, in the form of bits and pieces that have been blasted off the Martian surface by meteorite impacts. Walter describes in detail the scientific examination of some of these rocks, and one, in particular, identified as ALH84001. This meteorite made world news when a team of scientists reported finding evidence of ancient microbes buried inside it. Walter describes the initial reports, the objections, and the eventual state of limbo in which these conclusions came to rest. This helps set the tone for expectations regarding the difficulty against which such analysis will proceed even when we manage to return samples from the Martian surface using spacecraft.

In describing how scientists make conclusion about the presence of microbes in ancient rocks, Walter does a real service by illustrating the importance of convergent evidence. Identifying ancient microbes involves more than one type of observation. It involves many types of converging data, including visible observations of deposits in rocks, the types of rocks involved, and things like carbon isotope ratios (not to be confused with carbon 14, which decays far to quickly for analysis in 3000-million-year-old rocks). Along these lines, I noticed a recent article in Photonics Spectra (May 2001) describing the use of Raman imaging to identify microfossils - another tool, in the search for the ancient life on earth, and possibly on Mars.

The book ends with some very informative discussions about proposals for future landing sites on Mars, for sample analysis and/or return.

This is a very informative book, with useful insights into the way science works, complete with several pages of color plates, a useable index, and short list of further reading material. If you are interested in what NASA does, and how the scientific search for life on Mars is (and will be) carried out, I think you will like it. I certainly did.

Looking for life on Mars.......2000-04-10

Malcolm Walter has written a fascinating guide to where we should look for current or past life on Mars. As a non-scientist I was not quite sure what to expect in buying this book, but what I found was a thoughtful discussion of how one scientist would explore the red planet for signs of life. Walter gives a short, understandable review of the scientific discoveries to date from the past NASA missions as a prelude to what to expect in the future. However, his background is in palaeobiology on Earth, which I learned is the study of fossilied life. Having absolutely no knowledge of this field myself, I sometimes felt a little lost in his technical discussions and wasn't always sure that I wanted to know as much as he told me about microbe fossils on Earth. Nevertheless, the thrust of his arguments and points he made were all clear. The heart of his case is that there is a lot we can learn from palaeobiology on Earth that should inform how we search for life, which may very well only be fossilized former life, on Mars. The importance future extensive scientific exploration for signs of past or present life on Mars is also well made. Overall, this short book (170 pages including the index) is worth the the time, and for a layman the effort, for anyone who has even a passing interest in this subject.

The Search for Life on Mars: Evolution of an Idea

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The Search for Life on Mars: Evolution of an Idea
Henry S. F. Cooper
Manufacturer: Henry Holt & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Astronomy | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

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Voyage to Mars: NASA's Search for Life Beyond Earth

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A Behind the Scenes Book about Mars Exploration
Excellent look inside a science team...
In many ways, this book was not really about Mars!
Mars: A Personal Odyssey

Voyage to Mars: NASA's Search for Life Beyond Earth
Laurence Bergreen
Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 157322894X
Release Date: 2001-10-09

Book Description

Voyage to Mars is the gripping story of an elite group of visionary scientists and their passionate quest to explore our closest cousin in the solar system. Acclaimed biographer Laurence Bergreen "goes to where the action is-NASA-profiling the scientists who are trying to make a manned mission to Mars a reality" (San Diego Union Tribune). It is a true adventure story of our time, about a modern-day odyssey that will not only push the limits of science, but will change our understanding of the universe and ourselves.

"Voyage to Mars makes a compelling case for the inevitability of a [manned] mission to Mars... Bergreen does a good and serious job. By focusing on selected individual men and women, he brings to life the rather abstract scientific and bureaucratic processes that drive NASA's Mars program. The reader gets a sense of the drama, the intense joys and disappointments, of science at the outer edge of knowledge." (Los Angeles Times)

"It's not hard to get caught up in the spirit of the enterprise, and it's impossible not to like the irrepressible Garvin or admire his unself-conscious, unabashed commitment to Mars. Bergreen is particularly engaging on the intense (and intensely personal) controversy-as yet unresolved-over ALH 84001, the Martian meteorite. In a heart-thumping, stomach-churning final chapter, Bergreen harrowingly relates what it would be like to be an astronaut on the way to Mars. Voyage to Mars is likely to draw even the sourest reader into the ranks of cheerleaders. Mars or bust! (Wired)

Customer Reviews:

A Behind the Scenes Book about Mars Exploration.......2001-06-29

While Laurence Bergreen's book "Voyage to Mars" does contain some information about Mars space missions, robotic probes, and scientific study of Mars, it is primarily about the scientists, both men and women, who study Mars and design experiments for NASA robotic explorers and how they dedicated their lives to the study and exploration of this planet. Most of the book covers the people involved in Mars research since the Mars Observer failure in 1992.

This book follows the lives (personal and professional) of several NASA scientists who study Mars, whether they're off in some remote location studying geology that's similar to Mars or designing an experiment for a robotic exploration mission. The book includes the many battles that each one fights, whether is with NASA bureaucracy, their personal lives, with each other for experiments to be flown on an upcoming Mars spacecraft, or dealing with each other's conflicting theories on Martian geological history. One of the things that I gleaned from reading this book is that while each of the people maybe specialized in a given area, they all have a board background in planetary sciences and spacecraft design. Also, there seems to be a lot jealously between scientists, especially for those people who worked on the "Life on Mars" Rock. It was also nice to see that a good portion of the people that NASA employs are women.

Since I've known several of the people involved in Mars research who are described in this book for over a decade, I can definitely say that the stories presented are true and I found the personal descriptions of various individuals to be dead on as well as those of NASA facilities. The book could, however, benefit from some photos and illustrations instead of the detailed of various Martian geological features. It also would have been nice to some parts of the book devoted to the engineers who help make these missions possible, but that might be an inappropriate topic for this book.

Excellent look inside a science team..........2001-03-29

Bergreen's book is a very intimate look at how science really works. In successive chapters, he takes us inside four groups of men and women: the team of scientists that worked on the Martian meteorite ALH84001; the Mars Pathfinder/Sojourner team, the team in charge of the Mars Global Surveyor's laser altimeter, and finally, inside Dan Goldin's NASA. What we see is a far cry from the polished interviews on TV, or the neatly written articles in Nature or Science. The truth is that scientists rarely agree on anything other than very broad assumptions, and often not even on those. Instead, scientists, even those working together on the same project, can heatedly disagree with one another's assumptions or interpretations, making it difficult to agree on the best way data should be released to the public.

An example from the MGS laser altimeter team (specifically the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter or MOLA). This instrument shoots blasts of laser light from the orbiting spacecraft to the surface of Mars, and times their return to the sensor. By doing so, an incredibly accurate topographical relief map of Mars can be created. However, Mars has no absolute altitude marker like Earth (sea-level). Therefore, the scientists have to agree on an altitude reference against which all other measurements are compared. The specific reference chosen is critical because it will be used in all subsequent analyses of MOLA data. Any error could potentially be a spoiler for generations of future reserachers. Bergreen was there when they discussed whether they were ready to commit to an altitude reference and start releasing data (many team members argued "yes!") or whether more data and study were needed before the team published such critical information (other team members said "wait!").

Also typical was the conflict in choosing a landing site for the Mars Polar Lander. Scientists pour over the data from MGS and pick a site that is geologically interesting. Engineers pour over the MGS data and pick a site that is safe. The two goals are often at direct odds with one another. The engineers want stastical rock-counts so that they can ensure their craft won't topple over a boulder. Scientists argue that the sites chosen by the engineers will nullify all the science objectives of the mission. Such discussions can quickly become personal as emotions boil over and passionate beliefs give way to shouting contests.

Bergreen's book is in many ways reminiscent of Overbye's Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, only directed at Planetary scientists instead of cosmologists. This book will be of extreme interest to Marsophiles, but will also be enlightening to those who want an inside look at Dan Goldin's NASA, or at the process actually followed by scientists in the trenches. I recommend this book highly to these two groups as well as anyone else who hasn't updated their knowledge of Mars exploration since Viking.

In many ways, this book was not really about Mars!.......2001-03-07

Although on the surface this is a book about the recent robotic missions to Mars, the book is really an exploration of the culture of the project scientists at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Bergreen paints very full portraits of many key people involved in NASA, JPL, etc including the scientists, graduate students, industry representatives, etc. The book reminded me very much of Jim Watson's excellent account of his work to elucidate the structure of DNA, "The Race for the Double Helix" in that it showed the human side of science. Jim Garvin, Jim Head, Sean Solomon, and the other scientists in this book seek good and solid data, but also (understandably) seek publications in prestigious journals to advance their careers. They worry openly about funding and grant support. Jim Garvin has what sounds like a strained relationship with his wife, who does not really seem to understand her husband's passion and dedication. Some of the investigators don't like each other, and show this openly. These sorts of interludes were very interesting as many books about science and scientists are sterile and portray scientists as absent-minded-professor types who are not grounded in the real world (which is only very rarely the case).

The book is very readable and well written. My only complaint is that the book would have benefited from some illustrations. The images from the Mars Orbiter were discussed ad nauseum, but no representative images were between the covers of the book! Also, I would have liked to have seen a few photos of some of the hardware and researchers discussed.

Mars: A Personal Odyssey.......2000-12-19

Travelers often opine that the experience of a trip itself, the way stations and characters encountered, rather than the final destination, is the most exciting aspect of a journey. After reading Laurence Bergreen's latest offering, VOYAGE TO MARS: NASA'S SEARCH FOR LIFE BEYOND EARTH (hardcover edition), one may reasonably conclude that the peripatetic author is as fascinated with the personas and psyches of the various individuals he encounters along the way as he is with the ostensible subject of the book: Mars. Indeed, a glance at Bergreen's previous books, works covering the gamut from Al Capone to Louis Armstrong to Irving Berlin, shows that the author is a keen observer and no stranger to character studies; his most recent book is no exception.

Bergreen's tour, which starts on Surtsey, a volcanic island off the Icelandic coast, eventually ends on Mars. Throughout, he manages to weave an interesting narrative, replete with detailed personal observations of the scientists and engineers he encounters along the way, which is interspersed with some fairly decent Mars science written in layspeak. The author recounts the often-rancorous Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) team meetings and the clash of egos between scientists pushing their own competing theories and hypotheses about Mars. He encounters scientists in the nascent astrobiology community, some of who are veterans from the Viking mission to Mars of the mid-1970's, and who have bittersweet memories of the main finding from that mission, namely that Mars was a lifeless world. He smoothly segues into the modern view (based on more recent analyses) that the question of life on Mars, either extant or extinct, may not be a closed issue. The reader is caught up in the excitement and the glimpses into the inner sanctum, which is made all the more fascinating because the subject is the Red Planet. The reading is pleasurable (I read the entire book in two sittings) and insightful, but there are a few problems. As a scientist, I am trained to be alert to what is termed "observational bias", which, upon careful reading, appears to raise its head in the pages of the book. It is almost axiomatic that scientists, as well as science teams, tend to be very competitive. So it is not surprising that Bergreen appears to view the world primarily through the prism of the MOLA team. Indeed, he seems to accept their characterizations of others (especially competitors on the other MGS science teams); an interesting parallel to Stockholm syndrome. Additionally, given that Bergreen is really not a "participant" in the normal sense of the word, there are the inevitable factual errors (mostly minor) that are sprinkled throughout the book. Without wanting to appear as a nitpicker, I'll list a few that came to my attention:

Page 104: "...the same moment in 1993 when Mars Observer slipped behind Mars and never resumed contact with Earth." Fact: The failed Mars Observer spacecraft lost contact with Earth three days BEFORE Mars Orbit Insertion and Earth occultation.

Page 104: "For the first time in twenty-one years, a spacecraft [Mars Global Surveyor] was orbiting Mars." Fact: The author is apparently unaware of the Soviet Phobos 2 spacecraft, which successfully entered Mars orbit on January 29, 1989, although the spacecraft was lost in March of 1989 when controllers lost contact while it was approaching its primary target, Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons.

Page 111: "...[Mars Observer] and finally launched in 1991." Fact: Mars Observer launched in 1992.

Page 114: "He's [Malin] a member of the MOLA team." Fact: Dr. Michael C. Malin is Principal Investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera team and a Co-Investigator for the Thermal Emission Spectrometer team; he is not a member of the MOLA team, and would therefore normally not be expected to attend their meetings. This "factual error" by the author is less innocuous than it appears and perhaps was colored by observational bias accruing from his association with the MOLA team. Moreover, the misidentification is used to strengthen his claims that Malin is secretive, elusive, one who holds onto data, and one who does not respond to email, etc., which do not appear to be well-supported by the facts, although one can easily believe that the MOLA team encouraged this view. In fairness, though, it is possible that the author simply confused membership on the MOLA team with membership on the much larger and more inclusive MGS Project Science Group.

Page 138: "...and the Journal of Geophysics Review." Fact: After checking with the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) online database, I discovered that no such journal exists. It is likely that the author confused two separate journals, the Journal of Geophysical Research and Geophysical Research Letters, both of which are key publications for planetary scientists.

Page 205: "Stardust will swing around Mars..." Fact: The Stardust spacecraft did not and will not "swing around Mars." It does, however, travel beyond Mars' orbit, but never comes closer than several million kilometers to the Red Planet at any time during its baseline mission.

Page 216: "And a little camera will pop up..." Fact: The author, while apparently describing a portion of the mission profile for the two Deep Space 2 penetrators (part of the failed Mars Surveyor 98 mission), incorrectly describes their instrument packages. There was no camera aboard either of the impact probes; however, Bergreen may be referring to the Surface Stereo Imager, a camera system aboard the Mars Polar Lander.

Customer Reviews:

Less acrimony please.......2000-04-11

The book I read with this name was copyright 1998, first published in Britain. It also had a different ISBN number, but aside from these differences, it appears to be the same book. I did not like it. It lost me in the Introduction when the author felt it was necessary to let me know Fermi's principle was "merely a display of stupendous arrogance and ignorance little different from the pompous declarations of medieval popes". Right at the end of the book, the author makes the following comment about Tipler, "He refuses to accept any arguments against his view, and is dogmatic to the point where one wonders what has precipitated such a belief - does it derive from some twisted humanism or some childhood trauma". Von Daniken is treated more generously as he is rebutted, although I wasn't sure what to make of a reference to a jail term for fraud. While the author is trying to muster arguments for acknowledging different (X-file like) opinions as part of the "Life out There" discussion, his attitude towards opinions counter to his own appear, at least on the face of it, identical to his description of Tipler. That said, the author has mustered many snippets of information that while readily available elsewhere, are interestingly put together in his book. Ironically, he even acknowledges, as a footnote in chapter 5, the presence of gamma-ray bursters that some people now feel add support for Fermi's principle, although this is not the context the author has used. My central criticism of the book is that the author is biased so strongly in favour of life out there, and so trenchant in his criticism of those who hold a different view, as the examples above suggest, that it is hard to feel comfortable with any of his views. Read this book if you feel you need a strident avatar for your cause.

THE QUEST FOR MARS: THE NASA SCIENTISTS AND THEIR SEARcH FOR LIFE BEYOND EARTH.

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THE QUEST FOR MARS: THE NASA SCIENTISTS AND THEIR SEARcH FOR LIFE BEYOND EARTH.
Laurence. Bergreen
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Astronomy | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

Return to Mars: A search for humanity's true origins

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Return to Mars: A search for humanity's true origins
Brian Crowley
Manufacturer: Matchbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Astronomy | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

Mars | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1863210016

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The Search For Life On Mars
MALCOLM WALTER
Manufacturer: Perseus Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O9JY4K

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Search for Life on Mars
Henry S. F. Cooper
Manufacturer: Outlet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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