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17 Jun 2002
Last August, a group of scientists stunned the scientific world with evidence that life may have once existed on Mars. Their analysis of a Martian meteorite concluded that microscopic life may have been the source of "apparent" fossils it held. In the six months since then, several studies have questioned their interpretations, and recently some in the media have used words from "doubt" to "death knell" to describe the Mars-life theory.
In a speech this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle, however, a key researcher of the original project called dismissals of the claims entirely premature.
"It's time to pry the lid off the coffin, as our interpretations are still very much alive and doing well," said Dr. Christopher Romanek, now of the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory in Aiken, S.C. "We had nine people working on the project for three years, and just since our press conference, researchers have had to formulate and design tests, perform experiments and interpret and publish the results in an amazingly short time frame. "
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