Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a German astrobiologist, recently published an article in the scientific journal Nature wherein he argued that NASA introducing water to Mars in its 1970s Viking experiments to see if it attracted life probably did more harm than good.
According to Schulze-Makuch’s theory, Earth’s water might’ve been too harsh for Martian organisms. So, when NASA dropped off some water onto the surface of Mars, he argues that they probably killed some microscopic organisms in the process. He says they probably should’ve spilled some salt instead of water.
“Mars is so dry that the introduction of liquid water might be killing life there,” Schulze-Makuch argued. It’s a phenomenon you can see on Earth in places like the Atacama Desert in Chile, the astrobiologist explained, where salts help organisms survive by retaining water longer than would otherwise be possible. If you’ve ever dried brined a steak or a piece of chicken, you get the idea.
Salt absorbs moisture, so if you want to find water in arid environments, you don’t use the so-called “Follow The Water” approach to attract it, you use the substance that is known to draw out water. To put it in the dumbest terms possible, he thinks we should have dry-brined Mars.
He admits that his idea of using salt instead of water to find microbial life may not definitively prove whether there is indeed life on Mars, but he does think it’s a better method than what NASA did decades ago. He still believes that any life on Mars would require water to survive since Mars and Earth have so many similarities, but using water to find it was a dumb way to test it out.
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