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Just saw this on Bautforum.com:<br /><br />Viking landers may have missed Martian life. <br />22:19 23 October 2006 <br />NewScientist.com news service <br />Mark Buchanan and David L Chandler <br />"Now, a paper by Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the University of Mexico and others demonstrates that the GCMS instrument was incapable of detecting organic compounds even in Mars-like soils from various locations on Earth. This includes Chile's Atacama desert, where other tests prove that living microbes are indeed present. <br />In some soils – including samples taken from Rio Tinto in Spain, which contain iron compounds similar to those detected in Mars soils by NASA's rover Opportunity, the sensitivity of the GCMS was actually a million times lower than its claimed threshold for detection." <br />http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn10361&feedId=online-news_rss20<br /><br /> The paper is freely available from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences web site:<br /><br />Chemistry <br />The limitations on organic detection in Mars-like soils by thermal volatilization-gas chromatography-MS and their implications for the Viking results. <br />( astrobiology | detection of organics | search for martian life | extreme environments | deserts ) <br />Rafael Navarro-González *, Karina F. Navarro *, José de la Rosa *, Enrique Iñiguez *, Paola Molina *, Luis D. Miranda , Pedro Morales , Edith Cienfuegos , Patrice Coll ¶, François Raulin ¶, Ricardo Amils ||, and Christopher P. McKay ** <br />Published online before print October 23, 2006 <br />Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0604210103 <br />OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE <br />http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0604210103v1<br /><br />From the abstract:<br /><br />"In the Antarctic Dry Valleys and the Atacama and Libyan Deserts we <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>