Monday briefing: 50 years after Viking landed on Mars, did Nasa overlook evidence of life?
Good morning. As Andy Burnham’s search for intelligent life to appoint to cabinet continues (more on that from Libby tomorrow), First Edition sets our sights further afield, to the search for life on another red planet. It’s 50 years to the day since humankind’s first foray on Mars. On 20 July 1976, Viking 1 successfully touched down on the planet in a groundbreaking feat. At least, that’s how Nasa tells the story – technically, the Russians did it first in 1971, but contact with the Soviet Mars 3 was lost in seconds, and only a single fuzzy grey image transmitted back to Earth. Over six years, Viking 1 and its successor returned more than 50,000 images, and mapped 97% of the Martian surface. Their research shapes our understanding of space to this day, in particular their life-detection experiments. “No bodies, no life,” declared Viking chief scientist Gerald Soffen at the time. As Nasa’s website states, Viking “provided no definitive evidence for the presence of living microorganisms”. But what if they got that wrong, and for 50 years we’ve had the evidence to prove it? That’s the claim of Steven Benner, chemist and former Harvard professor, in his new book, Meet the Neighbours. The repercussions, he argues, are vast. For today’s First Edition, we ask: is there life on Mars? Before that, a roundup of your biggest earthling stories from the weekend. Weekend roundup UK politics | Andy Burnham is expected to scrap Keir Starmer’s plans for digital ID cards in a “reset of priorities” when he enters Downing Street. The new Labour leader plans to redirect the resources earmarked for the scheme towards tackling the cost of living, his team indicated. Ukraine | Russia has carried out one of its biggest-ever ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, launching a five-hour raid that left at least one person dead and seven injured, with fires and damage across the city. Iran | The US launched a ninth night of strikes targeting Iran early Monday, after announcing the death of another American service member, as the price of Brent crude oil climbed above $90 a barrel, the highest level since June. Africa | Seven American aid workers who had been in Congo to fight the Ebola outbreak are quarantining at a new isolation facility in Kenya after the US government introduced travel restrictions, the head of a US charity employing them told Reuters. Europe | Hungary’s president, Tamás Sulyok, has agreed to step down after signing a constitutional amendment passed by the ruling Tisza party of the prime minister, Péter Magyar. In depth: ‘They thought they found no organic materials’
It’s tricky, Benner tells me, for scientists to claim they have found something. Much safer to state they haven’t. Imagine you’d discovered something unprecedented and revolutionary. “Would you hesitate to announce it to the world? What if two weeks later, some grad student pointed out your basic error?” Scientists like him, Benner says, are “more afraid of being called out for a false-positive than for a false-negative”. In his view, this explains the half-century of science that states extant life was not found on Mars. Over decades, Benner has come to the opposite conclusion. His academic credentials are unimpeachable. Benner holds degrees from Yale and Harvard, and worked at the latter, alongside institutions including the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He is now the director of a non-profit research organisation, and has also worked with Nasa. In fact, it was while peer-reviewing grants for the US space agency at their Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston that Benner made, what he claims, was a major discovery while flicking through the original 1976 Viking mission logs in their library. “Things had quite clearly been missed.” *** The experiments The Viking missions conducted various experiments to test for life on Mars. Some, such as those searching for microbial metabolism (microbes digesting food) and for microbes performing photosynthesis, are widely accepted to have offered positive results. “These experiments discovered unexpected and enigmatic chemical activity in the Martian soil,” says Nasa. “But then Viking used Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) to look for organic material in the soil,” Benner says. Put simply, the GC-MS process can identify and measure the concentration of certain chemicals in a sample. “They thought they found no organic materials.” This is what Benner disputes. “Reading the logs at Nasa in 1999, as a chemist it was clear the GC-MS had detected traces of organics in the Martian soil, but scientists could not explain them, and so dismissed them as a contaminant.” There’s much more to his argument. Decades later, in 2008, Nasa’s Phoenix lander discovered perchlorates were present in Martian soil. Perchlorates are chemicals which destroy organic materials when heated. The 1970s GC-MS experiment heated Martian soil to 500C. “So we now know this experiment would have destroyed most organic materials in the soil.” (For any science-heads, this space.com piece explores this in rich detail.) *** The discovery? If Benner is correct – and there is extant life on Mars – the consequences could be colossal. “It means one of two things,” he argues. “You could have an independent genesis on Mars – a second origin of life.” With Earth, we’re one-for-one when it comes to planets like ours generating life. “If we get two for two, life origin on Mars and Earth, it suggests there is microbial life all over the galaxy.” Only last week, scientists announced they’d identified another Earth-like planet outside our solar system. “If your first casino hand is a straight flush, you’re just lucky,” is Benner’s analogy. “If your second is also a straight flush, you know the deck is rigged. With life on Mars, we’d conclude there is life on all these rocky planets.” There’s an alternative reading of his results: that any life on Mars is a result of interstellar panspermia, the exchange of material between planets. “Rocks hit Mars, get knocked out of the surface and hit Earth, and vice versa,” says Benner. “If we still see extant life on Mars, we are saying that life is extremely resilient to planetary changes.” Earth and Mars have hugely different atmospheres and environments. “If you have one planet seeding life to another planet, and it survives these dramatic changes, again we can expect there to be life on all sorts of rocky planets.” *** Life as we know it Benner’s case isn’t that Viking found definitive proof of extant life on Mars. It’s that the evidence against life is far weaker than received wisdom. Focus has therefore shifted since the Viking missions, turning to the search for water, habitability and signs of ancient life on Mars – which recent missions have detected. “Think of all the experiments that could have been done, had they properly identified microbial life on Mars,” says Benner. “Instead, we decided not to look for it. That was the decision of the Nasa Astrobiology Institute when it was inaugurated in the late 1990s.” Benner worked there from 1999. “We were told no experiment will fly if it is going to look for extant life on Mars – the Nasa leadership interpreted Viking as a mistake or failure.” Yes, the organisms we’re discussing are microscopic in scale, but that belies their significance. “Microbial life has a lot in common with you and me,” says Benner. “In fact, you have more microbe cells in you than you do person cells.” What differentiates microbes from, say, a lump of rock, is their capacity for Darwinian evolution. The search for intelligent extraterrestrial life sounds the sexier pursuit, but “what we’re talking about here shapes our assessment of the prospect of finding it”, Benner argues. “I can’t tell you that microbial life will with high probability evolve to intelligent life, but I can tell you this: you do not get intelligent life without it.” *** Not alone Benner isn’t the first to make a similar claim. Dr Gilbert V Levin, who designed one of the tests used on the Viking missions, spent decades arguing this case. He died in 2021 still resolute, despite being “marginalised, treated as goofy,” says Benner. The late Mexican astrobiologist Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez agreed, finding soil in Chile’s inhospitable Atacama Desert closely matched that found on Mars and that Viking “may have been blind to low levels of organics.” In space circles, it’s a hotly contested topic. Many textbooks today suggest that the Viking tests failed to find life, or were inconclusive. “The community is divided,” says Benner. “Some say, ‘Good guy, Steven. Well done for going out there and taking the arrows.’ Others are worried about the impact on public perceptions of space. That if we say what’s been unspoken, there’ll be a backlash: it’s Nasa trying to get money; a crackpot theory!” For now, Benner says, nobody has stepped forward to discredit or disprove his claims. “That’s because most people in this community are geologists, or biologists, and are a little scared to venture into chemistry,” he acknowledges. Nasa told me they don’t comment on outside research. The European Space Agency, I was told, was “not aware” of Benner’s publication. But he’s up for the fight, if/when it comes. “I’m not going to stop until [Nasa head honcho] Jared Isaacman goes on television and acknowledges the issue.” Science, he concedes, isn’t about total certainty. “But right now, nobody is questioning this. They have to be. I’ve been polite for 25 years – now I’m taking no prisoners.” The week to come Monday | Keir Starmer will visit King Charles to resign as prime minister before Andy Burnham meets the monarch, delivers his first speech as PM, and appoints his cabinet. Wednesday | The third hearing of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who is facing “narco-terrorism” charges, is set to take place in a New York court. Friday | International criminal court members vote on whether to dismiss prosecutor Karim Khan for alleged sexual misconduct, which he denies. What else we’ve been enjoying
Tobias Jones’s long read on the fight for Italy’s beaches is a fascinating story that takes in organised crime, the military, arson and, er, chainsaws. Sam Coare, newsletters team The Church of England’s upper echelons are grappling with its stance on Palestine, and I found this report from Aamna Mohdin on the unfolding debate fascinating. Michael “If you were gonna emulate a director, you’d emulate somebody whose movies aren’t panned” – Steve Rose’s interview with John Carpenter makes for a personable profile of the notoriously grumpy master of horror. Sam World Cup 2026
Final | Spain won their second men’s World Cup after Ferran Torres’s extra-time strike beat a battling Argentina side who had Enzo Fernández sent off. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino were booed as they took to the field for the presentation ceremony. The spectacle | The World Cup concluded with a disorientating fever dream beneath a bright blue American sky, Nick Ames writes, where football appeared a sideshow for a tournament nurtured to indulge the cult of the individual. Fifa | Fifa has been accused of providing an “open door to fraud” and allowing political influence to cast doubt on the integrity of the World Cup in a stinging rebuke by the Council of Europe’s secretary general. Sport
Golf | On a dramatic final day of the Open, Ryan Fox, son of a New Zealand rugby legend and grandson of a former Black Caps captain, emerged victorious. Formula One | Kimi Antonelli won the Belgian Grand Prix for Mercedes but his title rival and teammate George Russell was knocked out on the opening lap after a clash with Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton. Tour de France | Jonas Vingegaard crashed out of the Tour de France on the approach to the climb of Plateau de Solaison, just hours after being woken up early on Sunday morning to undergo doping controls. The front pages
The Guardian’s front page today is “Time for UK to face up to its challenges – Burnham”. The Times says “Burnham: My 10-year UK plan”, the Telegraph’s take is “Burnham heralds new era of big state”, and the i Paper writes “Burnham pledges ‘breathing room’ to help UK on cost of living as he moves into No 10”. The FT leads on “Burnham seeks tight grip on spending with beefed-up control centre at No 10”. Still on the incoming PM, the Mail has “Burnham doesn’t speak for us, say voters in South”, the Express says “New PM has no mandate to raise taxes again”, the Mirror writes “Burning ambition” and the Sun leads on “Turmoil”. Lastly, Metro angles its splash on the return of England’s footballers, writing “Welcome home … there’ve been a few changes”. Today in Focus
The battle to reclaim Epping Tim Burrows goes back to Epping in Essex one year after protesters from across the country descended on the small town to demonstrate against asylum seekers being housed at the Bell hotel. Cartoon of the day | Tom Gauld
The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Dino J Martins, an entomologist, argues that insects and parasites are essential to understanding ecosystems. His lifelong fascination with insects led him to study how overlooked creatures shape biodiversity. In his book Hidden Creatures, he explores parasites’ complex roles, from wasps that consume caterpillars from within to sex-loving hookworms thriving in human intestines. Martins contends parasites are indicators of ecological health and offer insights into evolution, immunity and disease. He warns that losing parasite species erases biological knowledge and may affect future health. His work urges readers to see parasites not as villains but as vital ecological actors. “Even the most disgusting have some of the most incredible adaptations and abilities.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
