Martian Sulfur Shows No Evidence of Life
(From the May/June 2000 issue of StarDate magazine)
Variations in sulfur compounds found in Martian meteorites -- including ALH 84001, which some scientists believe contains evidence of ancient microscopic life -- are produced by chemical reactions in the planet's atmosphere, and not by bacteria, according to researchers at the University of California–San Diego. Variations in sulfur compounds found in Earth rocks often are caused by types of bacteria that produce energy by converting sulfur from one form to another. But the UCSD researchers say they found no evidence of such "biogenic" processes in the five Mars meteorites they studied.
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