Martian Soil May Contain Life

I’ve given up hope of finding Martians, but if we do it would be ironic if we came across them in the 70s and ignored them:

Study: Martian soil may contain life

“The soil on Mars may contain microbial life, according to a new interpretation of data first collected more than 30 years ago. The search for life on Mars appeared to hit a dead end in 1976 when Viking landers touched down on the red planet and failed to detect biological activity.

But Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, said on Friday the spacecraft may in fact have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin.”