Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Meet the Neighbors – Life on Mars and How to Find It by Steven A. Benner; Allen Lane, (an imprint of Penguin Books); July 2026; 416 pages (Hardcover); $40.99 (Amazon).

Talk about a “cold case” – nothing like dealing with life on Mars where the temperature can drop like a rock to roughly – 89°C at night. But that’s just one factor when thinking about is or isn’t there life on Mars today.

Twin NASA spacecraft Mars missions were launched in the 1970’s: a Viking 1 lander planted its legs on the terrain of Chryse Planitia on July 20, 1976, with the Viking 2 lander touching down months later at Utopia Planitia on September 3. Both asked a key question: Is there life on Mars?

Among their duties, the dual landers scooped up the first soil samples of Mars and deposited those precious collectibles into onboard, specialized equipment. To answer their query about life on the Red Planet, Viking scientists had tightly boxed up their cares and woes and sent that science gear to probe that issue.

Here’s the Red Planet rub. After interpreting all the Viking mission call backs: a majority consensus of scientists at the time was that Viking relayed a “no life on Mars” result.

However, is it possible that the two robots actually radioed back a very clear comeback: “Can you repeat the question?’’

Thought provoking chapters

Steven A. Benner is a chemist, synthetic biologist, paleogenetist, and astrobiologist – and author of this exemplary tale and head spinning volume.

You must read this book – a trite saying, but important to emphasize that point to space groupies, chemists, biologists, geologists, historians, philosophers, and scientific soothsayers.

There are those that might get bogged down in a chapter. No worries, Benner adds, skip to the next. Each chapter comes with a bullet point list of conclusions.

The book supplies witty and wonderful thought-provoking chapters, such as: “Our Place in the Cosmos,” “How ‘Yes Life’ Became ‘No Life’”; “Seeking Extant Martian Life Remained . . .Low Priority”; “The Motivational Logic of Exploration” to “The Origins of Life. A Solution”; “How Martian Life Might Survive” and the clarion chapter call “Astrobiologists of the World, Unite!”

In the past, missions to Mars might “follow the water.” They might assess “habitability.” They might even look for signs of ancient Martian life, says Brenner.

But now missions to seek extant life on Mars have been off the table. What’s going wrong here?

Image credit: Meet the Neighbors/Benner

Big questions

Importantly, this book also tells another story generated from Viking. It illustrates how actual scientists manage research that addresses “big questions.”

“For Viking, anomalous results that might have led to a back-and-forth discussion to correct mistakes in interpretations were rationalized away,” the author suggests. Benner provides examples of how fact and logic can prove less important than “culture” in a community of scientists.

Benner writes that the results of the Viking mission can all be explained by bacterial autotrophs that respire with stored oxygen on Mars (BARSOOMS). BARSOOM is the acronym for a Bacterial Autotrophthat Respires using Stored Oxygen.

“It is hard to not be enthusiastic about the results delivered by the Viking landers,” Benner writes. “Yes, with more money and more payload, more experiments could have been done. The conclusions might have been made more secure. But to repurpose a lyric from Meat Loaf, three out of three ain’t bad.”

Benner writes: “You might think therefore that the community would have changed its consensus opinion. You might think that the community would have had a collective Aha! moment. You might think that the search for extant life on Mars would be back on the table. You would be wrong,” he explains.

Propositions

Yes, science is hard, explains Benner, “especially for ape descendants.” Still, advocacy has a logic. “For extant Martian life, we can break that logic into propositions that we can examine individually,” the author suggests.

— Life arose on Mars

— Life survived on Mars

— We know how to identify any extant life that we will encounter on Mars

— We know where to access places on Mars where any extant life survives

From Benner there’s a call to action: “Astrobiologists of the world, unite! Do risky things. Seek to answer big questions. You have nothing to lose, and a world (Mars) to win.”

For more information on this landmark book, go to:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/477954/meet-the-neighbors-by-benner-steven-a/9780241808306

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