Finding ‘Mars on Earth’
Wired has a rather fascinating article up about some NASA researchers who are trying to devise tests to perform on Mars. In order to do so, they’re trying to find the best proxy for Mars that Earth has. They think they’ve found it.
The ridge and hills are near the geographic center of the Atacama, 40,000 square miles of brutal wasteland in northern Chile. It is the driest spot in the driest part of the driest desert on the planet… It is the only place on Earth that is, as far as anyone has been able to tell, devoid of life.
When they say “devoid of life” they mean it, too. They haven’t yet found any sign of life; even bacteria, blue-green algae, cyanobacteria, etc. haven’t been detected there.
Posted Wednesday February 25, 2004 in Interesting by Chris Curtis
This is an older entry and as such, it may be by a guest author or contain formatting problems / extraneous code. If you notice something wrong with the entry, please use the Contact page to let me know the entry title and issue.
I expected them to say Utah!
By Collin French on February 26, 2004 at 05:42am link