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Show Is There Life On Mars? Still A Question, Says Prof It is too early to tell if there is a simple form of life on the planet Mars, but it appears inevitable in-evitable that extra-terrestrial life exists in the universe. This is the opinion of a University Uni-versity scientist who has received re-ceived the latest processed set of 22 pictures taken of the cold planet 135 million miles from earth July 14 by Mariner IV. Dr. Elie A. Shneour, associate professor of molecular and genetic ge-netic biology, is one of the members mem-bers of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Biology and Exploration of the System. Dr. Shneour said the latest set of Martian pictures was processed pro-cessed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lab-oratory, Pasadena, as the earlier ones, were not designed to discover dis-cover life on Mars. He is quick to point out that the pictures cannot be expected to prove the existence or nonexistence non-existence of life, but they do give valuable clues to the structure of the planet. The first Mariner IV pictures were translated such as a tele-sivion tele-sivion image at ,200 dots per line 200 lines wide. In the later sets much clearer images have been provided through techniques tech-niques of data processing. Some things we do know about Mars, he said, are that dark areas become darker and polar caps recede, indicating the planet has a season and some water is available. "We are aware the temperature temper-ature reaches about 65 degrees fahrenheit for brief periods at the Martian equator in summer," he said. When Mars is in a favorable position for another shot in 1969, Dr. Shneour hopes the United States will be the first nation to land instruments that can sample and analyze the atmosphere atmos-phere and surface to determine if microbe-like life exists. One of the greatest problems in doing this, he said, will be to make sure that the unmanned instruments used to collect material ma-terial from Mars are sterile so any organisms from earth are not introduced there. "As far as I know," he said, "the Soviet Union has not succeeded suc-ceeded in sending anything to Mars and we appear to be quite far ahead in this game." Why did Dr. Shneour come to Utah? |