If the Mars rover Curiosity finds carbon-based molecules in the Martian soil, researcher Gilbert Levin will feel vindicated, since he promulgated the theory that life on Earth was seeded by an asteroid from Mars 36 years ago.

A Titan/Centaur vehicle was sent to Mars on August 20, 1975 and picked up a soil sample there. Levin mixed the Martian soil with a nutrient containing radioactive carbon.
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The new Mars rover was named Curiosity because it hopes to answer one of the greatest questions of modern man: Are we really Martians?

A few billion years ago, Mars may have been a planet covered with oceans. We’re not sure what happened (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show), but we do know that the liquid has mostly burned away. Curiosity will probe the soil that they left behind in order to look for tiny fossils.
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