The Rock From Mars (32 page)

Close-up of carbonate globules (each about 100–200 microns across), where the most interesting and puzzling microscopic features in the rock are concentrated. These deposits suggested the rock had interacted with water, a prerequisite for life, on the young Mars. This photo originally appeared in the journal Nature. (NASA/Monica Grady)

Secret collaborators Kathie Thomas-Keprta, David McKay, and Everett Gibson in the electron microscope lab in Building 31 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston. (NASA)

Veteran space reporter Leonard David got wind of the McKay group’s work and, in August 1996, triggered a media feeding frenzy that forced officials to move up the announcement of possible evidence of biology in the rock from Mars. (Courtesy Leonard David)

WASHINGTON—
THE
1996
NASA HEADQUARTERS PRESS CONFERENCE

Wesley Huntress, Dan Goldin, David McKay, and Everett Gibson appear upbeat as they gather around the rock on the day of the press conference that launched global headlines and triggered a hostile blowback from many scientists. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Reporters and photographers press toward the dais as McKay, with his hand on the glass case containing the Mars rock, looks out on the excited scene in the NASA headquarters auditorium just before the press conference is to begin. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Dan Goldin introduces the scientists, including J. William Schopf (second from right, between Hojatollah Vali, far right, and Richard Zare). Schopf would become a leading critic and antagonist of the McKay interpretation of the evidence in the Mars rock. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Hours after the press conference, a sleep-deprived Richard Zare and NASA official Wesley Huntress explain the Mars rock findings to Jim Lehrer of PBS. (Courtesy Stanford University)

This high-resolution scanning electron microscope image of ALH84001 shows an unusual tubelike structural form found by the McKay group. This structure was not part of the report the group published in the August 16, 1996, issue of the journal Science, but they showed it at the August 1996 press conference at NASA headquarters and it appeared in media reports around the world. Numerous scientists quickly disputed the proposition that it might be evidence of primitive life on Mars 3.6 billion years ago. (NASA)

This electron microscope image shows tubular structures of likely Martian origin that are very similar in size and shape to extremely tiny proposed microfossils—nanofossils—found in some Earth rocks. This photograph was part of the report that the McKay team published in Science. The largest of the fossil-like shapes are less than 1/100th the diameter of a human hair in size while most are ten times smaller, or about 1/1000th the volume of typical Earth bacteria—a size many scientists say is far too small to contain the basic machinery of life. (NASA)

ROCK DETECTIVES

In the bitter hostilities that followed the August 1996 press conference, J. William Schopf of UCLA, a celebrated authority on ancient microfossils, became a primary critic of the McKay group’s interpretation of the evidence in the Mars rock. (Courtesy of UCLA)