Exam 27: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life

What process or observation misled scientists into believing initially that their life-seeking experiments on the Mars Viking Lander had succeeded in detecting evidence of life on our neighboring planet?

In looking for exoplanets, one important discovery target is oxygen because:

The Drake equation calculates the number of technically advanced civilizations in the galaxy as a product of seven factors: R_*, f_p, n_e, f_l, f_i, f_c, and L. In the sample calculation in the text, these values are taken as 1 × 1 × 0.1 × 1 × 1 × 1 × 100 = 10. If we were to redo the calculation, increasing each increasable factor by a multiple of 10, what would our result be?

Which of the following has placed Martian rocks in the hands of scientists on Earth?

In both the labeled-release and pyrolytic-release experiments conducted on Mars by the Viking Landers, carbon compounds were fed into the system and then this carbon was searched for after being potentially involved in respiration or photosynthesis. But how would we know it was the SAME carbon atoms?

One proposed test for determining life on Mars is to measure carbon isotopes in rock samples. How could this indicate life?