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From: Lan Fleming <apollo18@swbell.net>
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 20:54:17 -0600
Fwd Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2000 20:49:05 -0400
Subject: UpDate: Scientists Strengthen Prospects For Life On Mars


Below is the latest press release from Dr. Gil Levin, who for
years has been defending his claim that his Labeled Release
experiment on the Viking Mars landers discovered life despite
NASA proclamations to the contrary. What's interesting about
this release is not only that there is another scientist
involved with Viking backing up some of Levin's arguments, but
that his press release was actually released at all -- and by
JPL's Public Information guy, Ron Baalke, no less. I had assumed
that Levin's press release wouldn't get any farther than his own
web page, and JPL is the organization I'd least expect to see
this coming from. Maybe there's been a shift in the political
winds in Pasadena.

================================================================

From: Ron Baalke <baalke@zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
Subject: New Information Supports Claim Viking Discovered Life in 1976
To: astro-l@uwwvax.uww.edu (Astronomy List)
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 08:10:33 -0700 (PDT)


Biospherics Incorporated
Beltsville, Maryland

Media Contact:
Mark Hopkinson, 561-750-9800 x14
Email: mhopkinson@transmediagroup.com

Science Contact:
Gilbert V. Levin, Ph.D.
619-234-1500 (8/1-8/3), 301-419-3900 (after 8/4)
Email: gillevin@biospherics.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 1st, 2000

SCIENTISTS STRENGTHEN PROSPECTS FOR LIFE ON MARS

New Information Supports Claim Viking Discovered Life in 1976

SAN DIEGO, CA -- On the heels of NASA's decision to land new
rovers on Mars, the debate over the existence of life on the red
planet is heating up. Dr. Gilbert V. Levin, a chief proponent,
today advanced his claim to finding living microorganisms on the
elusive planet 25 years ago. Dr. Levin, one of a trio of
scientists, including himself and another who participated in
NASA's Viking Mission, was presenting a paper at the Annual
Meeting of the International Society for Optical Engineering
refuting the mainstay arguments against life on Mars. He
contends that those arguments -- the presumed absence of organic
matter and of liquid water -- are no longer tenable.

Levin, senior author of the paper and President of Biospherics
Incorporated (NASDAQ/BINC), Beltsville, Maryland, was
Experimenter on the Viking Labeled Release (LR) life detection
instrument that landed on Mars in 1976. His tests produced
evidence for life that sparked a continuing controversy. The
consensus of interested scientists has been that the Viking LR
results on Mars, though positive, were chemical in origin and
not biological. However, in a 1997 publication, following two
decades of study, Levin finally concluded that Viking had,
indeed, detected living microorganisms on Mars. Acknowledging
that many scientists may remain unconvinced, he now proposes a
new test to settle the issue once and for all, and urges that it
be sent on the next lander mission to Mars.

Co-author Dr. Arthur Lafleur, Assistant Director of MIT's
Environmental Health Science Center, provided information that
refutes the most often cited argument against the LR life
detection experiment -- the lack of organic matter, the stuff of
life, on Mars, as reported by the Viking organic analysis gas
chromatograph mass-spectrometer (GCMS). Lafleur, who helped
develop the Viking GCMS instrument, and a co-author of the
original report of no organic matter on Mars, revealed
unpublished results of pre-mission tests. They showed that the
instrument sent to Mars could easily have missed biologically
significant amounts of organic matter in the soil, as it had in
a number of tests on Earth. Thus, the Mars GCMS results no
longer can be considered proof that the LR failed to detect
living microorganisms.

[Note: the GCMS failure to detect organic compounds is usually
cited as the conclusive evidence that Levin's experiment did not
detect life. The support of Levin's position by one of the
developers of the GCMS is therefore highly significant -- LF]

Co-author Dr. Lawrence Kuznetz, University of California,
Berkeley, Department of Planetary Sciences, has put to rest the
second prevailing argument against the possibility of life on
Mars, that the atmosphere of the planet is too thin to support
the existence of life -- essential liquid water. Results of a
laboratory study by a team of researchers led by Kuznetz showed
that liquid water does exist under Martian environmental
conditions. In addition, Kuznetz found results from 1960's tests
of cooling systems of astronaut space suits showed that water
exists in liquid form under atmospheric pressure as low as that
on Mars. The findings lend credence to a model for Martian water
published in 1998 by Levin and his son, Ron, a Ph.D. physicist
at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Based on Viking and Pathfinder data,
the model predicted amounts of moisture in the Martian soil
equal to that found to nourish microbial life in the sand dunes
of Death Valley, California. Corroborated by the new NASA
announcement of evidence for recent or current liquid water on
Mars, these reports dispel the no-liquid-water issue against the
Viking LR results.

The authors support Levin's "chiral LR" experiment and propose
that it be sent to Mars at the next opportunity. The experiment
would apply the proven LR technology to test Martian soil for a
unique characteristic found in all known forms of life, but not
in chemical reactions. This characteristic is the biological
preference for one of two possible configurations of certain
organic molecules. The scientists state that the experiment can
return an unambiguous answer to the major scientific question of
life on Mars that would be acceptable to virtually all
scientists.

Dr. Levin was an Experimenter on NASA's Viking Mission to Mars,
a Co-Investigator on NASA's Mariner 9 Mars mission, and was a
Team Member of NASA's MOx instrument placed on the ill-fated
Russian 1996 Mars Lander. He received NASA's Public Service
Award "In recognition of his achievements in designing,
perfecting, and conducting the Viking Labeled Release
Experiment."

Since his Viking experience, Levin has led the biotechnology
efforts at Biospherics, the publicly held Maryland Company he
founded in 1967. His developments include a full-bulk,
low-calorie sweetener, tagatose, soon to come on the market, and
the safe-for-humans, environmentally friendly pesticide,
FlyCrackerTM, introduced into the market this year. The Company
also provides information services to government agencies and
private industry.

Certain statements contained herein are "forward looking"
statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act of 1995. Because such statements include risks and
uncertainties, actual results may differ from those expressed or
implied. Factors that could cause actual results to differ
materially from those expressed or implied include, but are not
limited to, those discussed in filings by the Company with the
Securities and Exchange Commission, including the filing on Form
8-K made on March 3, 1999.

Under its motto, "Technologies for Information and Health,"
Biospherics' mission is to provide guidance and products to
improve the quality of life. Biospherics offers biotechnology
innovations, information technology solutions, and information
center services.

Biospherics Incorporated's Internet address is:
http://www.biospherics.com .

# # # # # #

BACKGROUND

SCIENTISTS STRENGTHEN PROSPECTS FOR LIFE ON MARS

New Information Counters Long-Held Opposition

The 1976 Viking Mission LR results met all the pre-mission
criteria established for the experiment by NASA and its
scientific review committees for proof of life on Mars. However,
the failure of the GCMS to find organic matter in the Martian
surface material led to caution. Accordingly, Levin did not
claim the LR experiment had detected life, but merely stated
that the results were consistent with biology. Other scientists
stated that, without organic matter, there could be no life.

They quickly advanced theories attributing the LR response to
the putative presence in the soil of the strong oxidant,
hydrogen peroxide, or its derivatives. It was also contended
that liquid water could not exist on the surface of Mars,
because of the low atmospheric pressure, in itself precluding
any possibility of life. Levin spent considerable time over the
20 years following Viking poring over the issue of life on Mars,
including three years of laboratory efforts vainly seeking a
non-biological explanation of the Mars LR results. Over the
years since Viking, he followed relevant discoveries such as:
the finding of life in many extreme environments on Earth,
evidence of microbial fossils in meteorites from Mars (with NASA
now explaining that the Viking GCMS may not have been sensitive
enough to detect the small amount of organic matter constituting
such organisms), the physics of water on Mars, and other
physical, chemical and biological findings impinging on the Mars
life issue. His continuing analysis finally reached a point
where, in 1997, Levin published a paper in which he concluded
that his Viking experiment had indeed detected living
microorganisms in the soil of Mars.

Despite the fact that the 1997 paper cited recently published
work by NASA scientists disproving the presence of hydrogen
peroxide on Mars, and made a strong case by Levin confirming
NASA's suggestion that the Viking GCMS may overlooked organic
matter on Mars, considerable criticism was evoked. It now
concentrated on the liquid water issue as the principal
remaining argument against the LR results. In 1998, Levin and
his physicist son, Ron, published a paper outlining a model for
the existence of liquid water on Mars. They claimed that
atmospheric physics and thermal conditions on Mars provided
moisture to the top layer of soil in amounts sufficient to
sustain life.

Dr. Lafleur read Levin's papers on the Viking LR experiment and,
impressed by them, in 1999 contacted Levin to tell him of
unpublished problems that he found as an engineer in developing
the Viking GCMS at MIT. He thought the GCMS results might be
explained without impairing the LR results. Dr. Kuznetz,
teaching planetary science at UC Berkeley, invited Levin to give
a talk about his Viking experiment. Intrigued with the liquid
water issue, Kuznetz searched and found evidence for liquid
water existing under low-pressure conditions during tests made
on cooling systems developed for astronaut space suits. He then
undertook laboratory experiments proving that liquid water
exists under Martian pressure and temperature. While the present
paper was in preparation, NASA announced the finding of strong
evidence for current-era liquid water on Mars, confirming the
theory and the experimental data reported by the Levins and
Kuznetz.

Levin now believes that the biosphere will soon be acknowledged
to include Mars. He thinks that, in a few years, people will
wonder at the difficulty that delayed acceptance of the
discovery of life on Mars in the face of the accumulating facts.
All the links necessary for life on Mars have been forged:
terrestrial microorganisms can live under Martian conditions;
there is liquid water available to microorganisms on Mars;
contrary to the GCMS results, organic matter seems certain to be
on Mars (photo-chemically synthesized from the atmospheric gases
and also deposited by meteorites); Earth and Mars have traded
materials that could readily have contained bacteria; bacteria
can be preserved for up to millions of years under the vacuum
and low temperature of space travel; bacteria transported in
meteorites can survive entry temperatures into the Mars or Earth
atmospheres and the thermal and mechanical shock of landing; and
freeze-dried bacteria are known to establish full metabolism
very shortly upon entering a favorable environment. These facts
relieve scientists from the difficulty of accepting separate
origins of life on Mars and Earth, an extremely unlikely
happenstance. Now, it is possible that life on either planet may
have come from the other -- or from a third source.

Levin believes that NASA's one billion dollar Viking Mission to
find life on Mars was successful, and that the answer has been
staring scientists in the face for nearly a quarter of a
century. The simple, relatively low-cost and easiest way to
finally settle the issue is to send the chiral LR experiment on
the next Mars mission.

NOTE: Additional info is available at

http://www.biospherics.com/Mars/index.html