989 On: Health

One of the articles I’m going to reference today is from NASA. As part of the planning for the early probes to the planet Mars in the 1970’s, the scientists involved with developing the scientific experiments - most importantly, the tests to search for alien life - were looking for a sugar that would respond predictably to any alien microbes that might be in the Martian soil, but not react to normal chemicals that might be present in sterile Martian sand. They were trying to avoid false positives. And it turns out, normal sugar can’t achieve that goal - it’s too reactive. So what to do...?