Meet the Neighbors : Life on Mars and How to Find It

Are we alone in the universe? For half a century, Mars has seemed our likeliest nearby answer.Yet since the Viking landers touched down in 1976, no mission has returned to the Martian surface to search directly for life living there now. In Meet the Neighbors, pioneering astrobiochemist Steven A.Benner argues that this was a historic mistake. Drawing on the Viking archive and explaining how the scientific process failed, he re-examines the mission that first searched for extant Martian life and makes the provocative case that its results were misunderstood.In the decades that followed, Mars science focused on water, geology and past habitability, while the most direct question – is anything alive on Mars today? – was pushed aside. Benner shows why Mars remains the most accessible place to discover a second origin of life, and why finding even microbial organisms there would transform our understanding of our place in the cosmos.He also asks a deeper question: what counts as life in the first place?From the chemistry that may give rise to living systems to “agnostic” tools capable of detecting unfamiliar biology, he lays out a bold and practical blueprint for the next phase of exploration. At once a scientific detective story, a challenge to decades of orthodoxy, and a lucid guide to one of humanity’s biggest questions, Meet the Neighbors is the definitive, urgent brief on where to go, what to measure, and why the next discovery won’t just change textbooks – it will rewrite our place in the universe.