Mars is alive!

Images: Viking missions
Info: NASA Viking info site

About 30 years before we began finding extrasolar planets every other day, and two robotic "scientists" started crawling across the Martian surface in search of life, two small, rather simple Landers proved quite convincingly that microbial life is present on Mars. Called the "labeled release" experiment, both Viking Landers (in 1975 and 1976) used a Carbon-14 catalyst to detect whether microbial life was present in the soil. Two separate Landers, two separate experiments and both showed positive results.
Gilbert Levin, former Viking scientist and now chief executive officer for Spherix in Beltsville, Maryland designed the labeled release experiment and has been crowing for years about the "discovery of life on Mars."
Unfortunately, scientists are a fickle lot and many discounted the results as a fluke and have been anxiously waiting for some "other" proof of life on the red planet.
Here it is.
What we are looking for is methane. Usually expelled by microbial life there is an abundance in the atmosphere of Mars in patches around the equator. It's theorized the microbes, acting as a giant organism, are "breathing" or expelling mass quantities of the stuff into the atmosphere.
Granted this is microbial life; we won't be catching a ride in their spaceship any time soon, but life is life and extraterrestrial life is even better.

The European Space Agency also found evidence of life on the planet, but it wasn't until multiple experiments yielded multiple positives that scientists started to get excited.

There is a theory the belches of methane are caused by geothermal reactions beneath the surface, but no matter. The facts now cannot be disputed: There is ice on Mars and there is methane on Mars; microbes on earth are found in abundance any place we have a source of water (frozen or not) and residual amounts of methane.

I said it before, so allow me to repeat myself and add a bit: The search for life in the Universe began right here on Earth, but it will continue on into infinity.