Red Safari: The Hunt for Life on Mars

On a Thursday afternoon in early February, in a residential neighborhood of Chevy Chase Heights, the dingy‐brown building of Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory looms from the top of a steep and grassy hill. At the bottom of the hill is a wooden entrance sign, just 20 feet from a pile of logs and tree stumps. On one branch of one naked magnolia a gray hooded sweatshirt hangs forgotten. The grass of the grassy hill is dead, and crunches when you walk through it. The lab houses 150 of the nation’s best scientists, but only a handful of cars are parked along the edge of the driveway that winds up sharply to the front door. When the elderly secretary enters the door’s security code, you can hear the slow punch of the buttons, and the soft shuffle of her shoes on polished linoleum as she escorts you down the empty corridor. In short, it’s everything you might expect from a Martian‐life‐detection lab.Read more of my Master's thesis.