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

Are we alone in the universe?

Mars has always seemed where we were likeliest to find the 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. Instead we're searching the moons of outer planets, or the atmospheres of planets many light years away.

In Meet the Neighbors, pioneering astrobiochemist Steven A. Benner argues that this was a historic mistake. That we're looking in the wrong place. Dra...