layer), has built up a thin layer of a very strong oxidant. A sufficiently strong oxidizing molecule would react with the added water to produce oxygen and hydrogen, and with the nutrients to produce carbon dioxide (CO2). Norman Horowitz was the chief of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory bioscience section for the Mariner and Viking missions from 1965 to 1976. Horowitz considered that the great versatility of the carbon atom makes it the element most likely to provide solutions, even exotic solutions, to the problems of survival of life on other planets. However, he also considered that the conditions found on Mars were incompatible with carbon based life. In August 2008, the Phoenix lander detected perchlorate, a strong oxidizer when heated above 200 °C. This was initially thought to be the cause of a false positive LR result. However, results of experiments published in December 2010 propose that organic compounds "could have been present" in the soil analyzed by both Viking 1 and 2, since NASA's Phoenix lander in 2008 detected perchlorate, which can break down organic compounds. The study's authors found that perchlorate can destroy organics when heated and produce chloromethane and dichloromethane as byproduct, the identical chlorine compounds discovered by both Viking landers when they performed the same tests on Mars. Because perchlorate would have broken down any Martian organics, the question of whether or not Viking found organic compounds is still wide open, as alternative chemical and biological interpretations are possible. In 2013, astrobiologist Richard Quinn at the Ames Center conducted experiments in which amino acids reacting with hypochlorite, which is created when perchlorate is irradiated with gamma rays, seemed to reproduce the findings of the labeled-release experiment. He concluded that neither hydrogen peroxide nor superoxide is required to explain the results of the Viking biology experiments. A more detailed study was conducted in 2017 by a team of researchers including Quinn. While this study was not specifically designed to match the data from the LR experiment, it was found that hypochlorite could partially explain the control results, including the 160 °C sterilization test. The authors stated "Further experiments are planned to characterize the thermal stability of hypochlorite and other oxychlorine species in the context of the LR experiments." Controversy Before the discovery of the oxidizer perchlorate on Mars in 2008, some theories remained opposed to the general scientific conclusion. An investigator suggested that the biological explanation of