Martian Earthlings?

Researchers are working on building a device that could detect genetic material in the soil or in the subsurface of Mars and check it against Earthly DNA to see if there are any common sequences. Since we know Mars and Earth have been swapping rocks for billions of years, scientists say it's possible life originated on one planet and migrated to the other. The device may be ready to fly to Mars by 2018.

While researchers say the device has other uses, like diagnosing diseases in space and determining how much of a threat possible Martian microbes might pose to human explorers, selling it as a way to test whether Earth life came from Mars might be a mistake politically. Even if that hypothesis has scientific merit, it seems out there with UFOs and ancient astronaut theory. In this day of tight NASA budgets, that's probably not where you want to be.