Oregon geologist says Curiosity's images show Earth-like soils on Mars

http://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2014/7/oregon-geologist-says-curiositys-images-show-earth-soils-mars

by 3rd3 • 12 years ago

61 4 12 years ago

uonews.uoregon.edu

sixQuarks• 12 years ago

Interesting. I've been hearing more and more evidence piling up towards the possibility of life on Mars. It makes you wonder if there isn't some sort of PR play at work here. Could it be possible that life has already been discovered on Mars, but they don't want to "shock" the public with a sudden announcement. They're slowly building up to it. A very conspiratorial theory, but possible, no?

dalke2• 12 years ago

The link says "The ancient soils, he said, do not prove that Mars once contained life, but they do add to growing evidence that an early wetter and warmer Mars was more habitable than the planet has been in the past 3 billion years." so it's a big stretch to conclude this is a warmup to a big reveal.

In any case, what shock would there be? We even have antecedents by which to judge this, like Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001) in the 1990s, where the researchers proposed that they had identified fossilized microbes in Martian rock samples. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars#Possible_biosignat... for others. Some people, like Gilbert Levin, are more confident about the data than others.

Even further back in time, Percival Lowell believed there were canals on Mars. The discovery of life now would be so much less shocking than the impact of Lowell's work, no? If only because we know that any such life can't attack us a la Wells.

Also, wouldn't "shock" more likely lead to new funding for Mars missions? What reason is there to delay and minimize that announcement?

No, I think a better hypothesis is that the information we have about Mars is growing over time ("piling up"), which allows us to make more and more definite conclusions. Since the observed events are compatible with that simpler hypothesis, I see no need to add a new wrinkle to the system.

themartorana• 12 years ago

"Shock" will come in the form of conspiracy theorists getting a bump in popularity, further distrust in government (and Netflix streaming an unseemly amount of old X-Files reruns), but mostly in disturbing thousands of years of dogmatic religious teachings that will shake the moral foundation of most of the world.

True, some microbes won't be as meaning-of-life shattering as other intelligent (or even large, multicellular) animal-like life forms, but way too many people believe God created us and only us.

Which is sad. Because looking at the current state of humanity really makes me hope God tried a few more times to get it right.

Oregon geologist says Curiosity's images show Earth-like soils on Mars

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