NASA: 'Those life-on-Mars rumors? Chill, dudes and dudettes' Calm down, Mars fanatics. NASA has tossed a wet blanket over speculation that its Curiosity rover has found evidence of life – or, at minimum, of organic compounds – on the Red Planet. "Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect," the agency plainly stated in a …
Don't be so sure. After we've been bombarding them for years, then sent in an invasion force, I reckon the Martians are getting pretty pissed off with the ejits from the blue planet. Seeing as we're probably a lot bigger than them, they'll probably hit us with something quite unexpected and original... Bugs of some sort I expect.
Organics would be too much to ask, and even if they found some at this stage of the mission they would most likely have gone back a bit, and flushed the rovers' systems within an inch of it's life befor re-sampling the spot that would have given the hit. Just to be really *really* sure.
There's a range of results that would be seriously good news without having found organics: Conclusive evidence of free-flowing water in Mars' past would be a real hit already. Evidence of "free flowing" water or subsurface moisture in it's *recent* past or even the actual present would be gobsmacking.
Any Physicist will tell you that observations can vary depending on your frame of reference.
If your frame of reference is a desire to relate scientific data to carefully constructed and hotly debated hypotheses, then you are likely to observe within yourself a different level of excitement than in someone whose frame of reference is Michael Bay movies.
Maybe the big news is that their under-clocked G3 is still living up to expectations. I would like to see them try (just as an experiment) a dual processor board with a rad/space rated cpu as a backup along side a more modern clocked compatible architecture. If it survives the journey, they'd get a bonus without risking the entire mission on a piece of silicon. How hard can that be? (please don't remind me how that question taunts Murphy's law)
Well, the types and amounts of radiation and particles encountered during interplanetary travel are quite well known (I assume, based on all the probes that have been there in the past few decades); so I'm guessing they're nearly certain "conventional" electronics would fail quickly.
As in, sure enough that the extra mass doesn't justify the difference between certain and nearly certain.
Also, outside of a mind deformed into believing that computers are more important than stuff, who'd care? Why spend a huge amount of money sending a computer whch probably won't work to Mars when you could send the same weight of something with which you can do actual, you know, science?
I'm not exactly sure what they were expecting when they came out and told everyone that they had amazing news from mars - I'm fairly certain "big news from mars" = "signs of life" for pretty much every mainstream media outlet; these (media outlets) are people who make a living out of jumping to conclusions so I don't know why this would be any different.
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...and what was pretty earth shattering will end up being a nothing event. Even science sites are having a hell of a job trying to keep this under control...e.g see these rules for this site in respect of astrobiology (i.e. little green men) http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=7514&st=0&p=194625&#entry194625
Hmm!
First the indication of something big and then the official denial!
Seems to be that MIB and Majestic have been busy!
And all because Curiosity has found wifi signals on Mars and determined that 90% of client and server systems use Linux!
Have to protect MS and Apple,, you know!
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