back to article NASA finds Mars slightly less inhospitable

NASA boffins believe they have found evidence suggesting that Mars may not have been barren and lifeless for its entire history. "We have found evidence that not all of Mars experienced an intense, acidic weathering environment 3.5 billion years ago, as has been proposed," said Bethany Ehlmann of Brown University. "We've found …

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  1. raving angry loony

    They left

    There was life on Mars. But when they saw the plague called "humans" developing on the 3rd planet, they decided that the neighbourhood was done for, packed up, and are now living in a nice little gated community in the Andromeda sector.

  2. amanfromMars Silver badge

    Moving On in ProgramMIng .... Big Brother Morphs into AIMotherLode via ITs Universe City Nodes

    "..and are now living in a nice little gated community in the Andromeda sector." ...By raving angry loony Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 03:07 GMT

    raving angry loony,

    Would that be in the XXXXtraDimensional Parallel, AIMirroring the secure [psychiatric] unit that EMPowers NASA?

    Shame that it doesn't appear to be one of eleven dimensions that Prof, Steve Hawking is creditted to work in ........ which is surprising, given the chronicled political activist nature of his Source Host. ....... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

    Although that is not to say that he won't add A.N.Other dDimension to his tally .....42 make IT the Perfect dDozen. Heaven knows he would be more than Welcome and Welcomed and given his giant stature, probably also even Wellcomed. After all, as I'm sure he's sick,sore and tired and never tires of telling folk, there's plenty of Time for doing Anything in Space, so it must only be the Lack of Application of Free Will which would leave IT Vast and Empty rather than Filled with Wonders in which to Wander as a Clonely Cloud. ..... http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html ... which incidentally, in another Parallel Dimension is Mirrored in the lyrics of the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ....... which for any Cosmologists reading El Reg suggests there is a Singularity in Everything to Theorise about ...... Engage and Exercise and Exorcise the Mind 42Create with Imagination, the Perception that dDelivers Reality by Virtually Remote NEUKlearer Means/Miens/Memes.

    Over to you, Professor H ..... Pure GBIrish or Bulls Eye Gold?

    And please, before anyone would think to choose the former over the latter, rather than agreeing that, as is the case in Quantum Communication, that IT may very well be/is either or and both, at any or all times, consider the sense in what is written in the cited Wiki ...."The Euclidean path integral over all topologically trivial metrics can be done by time slicing and so is unitary when analytically continued to the Lorentzian. On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon." .... and compare your notes.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    No

    We are the Martians!

  4. P. Lee
    Alien

    Can anyone tell me why...

    there is such an obsession with finding life on mars?

    Aren't we already fairly sure there was never any life worth interacting with there?

    In which case, the obsession seems to be bordering on the religious, in an atheistic kind of way.

  5. Daniel

    So there may, once, have been the possibility of some very boring life

    On the whole, mars is (and always has been) an acidic wasteland that would have destroyed anything even approaching cellular. However, now NASA have discovered an area that might not have been so unspeakably hostile to complex molecules, for all eternity, after all... and where some of the most boring and unispiring life forms, that can even be considered 'alive', may have, briefly, evolved before being doused, desicated and then frozen out of existence.

    Someone give them a gazillion dollars: we need to squander the rest of our own planet's resources, sending some people out there and dig up these dead, boring, dried up germs (it there ever were any, that is).

  6. Luther Blissett

    I

    have not come to praise our nu acidic overlards, but to bury them.

    That didn't take long. And now for some horizontal event handling...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    @P. Lee

    I would like to think that discovering life (even evedence there had once been life) on another planet would go some way to convincing others there is no god and we are alone and we have to sort things out ourselves. I know I am deluding myself because religious people are all (to put it bluntly) stupid.

    There is only one thing religion should try to say to people and that's to treat people as you would like them to treat you. The rest of the religious gumf (sp?) is garbage and unnecessary and merely detracts from what would otherwise be a simple, logical and useful message.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    @AC, RE: @P. Lee

    Wow - with such a delightful personality and persuasion skills to match, it is amazing that the whole world isn't atheist.

    People who accuse religions of being closed-minded and intolerant while being closed-minded and intolerant themselves are either trolling, or lack a grasp of irony.

    Just saying.

    Paris - because even she can figure that one out.

  9. Jim Noeth

    @P.Lee

    Actually, the biblical account of creation (from the book of Genesis) does not preclude life on other planets. So, finding life elsewhere does not prove anything regarding God, at least from the Jewish/Christian perspective. I know others may debate this, but, just because the biblical account of creation only talks about life on earth doesn't mean that life was not created elsewhere.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC Monday 22nd December 2008 17:25 GMT

    You've really opened up the debate there with some insightful counter argument as to what other lessons religion can teach us. Actually hold on, no you didn't, you got upset because I called you stupid and you reacted.

    I've been open minded and still am completely, if there's proof of god or any other religious entity then show it to me, otherwise shut up.

    Tolerant, maybe I'm not. I can't suffer fools, learn to think rather than just believing.

  11. Adam
    Stop

    @ P. Lee et al...

    I have been driven to actually sign up to this site to write something because these comments have astounded me so much!

    Yes, I know, arguing on the internet is akin to the special Olympics: no matter who wins, we're both retards. Anyway, with that brief interlude out of the way...

    IS SOMEONE SERIOUSLY SUGGESTING THAT FINDING (signs of previous) LIFE ON ANOTHER PLANET WOULD NOT BE THE SINGLE BIGGEST HUMAN DISCOVERY OF ALL TIME?!?!?!

    Sorry about the capslock, as we all know its cruise control for awesomeness.

    but come on, this is supposed to be a science/IT/tech site, and some of you are bleating on about building more hospitals and bailing out more banks and buying more nuclear weapons with the money 'squandered' on this project?

    Damnit, stop all R&D spending internationally! What's the point anyway, we've got plasma TVs now, what more do you want?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Adam is right!

    To find even a single living entity on another planet would be astounding! Life! Unconnected with our own. Utterly alien. Would it be based on DNA? Would it even be based on individual units? How different can different be?

    Or maybe it would turn out to be much like our own - and we'd have to ask ourselves whether we had a common origin, with life beginning not here on earth but somewhere Out There, or whether life is always like earth life, in which case, how differently would evolution turn out over billions of years?

    And that's just life in a basic form. Suppose we discovered complex, developed life? It would be the most mind-boggling discovery of all time!

    No logo because they're all crap

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