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White House Briefed On "Potential For Life" On Mars
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sat Aug 02, 2008 11:02 AM
from the spin-the-wheel dept.
from the spin-the-wheel dept.
Veeoh writes "FTA: It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more 'provocative' than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface. This news comes just as the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) confirmed experimental evidence for the existence of water in the Mars regolith on Thursday."
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NASA's Mars News Is Not Life, But Perchlorate 289 comments
leighklotz writes "In an update to the little green men story of not-life-on-Mars, NASA has twittered: 'The buzz this weekend was due to an interesting soil chemistry finding, still preliminary, but now avail here:' where 'here' is NASA Spacecraft Analyzing Martian Soil Data. The exciting bit: 'Within the last month, two samples have been analyzed by the Wet Chemistry Lab of the spacecraft's Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, suggesting one of the soil constituents may be perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance.' Also, 'NASA will hold a media teleconference on Tuesday, Aug. 5, at 2 p.m. EDT, to discuss these recent science activities.'"
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Big and black (Score:5, Funny)
It's always provocative when you hear they spotted a big black monolith in the regolith.
His first response was probably to ask if this meant Jenna was pregnant.
woo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:woo (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:woo (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:2008 just called... (Score:5, Insightful)
Um...it's still 2008, and Bush is still president. He's part of the news story. And it's damn odd that scientific results have to be 'discussed' with him before they're released.
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Already? (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't you link to the original article? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/WH08018.xml&headline=White%20House%20Briefed%20On%20Potential%20For%20Mars%20Life&channel=space [aviationweek.com]
Sheesh (Score:5, Funny)
Colour me confused (Score:5, Interesting)
Heed my word, my brothers, for I have RTFA! It says that there's no way it has confirmed the presence of life right now or in the past on Mars. So what can be the big story they want to tell the President first?
Or if it's no bigger than "we found something that may or may not indicate the possibility that Mars may or may not have probably potentially hosted a form a life, maybe eventually?" then why the secrecy?
Re:Colour me confused (Score:5, Funny)
Heed my word, my brothers, for I have RTFA!
Mod parent down! Parent read the linked article and has an informed opinion. Alert! Alert!
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That's Easy (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Colour me confused (Score:5, Funny)
They found an image of Jesus in one of the soil samples.
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Re:Colour me confused (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure if you meant that as a joke or if you were serious. Either way, it's been modded Insightful by someone. Oil would be too big of a discovery. If there were oil, then that would be definitive proof that Mars once did have organic life.
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Re:Colour me confused (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not much life on Mars. (Score:5, Informative)
The Viking lander [spherix.com] checked for microscopic life on Mars back in 1971. It wasn't a very sensitive test; the lander shot out some "sticky strings" and wound them back in. The lander had a unit which tested whether anything collected assimilated any of a few simple compounds. It didn't.
This established that Mars isn't teeming with microorganisms, like Earth. That doesn't eliminate all possibility of life, or something like it, but it did establish that there's no pervasive ecosystem there.
Potential life? (Score:5, Funny)
Finally an iron-clad reason to keep the Republicans from aborting Mars missions...
At least until we find actual life, when I guess they'll stop caring and start suggesting that such life invest in its own individual retirement plan.
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Funny)
Missed opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
If they'd just spent a little more time thinking it through, they could probably have come up with something more appropriate like Field Aerosol Recognition Thermal Sensing Nonionic Interference Failtested Frankly Erotic Robot. The resulting acronym would, I am sure, have been more memorable.
Re:are the muslim? (Score:5, Funny)
Bush: What? The Martians have oil? Can we still extract the water to produce gasoiline?
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Re:Short briefing (Score:5, Insightful)
While i realize you are just bush-bashing, that same statement holds true for a surprisingly large number of humans.
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How little we've changed. (Score:5, Insightful)
While i realize you are just bush-bashing, that same statement holds true for a surprisingly large number of humans.
Which shows how little humanity has progressed in the last 2,000 years. The human race is just a bunch of superstitious bald apes with better tools than their cousins with fur.
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Re:Short briefing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes
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Re:Short briefing (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:so which is it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
President Bush is the CEO of a large corporation called the Executive Branch. Failing to tell the CEO before a major announcement is bound to get you in trouble. I'm more worried about Mr. Bush quashing or modifying the announcement for religious compliance.
And we all know that someone does deserve to be fired; unfortunately, we have to wait until January for that.
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Re:Am I the only one? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary. We know of one place life originated. If we find a second, suddenly we know that life is almost certainly commonplace, and that intelligent life is almost certainly commonplace.
Right now we don't know anything because we've only got one data point.
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