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Might Mars Contain Life?
stagmeister writes "According to the BBC, the Viking probes to Mars in the 1970s "detected strange signs of activity in the Martian soil - akin to microbes giving off gas," and that while those findings were not acknowledged as proof of life then, "in 1997, reached the conclusion ... that the so-called LR (labelled release) work had detected life." At the same time, the British are launching a probe to try to find life on Mars."
So let me read this again:
Dr Levin, one of three scientists on the life detection experiments, has never given up on the idea that Viking did find living micro-organisms in the surface soil of Mars.
Beagle is looking for life He continued to experiment and study all new evidence from Mars and Earth, and, in 1997, reached the conclusion and published that the so-called LR (labelled release) work had detected life.
He says new evidence is emerging that could settle the debate, once and for all.
A crazy guy has been ranting for almost 30 years about his own personal theories and only now, shortly before we go back to mars, does the "new evidence" emerge? Please. Maybe the beeb should wait until they get hard evidence before printing paranoiac fantasies like this one.
Until we have enough solid data to say positively "Yes, there is a form of life on Mars, and here it is," *points* we won't really know.
As it stands right now, both sides can use the very same data and say either "There is!" or "There isn't!"
That's how firm and solid the information is so far.
I'll wait until we have something reliable and reproducible to go on, OK?
(Personally I think there IS and hope there is.)
--
Tomas
That would certainly make me feel more comfortable as this universe is an awfully big place and to think we were all alone would be......scary.
/Tor (somebody famous said something similar once)
I don't know what is scarier: that we are alone in the universe - or that we are not alone in the universe.
I hate to point this out, but even if there is life on mars it doesn't in any way change the statistical probablity of finding life on other planets else where. The problem would be not only do you have to prove there IS life on mars, but that it didn't come from earth, earth's didn't come from mars and they taht didn't come from the same (non earth/mars)source. If you can prove all that then you increase the liklyhood of life elsewhere, however even they you don't increase the odds greatly. Also, just because you increase the odds doesn't make it any more or less true. If questions of ETs is already solved, 100% we just don't know the answer. :)
If I claim that I saw a mouse in your bedroom, you wouldn't require much evidence to believe me.
If I claim that I saw a fully-grown African elephant in your bedroom, you would require significantly more evidence before you would believe me.
If both claims would require the same amount of proof before they would be accepted, we would either be accepting virtually nothing or virtually everything.
The reason science works is that the proof is never 100% final.
Why do some humans find it so hard to grasp that life more than likely exists elsewhere and likely close than we think?
My mother-in-law is that kind of person, she said one night that we are the only living planet in the universe, I had to point out how would she explain the sheer diversity of life on this planet alone? Whereever life can survive it seems to do so.
The more we look, the more we find, we've looked deep underground and found life, we've looked at cold arctic areas and found life, we have found life floating high in the atmosphere.
So, life on Mars? You bet some microbes are doing just fine there, and who knows what else.
Let's also not forget that life existed LONG before humanity ever came into being, of course some people refuse to accept that fact too.
OK, this is the challenge. You're a police officer, verifying the identities of people you pull over.
Offender #1 gives you an ID that says "John Smith". You believe him and give him his ticket.
Offender #2 gives you an ID that says "Yahweh, creater of the universe". You don't believe that could be correct.
Other than that, the ID's look the same. The difference there is that when you make a claim of a larger magnitude, you need more evidence to back it up.
Who knows how much truth has been cast aside because the evidence just wasn't extraordinary enough?
And who knows how much crap has been swallowed whole by people who don't have open minds? Remember, the definition of an open mind is a skeptic that can be persuaded by sufficient evidence. See also, burden of proof.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.