Slashdot Mirror
NASA Says Mars Once "Drenched With Water"
NASA is currently holding a press conference (carried live on NASA TV) where they are discussing findings from the Mars rovers. They are saying that the crater that the second rover has landed in has convincing evidence that it was once drenched or covered in liquid water. They cite the tiny spherules, odd holes in the rocks, sulfur in the spectrometric analyses, and evidence of an iron sulfate hydrate (a hydrate is a chemical compound which includes water molecules in the crystal lattice). Update: 03/02 19:45 GMT by M : CNN has a story, or see the NASA press release.
if there was life to swim in those seas.
Very true. If there was life in this 'ocean', then it's very likely fossils are in sedimentary rocks in that region. If there are no fossils? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it'll be a really curious coincidence.
If we brought back 10 tons of mars rocks, the chances of getting a fossil are still slim to none. Talk about needle in a haystack. Not to mention the fact that you have to land near some of it to begin with.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
The next find I expect is simple life living on Mars.
Water != life
How can any religion survive that revelation?
I don't recall the Bible saying that there was no life anywhere but Earth. I've always believed it was possible that simple life could exist elsewhere. Intelligent life would throw religion a curve, though... I haven't thought as much about that.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
Well here goes my karma...
...because no religion is dependent upon the earth being the only planet with life on it?
How can any religion survive that revelation?
I have discovered a truly marvelous
As far as Christianity is concerned, where in the Bible does it say life only exists / was created on earth?
Even though I am an atheist, I must disagree with what you say. The revelation only refutes a portion of the Judeo-Christian(-Muslim?) tradition of the creationism story (which could easily and eventually be modified and bent to the new evidence). But in terms of philosphies, especially in regards to how we treat one another and our surroundings, abundant life in the universe is a non-issue. Other religions like Buddhism aren't touched by the news either.
My $0.02...
[ insert your own witty .sig here ]
Why would most religions care?
Christians (at least _informed_ Christians, yes there are some) in particular, would not be disturbed to find that God had created life in more than one place. Why shouldn't He? It's not like the Bible says somewhere in it "Oh, and by the way... this planet is the only one with life on it."
C.S. Lewis discussed the subject fairly completely in an essay decades ago. In case you don't know, he was a famous and very influential Christian author, as well as writing some science fiction and fantasy. Besides writing a non-fiction essay about it, you could view his "Space Trilogy" fiction as an examination of the life-on-other-planets issue with a Christian background.
The more interesting question (also discussed by C.S. Lewis and many others) is how different religions would react to the discovery of _intelligent_ life somewhere else in the universe.
Microbes on Mars... scientifically, that's amazing. From a religious point of view... well, it's "just" another example of a Creator God at work.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Of course, I understand your criticism, which is, I think, directed mostly at dogmatic adherence to ancient traditions without questioning them. However, religion will survive, I am sure. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive. Science is concerned with one aspect of our reality - the quantifiable, and predictable. Religion is concerned with all those things that you cannot quantify - love, anger, thought, the experience of death, wonder, awe, consciousness. They are both parts of our reality, and neither can be used to explain everything.
Unlikely, the uncertainties of the atmospheric entry result in a landing footprint that's (IIRC) a few thousand square miles. The chances that we could get a new rover down within driving range of an existing rover is pretty small. By the time we've got rovers capable of driving those sorts of distances or landings that are accurate enough to make that plan practical, I think that we'd have enough experience that there wouldn't be much to be gained from going back and looking at the old rovers.
"Swim" is a sufficiently vague term to apply well.
Don't forget that bacteria can leave fossils too.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Do you honestly expect every single thing God created to be written down?
And Sirius begat M-551, and M-551 begat Polaris, and....
Someone's going to say "Life elsewhere would be pretty important."
Sure, to you. Probably not so interesting to most people living 4000+ years ago, who would have been quite shocked to discover that there was more than one continent, or that the world was round.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
Excellent point. I think my fundamentalist brethren tend to forget that when God came to Moses, he wasn't dealing with a Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking -- or even a Galileo. He was dealing with a guy whose claim to fame was running away from a life of luxury to tend sheep. At the best, Moses' idea of the universe might have dealt with Egyptian gods, and a universe whose origin was a direct result of some rather kinky onanism.
God came to Moses in a way Moses could understand, in a way that his fellow shepherds and stonemasons could understand.
Imagine Moses up on the mountain, getting the first four books of what we now call the Old Testament from the Almighty:A bit cheeky, but the point is: God comes to us in a way we can understand. That's different for an illiterate goat breeder in 2000 BC than it is for a nuclear physicist in 2000 AD. Whether you choose to believe doesn't have as much to do with how God appears as it does with your own faith.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
No Manned Missions should be sent to Mars until we are reasoably certain that no life presently exists on the Red Planet.
Fossils can wait. We don't need to contaminate Mars with the Earth Bacteria that a manned mission would introduce until we are sure there is a very low probility of finding living independantly evolved life.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
My kids are growing up in a conservative Christian household and I am highly encouraging them to choose what they want and what they're good at for a career. I hope that they want to study science, but will support them every step of the way regardless of their decision.
I know that doesn't help you any, but I thought you should know that Christianity and a love of science are not mutually exclusive. Any belief system (or lack thereof) will have a few bonehead adherents, but that doesn't mean that's the norm, or even particularly common.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Couldn't the machines and devices we have sent have just as good of a chance to contaminate Mars than humans?
I'm sorry, what the hell does finding water on Mars have to do with religious belief? I don't see anyone of any religious faith claiming that there was no water on Mars because their religion says so.
Celebrate the finer things in life
The problem is, that RTGs are huuuuge, for space stuff, and they really don't generate very much power, and introduce all sorts of cooling problems, cause they get hot.
Don't be ridiculous. An RTG with twice the power output would have weighed far less than the batteries, solar panels, and mounting. Not to mention that 5 pounds of PU is pretty small (remember, atomic number in the 90's). Cooling is the least of their concerns on Mars. (Or getting it there, for that matter). They had a working RTG system for the Mars rover. NASA just backed off of it because of the outrage over Cassini. (Insert comment about stupid tree huggers with oatmeal for brains who can't even take 10 minutes to find out what the hell they're protesting over. And that also goes for that whats-his-name physicist who complained about Cassini. "Oh no! A little plutonium in an indestructible box that has had flight testing during several accidents is going to kill us all!!!! Run for the #$*%#$*%$%$ hills!!!!")
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The ISS and Mars have the forest. Hubble needs a tree.
The cost so far for this most recent mars mission is over $800 million. Budgeting through further missions is set to exceed $15 billion. The ISS outdoes even this, with an expected cost of near $30 billion to finish the station, and estimated operating costs of $1.5 billion a year once completed.
Hubble needs about $100 million for a single shuttle launch. $200 million in equipment has already been constructed and is only waiting in a warehouse for a mission.
I don't deny the importance of the ISS and Mars missions. All these projects have significant importance for science, technology, and society as a whole. Hubble is about far more than "getting to see a black hole". We have made dramatic advances in astrophysics with the help of the telescope. We have gained immense insight into the depths of our universe, to an extent that won't be possible again for a very long time.
Taking relative cost of the three projects into account, Hubble is by leaps and bounds the most effective. Do the math. Fixing the hubble will only take 0.2% of the cost of the ISS and Mars missions. Given the advances in science and technology we have extracted from Hubble, the return on this small investment is tremendous.
That's why I sigh.
The Origin of life is one of the most important questions facing Science. We have made some good gusses about it, but we are handicapped by only having life from one planet to study. Finding Independantly evolved life would shed light on the questions of how common life is in the Cosmos and how it started. That is far more important than any information that can be gained by having Humans on the Surface of Mars.
We need probes designed to answer that fundemental question, does life presently exist on Mars before we land Humans there. If we find that there is little likelyhood of Martian Life then it's time for Human Exploration. If we finf that there is life on Mars it needs to be carefully studided before we contaminate the planet with the Bacteria that a manned mission would introduce.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est