Free Associating On The Surface Of Mars

jdaily writes "Apparently, while NASA scientists are busy analyzing the more than 10 gigabits of data returned by the rovers thus far, earnest space enthusiasts are dissecting the images and reporting discoveries of fossils, letters of the alphabet, and a white bunny. The 'Net really needs a kook hall of fame."

Comments

Look and Ye shall find

[leoaugust]

It sounds funny when you first hear it, but it is scary how serious this is to some people. In many ways this mentality also captures the state of the evolution versus "intelligent design" debate. And an ungodly number of people believe in intelligent design.

George Filer is not deterred. In a boulder photographed by Spirit on its 44th Martian day, he said, there's a distinct white E and a G, though the E may be closed off at the top, like a P. The letters appear to be 3 to 4 inches tall, Filer said.

In his living room, he enlarged the picture on his wide-screen television. He still had to point out the E and the G. They looked like they might have been chiseled or spray-painted or they might have been created by streaks of light that happened to look like letters.

"I could see easily how NASA would miss them," he said. "What we do is blow them up, so to speak, on the computer, using Photoshop and the like. If you believe there's something out there, you look for evidence."

If you believe these's something out there, you will find someone to tell you there is something out there. And that someone will also want to tell you what that something out there is telling you to do ...

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Re:Actually, the fossil picture is pretty interest

[Jerf]

Fossils are fragile, but they are rocks. You see people being careful with them in movies like Jurassic Park because they are often embedded in other rock, and in your zeal to remove the rock from the rock sometimes it gets hurt.

But no real "fossil" could be obliterated by rolling over in, in Martian gravity no less. The same thing promoting righteous outrage proves that it wasn't a rock in the first place. Even if it "broke up", you'd still see pieces.

Mars isn't the moon, it has an atmosphere; if it broke completely into dust when subjected to such a small force, it would have long since weathered to nothing. A fossil would have to be a rock that has survived millions or billions of years already; rolling over it isn't going to do any more then the wind that would have 'exposed' it, as it would have blown right away with the surrounding dirt.

Re:Right.

[Jerf]

Regardless of what a fossil is made of, it must be sturdy to survive millions of years, or the process of being exposed to the surface. Saying "we don't know what a fossil on Mars might be made out of" doesn't mean that it might be made out of Jelly Bellies; I may not be able to speak to the exact composition but there are certain properties that must hold true, or you'd never have seen it in the first place.

I mention this mostly because it's a common fallacy, that some amount of non-knowlege implies total non-knowlege. As soon as you say it, it sounds stupid and is obviously false, but it sneaks up on a lot of people, and is the foundation of entire pervasive modern philosophies. (It is, for instance, an essential philosophical foundation of Strong Post-Modernism.) I do not and can not know everything about the putative fossil on Mars but I can determine some things and make certain observations with great confidence, including observations that lead to the conclusion that it isn't a fossil. ;-)

Carl Sagan

[robbo]

These discussions bring to mind a quote of Carl Sagan's:

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." (from Billions and Billions, iirc)

Whether it's little green men, intelligent design or gun control, people have a tendency to shape their arguments (and distort the facts) to reflect their desire for how they would like the universe (world, society, whatever) to operate, without regard for how it actually functions. I think it's our greatest failure as a species.

Actually it can't be a tire track

[fredmosby]

That is an image of a rock taken with the rovers microscopic imager. They photographed the rock, then they ground a shallow hole in it and took another picture to try to get an idea of what the structure of the rock was. I still don't see how someone could possibly think that was a fossil though.

Fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine.. Mod me down but am I the only one who gets annoyed by news stories the obviously call for pictures but don't include any. It would be interesting and ammusing to see the pictures that kooks are referring to. ug..