Possible Active Glacier Found On Mars

FireFury03 writes "The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has spotted an icy feature which appears to be a young active glacier. Dr Gerhard Neukum, chief scientist on the spacecraft's High Resolution Stereo Camera said 'We have not yet been able to see the spectral signature of water. But we will fly over it in the coming months and take measurements. On the glacial ridges we can see white tips, which can only be freshly exposed ice'. Estimates place the glacier at 10,000 — 100,000 years old."

Comments

Re:Not a surprise.

[zappepcs]

I'll probably get modded as troll for this, but there is a great desire on much of this planet to ignore anything that is not written down in one of the 'good books'. Unfortunately, Mars was left out of that garden of eden scene... probably still somewhere on the cutting room floor of the FSM's dark room.

Needless to say, in North America, it is always surprising to find something that is not explained explicitly in one of the good books, even though god supposedly made everything. The possibility that there might be signs of life on Mars, outside the realms of this singular haven of life god created on Earth, is something that people want to forget very quickly. Besides that, what does ice on Mars have do with paying the rising interest rates of your ARM?

I for one welcome our solar system neighbors and their CO2 eating ways. Perhaps then we can all stop with the fighting about who has the one and true understanding of god on this planet.

Besides that, I simply cannot wait for the ID explanation of life on Mars. I can see that wing in the Creation Museum.

Re:Not a surprise.

[sumdumass]

The Constitutions says that Congress shall make no law with respect to the establishment of religion. Science is not a religion. The founders knew that. Religious people know that. Everyone but who isn't either a) dishonest or b) a moron knows that.

Actually, it says

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Do you see the part that says or prohibiting the free exercise thereof? Of course every moron knows that, right? You also have the seperation of church and state which isn't in the constitution but people claim it is. It is actually a letter Jefferson, Or was if Franklin? Well, it could have be any number of those people, but he wrote it to some church claiming that some law being passed couldn't be used against the church because the first amendment puts up wall that separates the church from the state.

Of course that is paraphrasing it. but the sentiment remains and is the basis of removing prayer from schools, it takes the nativity scenes away from public lands, it takes the ten commandments away from public buildings and it is a legal precedent that has a long history in US law. So, if prayer can't be in school because it is a government entity that people are compelled to attend, then the same rules for the or prohibiting the free exercise thereof with respect to religion apply. You cannot have one without the other. And if science wasn't taught in a way that say one if right and the other is wrong, there wouldn't be a problem like we see today.

It is not religion to believe that the sky is blue. Scientific beliefs are no different than believing the sky is blue. We believe it because we have empirical evidence that it is true. Religion is very specifically not like that.

It doesn't matter that it is true. What matters is that you don't say religion is not true in a state funded school setting where the students are compelled by law to attend. You can say it anywhere else in the world that isn't under the separation clause and it won't matter a bit. But in the places that the courts say need separated, then you cannot kick the religion out and then proceed to say it is wrong or not true or anything. We have the freedom or religion and the freedom from religion with the free exorcise thereof clause.

This was an issue that had all but disappeared until relatively recently. It isn't because of a resurgent of religious fanatics, it is because of a change in how science is being taught and the instructors or the science books are specifically telling students that religion is not true, science is the only answer and so on. The approach has been to relax that by putting warning statements in text books or ID statements that state it is only a theory. It isn't that they want science to disappear. It is that they want science to quite interfering with their religion from a government position.

Now, as for science being religion, Yes, for some it has replaced religion and became religion. I'm not saying your one of these people. But you cannot deny it and still maintain scientific credibility. It goes against the grain of science to make a flat out denial of the possibility of something because you never observed it. These religious freeks tend to claim Evolution as the mechanism for life as we know it and a common ancestor is a proven fact. They seem to think that we have empirical evidence showing life mutating from start to finish. They seem to think evolution in this manor stopped because this is the most perfect time for life. They seem to strongly deny other possible theories for the diversity of life like the bubble theory of evolution where the major difference is the common ancestor part.

And yes, even according to the UN's international charter on human rights, atheism is a protected religion as a human right. It has been that way since the 70s or so that I know of.