Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Look at Martian Salt for Ancient Life
eldavojohn writes "Is there life on Mars? Maybe not, but a better question might be whether or not it has ever existed on Mars? Scientists are claiming that the best indication for this will be in newly found evaporated salt deposits on Mars which they can use to check for cellulose. Here on earth, tiny fuzzy fibers have been found in salt dating back almost 250 million years making it the oldest known evidence of life on earth. Jack Griffith, a microbiologist from UNC, is quoted as saying, 'Cellulose was one of the earliest polymers organisms made during their evolution, so it pops out as the most likely thing you'd find on Mars, if you found anything at all. Looking for it in salt deposits is probably a very good way to go.'"
Where, pray tell, do you get your numbers? I want to see what "evidence" can be put forth for "billions" and "millions" (or even "hundreds of thousands") of years, for anything.
:) )
Call me a Creationist nut, but don't go stating things as facts unless you have some reason to believe that's what they are.
(And, yes, I do want to see your evidence
Basic research, even in areas that may seem quite remote from anything practical, is absolutely key to advancement.
Au contraire, mon ami, focused precision research is the absolute key to advancement in the 21st century. Unfocused research remote from practicality is just pissing in the wind at best and theft of public resources at worst. The era of the professional scientist, using the government funds of some superpower, doing basic research is a 20th century conceit that is effectively over.
The money isn't there anymore. The superpowers are broke. The long-term focused killer problems that need immediate attention of public funds are real, here and now.
To simply kill any research because one can't imagine an immediate benefit is a recipe for stagnation and lost opportunities.
In the real world, To simply fund any research because one can't imagine an immediate benefit is a recipe for stagnation and lost opportunities.
If you want cold lifeless desert, go to Death Valley or Arabia or the Gobi. It's much closer. You get the same empty experience, and, most importantly, you don't cost your fellow taxpayers any money.
None of these, of course, are actually lifeless.
They are lifeless in the sense that they can't sustain human life, which is the only important thing in the galaxy to humans like you and me.
Stop being a pretentious twit. You, and all the other people who are seriously advocating spending billions of dollars of space exploration, are making the entire civilized community of the world look like selfish nitwits to billions of people who live on the edge of prosperity (but can watch what we say and do).
Earth problems are real; space exploration is fantasy. Grow up and start contributing to solving the real problems of the real world.
Thank you.
Earth deserts are hot in the day and cold in the night. I am assuming that the deserts on Mars are cold all the time because they are millions of miles further away from the sun.
What difference does it make? If a place is more often than not outside the temperature range of 0-100 degrees F, then it can't sustain human life.
If a place can't sustain human life, and is millions of miles away from where humans live, then anyone who seriously advocates spending public funds to go there is fucking crazy by any accepted clinical definition of the term.
Hopefully I'm not talking about you. In the present era, anyone who seriously talks about interplanetary travel is a fool and deserves to be publicly treated as one. To spend public money for 'research' in this area is a theft of public funds. And people who take public funds for 'research into interplanetary travel' are criminals who belong in jail.
This is true regardless of whatever some hallucinatory public officials promise the 'scientific community' in speeches.