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Probable Water Ice Sighted On Mars
CraftyJack writes "Bright white chunks in the trenches dug by the Phoenix Lander have disappeared, leading Peter Smith & co. to believe that the chunks were ice that has since sublimated."
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Woohoo! Ice. We've got a pile of that here on earth. Liquid water too. And water vapor. We've also got things that swim in the water. We've got stuff that walks on the ice. We've got stuff that moves through the vapor. It's a technical achievement to be able to find ice on Mars, but really is it that big a deal? Someone explain the significance of ice sublimating on Mars as compared to vast number of (might I add, multicellular) organisms here on Earth.
Maybe water on Mars? Maybe, so what? If you want water, we have plenty of water here.
Oh, I'm so excited. Ice on Mars could actually mean LIFE on Mars! Maybe, and maybe after spending billions of dollars of other people's money you might find certain combinations of chemicals that would appear to indicate the possibility of pre-existant conditions that could preclude the factors that may have had influence on the development of life on Earth! WoW! Holy Smokes! We definitely need to spend another twenty billion dollars to really check this out! I tell you, man, I am so excited about this that I could just shit!
Chill out, amigo. If you want life, you got all the life here that you can handle. Yes, right here on Earth; right in your backyard. You don't have to go a hundred million miles to find it. And not little bacterium either, but real big thinkin', drinkin', and stinkin' human beings. Billions of the fuckers, right in your face; on mother Earth. All the life that you could ever hope to know and love. You don't have to spend billions of dollars of other-people's-money to look for life on for what is nothing more in reality than just a bright dot in the night sky.
"Man, You are so short-sighted! Life is dying on the Earth. We fucked up the whole planet. We need space exploration to seed the cosmos. Can't have all eggs in one basket. Think...Noah...Think ark, man!"
You watch too much television, amigo, and you get too many government grants. All the bad things about climate change, economic collapse, and overpopulation are happening here and now. The ability to use space exploration technology to address these problems won't be realistic for hundreds of years, if ever.
If you are involved with space exploration to the point where you are actually being paid by the government or a government-funded corporation to do so, then you are just a chickenshit leech who is pissing away public funds that are desperately needed for more important things in order to finance your own private Tom Swift-Star Wars fantasies.
You're a fucking twit. Grow up and contribute to the real world where real adults deal with real issues and solve real problems.
Gracias.
Thank you for your reply. As always whenever this subject comes up and I comment on it to Slashdot, I get bombed to -1 or -2 within minutes. I touch nerves. And at -1 no one ever see my comments and then gets angry enough to reply.
You can't just segregate space exploration from the rest of science...
Sure you can. You segregate scientific categories by deciding which of them gets funding. In civilized societies, money is limited and funding is allocated according to the best possible benefit for the society. Space exploration has no benefit for society in general.
Slashdot is a special forum. Slashdaughters are well educated, and have a tendency to be nerdy and sarcastic within a limited framework. Their attention spans are short and (outside their field of technical specialty) they are generally ignorant and boorish. Using the common two or three English language general-accentuation words (the swear words) and putting my points into their manner-of-speech rhythms is the most effective way to grab their attention. They are generally mean and narrow-minded little shits, which is why they instantly mod anything outside their point-of-view down to -1. They act like college freshmen, probably because many of them are or haven't developed the social or rhetorical skills to advance beyond that level.
I can't swear in scientific papers, in polite company, or at work. But I can on Slashdot. I aspire to do it there brilliantly.
Thank you,
Simonetta
Soldiers do not commit murder. Killing someone doesn't automatically make it murder. Twit.