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White House Briefed On "Potential For Life" On Mars
Veeoh writes "FTA: It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more 'provocative' than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface. This news comes just as the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) confirmed experimental evidence for the existence of water in the Mars regolith on Thursday."
Heed my word, my brothers, for I have RTFA! It says that there's no way it has confirmed the presence of life right now or in the past on Mars. So what can be the big story they want to tell the President first?
Or if it's no bigger than "we found something that may or may not indicate the possibility that Mars may or may not have probably potentially hosted a form a life, maybe eventually?" then why the secrecy?
You just got troll'd!
Bush is a member of the Methodist Church, which is a mainline Protestant denomination that does not take a literal reading of Genesis. People tend to paint bush as some kind of Christian Fundamentalist, but that's just the company he keeps, not his own beliefs to judge from his denominational affiliation.
Well, the GP has kind of a point. If we would find carbon-based life with DNA and the same mapping between triplet codons and amino acids as is found on Earth, the sensible conclusion would be that we still have not seen two instances of life originating, but only a single on that was capable of spreading to another planet. That is still interesting, but the amount of material that would leave a life-inhabited planet with enough velocity to ever get to another star system would be miniscule.
It would still be totally possible that the solar system would be the only inhabited system in the galaxy, or even the observable universe. If we find life on Mars, that is recognizable as such, but still radically different, THEN we are really talking.
No, although theoretically if something swims past one of the microscopy instruments (there's an Atomic Force Microsoft as well as an optical instrument) that could be seen. However the Aviation Leak report specifically says their sources say "it's not life itself", but something to do with the behaviour of the soil in the presence of water - which is exactly what the "wet chemistry" aspect of MECA is about; adding pure water (carried from earth) to the samples to see what happens.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
The American form of government is fundamentally broken in design and philosophy. The idea that so much executive power should rest with one man be it under the mandate of god or electorate is absurd and anachronistic. We should attempt again at remaking democracy in a more modern image with dutiful consideration that our inherent rights should be protected explicitly, that checks and balances on power be strengthened and perhaps it is time to reconsider the mechanisms of power in all branches. 500 elected positions at the national level cannot possibly represent the will of nearly 400 million people. There are many forms of government, and many variations on democracy that would likely guarantee more transparency in the political process than we enjoy today and by that hopefully make us again feel as if the government exists at the behest of a free people.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/protdet.htm "The discoverer should inform his/her or its relevant national authorities." This is in Step 2 of the protocol. The implication is that Step 3 will not happen, unless Step 2 is allowed.
This practice is not anything new. When Mars meteorite ALH 84001 was suspected to have fossilized life, previous White House administration was notified. Only after getting permission from White House (took about couple of weeks) was that news even published.
The key part is in the last paragraph, where it says the "provocative" results came from the experiment where they added water from Earth to a sample of soil. I bet they had a burst of oxygen like the old Viking lander experiments, which no one ever satisfactorily explained. The one that I remembered that made sense was some kind of dry peroxide in the soil formed by UV, which reacted with water to generate O2, but didn't repeat because the peroxide was used up.
I hope this indicates some kind of chemistry that makes it easy to extract breathable O2 from Martian soil, so that any explorers/exploiters won't have to take as much in consumables. Would be nice to find a nitrogen source, then you'd have CHON, which is most of what you need to live. In the right proportions, of course.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
There's no comparison. America has killed tens of thousands more people.
Really? So the numerous agricultural combine lobbyist groups, comprised of small farm holders, is "big cash"? La Raza, the largest Hispanic lobbying group, is "big cash"? How about lobbyists from the ABA, or the AMA?
This notion that only "big cash" hire lobbyists is a myth. And its a myth perpetrated by the ignorant that can only rail against "the MAN" while sitting on their couches doing nothing.
No paper trail is required to prove corruption. All that has to be shown is that your people benefited, that friends, colleagues, former coworkers etc. gained from your decisions while in office.
The Halliburton no-bid contracts are an excellent starting point, with many more like them to investigate.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.