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Martian Microbe Fossils, Not So Debunked Anymore
rubycodez writes "Three meteorites, including one that has been in a British museum for over a century, are going to be put under the electron microscope and ion microprobe by NASA. We're 'very, very close to proving there is or has been life [on Mars],' said David McKay, chief of astrobiology at Johnson Space Center."
I just had a psychic vision of the future. In my vision, this test ended up either producing negative or inconclusive results--once again disappointing the millions of believers who just cannot accept that, for all practical intents and purposes, we here on earth are all alone in the great big dark. I also see myself posting a link this this very post, a year or so from now, in yet another similar thread that has the believers once again futilely hoping that the discovery of life out there is "very, very close."
I think what you're witnessing isn't some X-Files Want to Believe style cult assembly or circle jerk but instead the simple fact that should this be confirmed, it changes everything. From not only a scientific point of view with the near complete annihilation of Drake's equation but also from a philosophical and -- perhaps most importantly -- theological point of view. Since the gravity of a decision in the positive direction is so great, the tiniest disturbances in the canon of thought surrounding extraterrestrial life gets close attention by the nerd world. Even the minuscule announcement that in a certain amount of time we will know with 100% certainty one way or the other on these fossils is actually newsworthy.
Similar to the anti-global warming decision. Huge consequences mean massive attention.
My work here is dung.
Drake's equation has quite a few terms in it and only two of those terms are subject to reevaluation: the average number of planets per star that are suitable for life, and the fraction of planets which are suitable for life that actually have life.
Could also be added that Mars and Earth could have a common source of primordial life, and/or that samples from one crossed over to the other. Far greater would be the impact IF life on Mars turned out to be so radically different from Earth's as to preclude any sort of common ancestry.
The Long Now Foundation
it would only take a few hundred million years (blink of an eye in cosmological terms) to probe the entire galaxy
But what good would that do us? A few hundred years is all it takes on earth for technology and language to change, empires to rise and fall. A few thousand years buries entire civilizations in the sands of time. Passage of one million years would result in evolution of the human race into something that we only superficially resemble today. Ten million years wipes species from the map, replacing their line with another. A hundred million years from now, if one of these probes responds back to us, would we be here to hear it? Would our descendants resemble us any more than we resemble a trilobite? If so, would we even recognize the transmission as ours, related somehow to ancient myths of the far distant past? Be able to decode it, and understand its message?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.