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New Evidence Presented For Ancient Fossils In Mars Rocks
azoblue passes along a story in the Washington Post, which begins:
"NASA's Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars. In addition to presenting research that they said disproved some of their critics, the scientists reported that additional Martian meteorites appear to house distinct and identifiable microbial fossils that point even more strongly to the existence of life. 'We feel more confident than ever that Mars probably once was, and maybe still is, home to life,' team leader David McKay said at a NASA-sponsored conference on astrobiology."
While it may be cool to find life on Mars, it would present some additional problems for future colonization (or even just future missions, robotic or otherwise). If we do find life, do we quarantine Mars so that we don't contaminate the native life there? Do we bar ourselves from any terraforming efforts whatsoever so that we don't disrupt possible existing life? You all must realize that that would be the position of at least some people; what percentage of the public that might be, and the influence they would have is another question.
Generally, I think it would be much simpler if we never found life on Mars, and could in fact say with a fair amount of certainty that it is completely dead. That would remove a (possibly significant) reason to oppose human colonization and terraforming.