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What "Earth-Shaking" Discovery Has Curiosity Made on Mars?
Randym writes "NASA scientists have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument. The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. 'We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting,' says John Grotzinger. He's the principal investigator for the rover mission. SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) is a suite of instruments onboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something Earth-shaking. 'This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good,' he says."
I predict that the results are accurate, but not nearly as exciting as NASA is trying to get us to believe.
It may yet be a scientific triumph, but a public opinion flop. Or a thestudio_bob flop.
Speak for yourself.
That seems likely. A public fed on movies tends to not think real world discoveries are exciting enough.
Wasn't the last "earth-shaking" announcement that of bacteria using arsenic instead of phosphorus in their molecular construction?
They'll want to be very sure about whatever it is before going public.
Probably some mineral, that can only form on the bottom of an ocean.
Privacy begins with
"One for the history books" means life. Remember how important it was that one of the two earlier rovers found surface water by getting a wheel stuck in the mud? Remember how big a story that was? That is not getting into the history books. The most likely alternate possibility is that the techies are overblowing the importance of this because it is a big thing in their world.
Given the description of the instrument, it is likely that they got a successful result from a Viking-style experiment which they are taking as evidence for life.
For the results to truly be Earth-shaking, they have to have found Marvin the Martian's Illudium Q-36 space modulator.
The problem with evidence of life is that it's usually something along the lines of "POSSIBLE evidence of life, *maybe* (or possibly not)" And that's the kind of thing that will produce sensationalist "Life Found on Mars!" headlines in the press, but which will likely be followed by the inevitable "Turns out what they found probably wasn't jackshit" disappointment--which will only turn the public even more skeptical of the usefulness of these sorts of missions in the future.
Now Roman helmets, on the other hand...
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Actually coal, or any carbon source, wouldn't be a usable energy source, since there's very little free oxygen on Mars.
Discovering free oxygen would be a very big deal, but extremely unlikely. The only reason there is free oxygen on Earth is because early life started some sort of photosynthesis and starting giving off oxygen as a waste product that had the side effect of poisoning all their bacterial competitors. That event is known as the "Oxygen Catastrophe".
Hi, my name is iron oxide, I'm all over mars (in fact I give the planet its characteristic red color) and make a great accelerator for thermite and other high-energy thermal reactions.
Free oxygen is everywhere. You just gotta get it from me, first.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.