Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life

sighted writes "NASA is announcing that analysis of a rock sample collected by the Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater last month. The announcement quotes Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program: 'A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment. From what we know now, the answer is yes.'"

Comments

'Could' isn't the same as 'did'

[Kittenman]

I can speculate just as well as the next slashdotter. Mars could have done all sorts of things.

Re:'Could' isn't the same as 'did'

[CrashPoint]

Confirmation of "could" does not equal speculation of "did". This is a pretty big deal.

Everyone knew that already

[neminem]

Granted, this *is* confirmation that the possibility requires fewer additional variables than it would've without the findings, which is decent news, though not overly exciting. Still, I've read great speculative but not overly soft scifi in which life was found was found in a gas giant (Manta's Gift), even in a freaking star (Dragon's Egg). Almost anywhere *could* have supported life, for some definition of life.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

that's like saying the fact that a woman COULD have a baby isn't important unless she DOES have a baby. but it is important, because men CAN'T.

this isn't a bad article at all. in fact it's huge news. KNOWING mars could have supported life is better than WONDERING if it could have. we now have evidence that life might once have existed on mars. we didn't know that before.

Re:that's a lot of money and effort for a maybe.

[fyngyrz]

From such maybes come later conclusions likely a good bit more concrete. Exploration and the resulting science is a process; it's not very smart to take a point in midstream and bitch about it. Don't hold your breath, go about your life, and eventually you'll catch notice of something that wows you, or enables your technology, etc.