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Mars Rover Opportunity Finds Life-Friendly Niche
astroengine writes "Gale Crater, the region being explored by NASA's Curiosity rover, isn't the only place on Mars where ancient microbes may have thrived. New evidence from NASA's senior robotic Mars scout, Opportunity, shows life-friendly water once mixed with telltale, clay-bearing rocks that now lie on the broken rim of Endeavour Crater, an ancient 14-mile wide basin on the other side of the planet from Gale. 'If I were to go Mars early in time and wanted to do a well, I'd do it there,' planetary scientist Ray Arvidson, with Washington University in St. Louis, told Discovery News. 'It's like drinking water. This would have been a niche for whatever life at the time existed.'"
but did the Mars Rover ever throw a kitten into a turbine?
We get it already -- there was water there, and apparently there still is water under the surface. If Mars One actually goes through, I hope they take lots of shovels, and do lots of digging.
But I feel ripped off the Mars doesn't have surface water now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"We must have the humility to understand the limits of our intellect"
Um... no. We must have the blind ambition to push beyond some perceived limits of our intellect. Humility for our achievements -- but aggressive in our progress. I for one would like to see my great^x grand children living on another rock circling another fireball one day.
Obligitory Aliens History Channel Reference
Here is idea for studying the subsurface that is affordable enough that we could actually live long enough to see it; we know the position (orbit, velocity, etc) of Mars with great precision. Why not build a cheap, simple impactor and send it to Mars. Aim it a few hundred meters away from a rover and blow a crater in the surface, recording the impact for spectral analysis and throwing debris around the crater for close inspection. A carefully guided projectile should have a CEP of only tens of meters; risk to a rover would be negligible.
So simple you can take the engineering for granted and so fast we could have it done in only slightly more time than the flight.
You used an awful lot of words to say not very much.
Understanding the limits of our intellect is exactly the reason for pushing our boundaries to explore. Intellect can be extended and the only way to do so is through exercise. The alternative you (seem) to be proposing is the equivalent of sitting around picking at one's belly fluff in the hope of divine inspiration. In case it's not immediately obvious: that isn't what got us where we are today.
I hope they never find intelligent life. The U.S. will be sure to start sending them money.
They're all making it sound Mars One will be a milk run.
Donuts, water, milk.
Garçon -- check please!
http://www.nbcnews.com/science...
I for one would like to see my great^x grand children living on another rock circling another fireball one day.
On yet another rock? Screw that, they aren't big enough, they're dirty, and just too darn cold. How about living on that great big fireball instead? Lots more room, and we solve the global warming process as well!
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Ah, bringing back the classics! There is something we don't fully understand therefore god. Good job.
Does it mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don’t understand it, that means God did it? Is that how you want to play this game? Because if it is, here’s a list of things in the past that the physicists at the time didn’t understand [and now we do understand] [...]. If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on - so just be ready for that to happen, if that’s how you want to come at the problem -Neil deGrasse Tyson
Does it mean, if you don't understand something, and physicists don't understand it, that means it doesn't exist?
Isn't that ultimately the equivalent of a toddler putting a blanket over their head and presuming they are invisible?
Works both ways. By the way, the God of the gaps thing is really worn out. We get it. It's 2014. Nobody is seriously suggesting everything outside our understanding = God anymore.
14-mile wide basin on the other side of the plane
Sorry but Martians used the metric system.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I admit I am fascinated about the Mars rovers but for craps sake could they stop with every headline about them discovering life?
Blaaah blah blah Life. OOH! let me click. awh another 3 sentences about nothing.
blah blah blah Life. Ohh! let me click. Awh another 3 sentences about water. Opps! nothing there.
Just land the next mars rover next to the outcrop of whatever the face on Mars was all about. I bet you we will find more life or water there.
Where the hell is the chinese lunar rover? Anyone ever heard of it anymore?
breathlessly waiting for the announcement confirming life on another planet because they believe that will be the final triumph of science over God.
...huh?
I think you overestimate how important god is to atheists.
God is extra-terrestrial life by definition
I'm not familiar with any definition of life that includes an omnipotent omnipresent timeless entity.
There is life on other planets/in other dimensions, and that life is possibly many many orders of magnitude more intelligent than us.
Umm, maybe. You seem to be talking about extraterrestrial life beyond just your notion of god here. How do you know?
Meanwhile, our narcissistic belief that our discovery of the metaphorical light switch [...]
I have no idea what the metaphorical light switch is.
entitles us to stand before the universe and claim "knowledge"
This is poetic, and I understand you're warning against hubris, but this it doesn't actually have meaning. What is overweaning pride here? How much pride in advancement is too prideful?
Every great discovery in man's history has only made the universe bigger, not smaller, nor easier to understand.
Well, no. At least depending on what you mean by "easier to understand" and "great discovery". For instance, heliocentric theory makes the universe easier to understand. It's not actually more "correct" than geocentric theory with its epicycles (certainly not less correct, though!) -- we can choose a geocentric frame of reference today and still calculate everything we calculate today with great precision. But heliocentrism was a great advance that made the universe easier to understand.
We have made a lot of progress, but we also must have the humility to recognize that scarcely 500 years ago, the overwhelming majority of the population was completely illiterate, and that science was the purview of a vanishingly small number of people.
Shouldn't that be a source of pride rather than humility? It means we're getting better, and when you say "scarcely" 500 years ago, it sounds like we're getting better quickly.
A toddler who learns to wipe his own ass has every right to be proud of his accomplishment, and it is, indeed, an accomplishment. The 10 year old who gets an A+ on his math test isn't scorned because his engineer dad can solve the same problems correctly while drunk and having not slept for 3 days.
We must have the humility to understand the limits of our intellect
I think it's arrogant to assume we have a strong understanding of the limits of our intellect, given all the things you said in this very post. I also don't understand why we must have this humility. What are the limits of human intellect? How can we know until we test them?
without wisdom and the human soul, the world is nothing but a very complex spreadsheet.
Again this is poetic but not meaningful. What are you trying to say here?
Also I thought you were talking about god but he pretty much disappeared from your post after the first sentence of the third paragraph. Did you just change topics part way through, or is this a god of the gaps argument?
Does it mean, if you don't understand something, and physicists don't understand it, that means it doesn't exist?
No, it doesn't. You're being really bizarre here. What Neil deGrasse Tyson was arguing is that if you don't understand something, and physicists don't understand something, then it says nothing about whether or not God did it. That's really, really obvious.
Note that Neil deGrasse Tyson explicitly does NOT identify as an atheist.
Nobody is seriously suggesting everything outside our understanding = God anymore.
Umm...you just did. Your initial post started with a strawman about atheists, a proclamation that this isn't science's "final triumph over God". Then it goes on about how we don't know anything and need to be humble about our knowledge.
From that, we infer that you do believe in God and are specifically arguing God exists on the basis of our puny knowledgelessness.
How is that not a god of the gaps argument? Or else, how is that not the argument you made?
And then just now, you've made up this story where physicists pretend things don't exist when they don't understand it, the implication being that if they recognized they exist, then they would believe in God. Which is exactly a god of the gaps argument because that's the argument you were mimicking and trying to reverse in the first place.
From that, we infer that you do believe in God and are specifically arguing God exists on the basis of our puny knowledgelessness.
Your inference is illogical in one direction and irrational in the other. I am not arguing that God exists. I am arguing that man's unrestrained ego is limiting his potential.
You've become so obsessed with framing arguments with those who disagree with you in terms favoring atheism that you are now apparently simply incapable of taking statements made by others at face value.
It's always been amusing to me how emotional atheists get about proving God doesn't exist, and how every discussion either starts there or is swerved in that direction even from the passenger seat. One wonders how their feelings got hurt enough to engender such obsession.
And then just now, you've made up this story where physicists pretend things don't exist when they don't understand it, the implication being that if they recognized they exist, then they would believe in God.
QED
Recognition and belief are two different things. If you weren't taking such Olympian leaps of illogic you would note my argument is far more concerned with man than God.
Living on that great star? Some important steps have already been taken to achieve that goal!
http://waterfordwhispersnews.c...
[North Korea lands first man on the sun]
They just needed to land at night when it's not so hot.
breathlessly waiting for the announcement confirming life on another planet because they believe that will be the final triumph of science over God.
nah. the gods won't care and the scientists are probably going to tire quickly of any conversation of science vs gods.
What will be interesting is the impact of that kind of discovery on day to day religious life. Things like "God shaped man in his image and likeness" (Gen. 2.7) will look out of place if weird looking aliens are found. More so if the aliens hold a similar belief about alien-shaped gods.
Phoneix landed in late Martian summer when it was too warm for ice to exist at the surface. But its shovel just cleared off a couple centimeters of soil and hit ice. That ice promptly evaporated too.
Phoenix died during the winter when it was thought probably at least a meter of snow-ice accumulated on top of it and crushed it. Or its batteries were drained beyond recovery during the winter.