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Scientist Says Potential Signs of Ancient Life in Mars Rover Photos
mpicpp notes that a scientist named Nora Noffke says she thinks that the Curiosity rover may have found fossils on Mars. "Time and time again, as we carefully scrutinize the amazing high-resolution imagery flowing to Earth from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, we see weird things etched in Martian rocks. Most of the time our brains are playing tricks on us. At other times, however, those familiar rocky features can be interpreted as processes that also occur on Earth. Now, in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology, a geobiologist has related structures photographed by Curiosity of Martian sedimentary rock with structures on Earth that are known to be created by microbial lifeforms."
I don't know where to go for insighful intelligent discussion online anymore.
I go to Ars. They actually have journalists who write stuff and all. And you get the tech news 2-3 days before here.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
1. The scientist in question is arguably the foremost in her (admittedly obscure) field, the study of microbial mats and their effects on sediments on Earth. She literally wrote the book on the subject and has a very extensive publication record on it. She is a well-known and respected researcher for this work, although admittedly it's obscure stuff at the interface between sedimentology and paleontology.
2. The pictures themselves are quite clear and are from the mastcam on the Curiosity rover. They aren't distant blurry pictures with huge blocky pixels and horrible processing, although they could be better. The structures interpreted from them, not so convincing, IMHO, but that has little to do with image resolution issues.
3. She's an assistant professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia.
I think you scored a 0.5/3. Don't trust your prejudices.
That being said, I think the interpretations in the paper aren't correct.