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Scientist Says Potential Signs of Ancient Life in Mars Rover Photos

Posted by samzenpus on from the did-you-see-that? dept.

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."

5 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot today. by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seven comments in, so far there's 4 jokes, 2 anti-us spam/trolls, and 1 crank. Quality discussion there.

    1. Re: Slashdot today. by DustinB · · Score: 3, Insightful

      More like koala tea. All jokes aside, this place isn't what it used to be... :( at its best its usually just inward bickering back and forth instead of discussion. I don't know where to go for insighful intelligent discussion online anymore.

      --
      Dustin - A different story...
    2. Re:Slashdot today. by iONiUM · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To be fair, there have been many of these "we think we may have found life / ancient life / we have a big announcement" type things out of NASA in the last few years, none of which had "conclusive" (or at least, relatively so) evidence of life.

      It's getting to the point where there's nothing really to discuss until they stop releasing these meta-statements, and actually give a real "we fucking found life FOR SURE" statement.

    3. Re:Slashdot today. by solios · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...and unlike reddit, a registered and logged in user can dock "funny" posts and read at a threshold that scrubs most of the jokers and trolls under the rug. A feature slashdot has had since the 90s; a feature the rest of the internet still hasn't implemented.

  2. Re:Time for some leaps and not baby steps by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, they're afraid of saying there is life and being wrong. They're not currently saying there isn't life, they're saying they dont know either way. They have no definitive proof.

    I don't think anyone in the scientific community has any doubts that there was life there at one time. It's just a matter of proving it. I think it's rather likely that there still is life on mars and it will be surprisingly similar to microbial life hear on earth. I suspect our two planets have been inoculating each other for a very very long time.