Well get the lead out Nasa, lets get up there! No more excuses now. Just gotta work out the details =) I think I'm more interested in the prospects of a lunar base than Mars right now, life elsewhere is pretty much statistically guaranteed and really shouldn't shock or amaze anyone except right wing religious folk, and even that's just a political front.
Direct evidence of something like life couldn't be 'kept silent' Boomslang. The explosion of trying to keep something like that contained will kill the container =) I'm not talking about conspiracy theory either. I mean direct incontrovertible proof of carbon based life on another planet. In todays microphone and video/still camera enabled phone drenched world leaks would happen. More subtle signs of life (and they can be VERY subtle) will filter in over time.
There is more money and power in religion than one would think... but I have to agree, something as important as that will probably be made public (if we are lucky ).
There is more money and power in religion than one would think... but I have to agree, something as important as that will probably be made public (if we are lucky ).
The first life detected from a stastical standpoint is going to be bacteria. Since religous types claim we have zip in common with bacteria it should be safe to announce there is/was bacteria on Mars. The universe is full of bacteria but god only placed people on earth sort of nonsense.
In the last few years we have discovered that bacteria can be very robust. It cold well be that there is live bacteria on Mars.
Well, okay, but in my defense, I just finished my summer session in school, am bored to tears, can't wait for fall, and these prednisone meds for my hearing loss are causing me the worst insomnia I ever had...
Well, okay, but in my defense, I just finished my summer session in school, am bored to tears, can't wait for fall, and these prednisone meds for my hearing loss are causing me the worst insomnia I ever had...
OK I can buy that. I have been busy getting ready for school to start too. When you are teaching you do get to wait for it to happen. More like make it happen.
The discovery of life elsewhere in the universe is going to be one of the most belated discoveries ever.
Whats more disheartening is that what we will finally find is most probably going to be just bacteria !!! or perhaps just something that supports life. like water ?
I dont understand why we consider carbon, water etc. to be the basis of life. Why are we insane searching for 'earth-like' life. Life elsewhere can turn out to be uranium based, plutonium based, or what not.
Once we are able to travell much outside the solar system, I bet we will find life very quickly and without having to search for carbon and water first. I just the new guys are friendlier or perhaps they are just girls who like earth guys ;-)
When governments spend public tax dollars on scientific space exploration missions, the public deserves to know a reasonable amount of truthful results and outcomes. That's my opinion. Of course ther's the Roswell, N.M. incident where our tax dollars went towards military officers cleaning up a high altitude baloon debris so top secret that ordinary citizens were threatened with their lives at stake. Must've been one very special baloon!
HiTech, it still is now a days but especially back then the phrase "In for a dime in for a dollar" WELL described the military. Whatever anyone currently thinks about the whole Roswell/Area51 thing it can be absolutely guaranteed that that is not what occurred. It's speculation blown into a whole seperate realm of reality =) Any application of the scientific principle fails because there is no solid independently verifiable data, smart people write it off and let the lunies fill in the blanks.
I would think that if evidence of life was discovered that NASA would be very keen to go public to help justify funding, which seems to be a perpetual problem.
Europa excites me even more than Mars. I watched the moon landings as a kid, and I'd love to see video from an underwater probe finding marine life around black smokers at the bottom of the Europan ocean. I think I'll go and daydream for while...