Proof of Martian life 'to come this year'

[jgraz]

Proof of Martians 'to come this year'

Final proof that Mars has bred life will be confirmed this year, leading NASA experts believe. The historic discovery will come not on Mars itself but from chunks of the red planet here on Earth.

David McKay, chief of astrobiology at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, says powerful new microscopes and other instruments will establish whether features in martian meteorites are alien fossils.

He says evidence for life in the space rocks could have been claimed by the UK if British scientists had used readily-available electron microscopes. Instead, images of colonies of martian bacteria were collected by American scientists.

The NASA team is already convinced that colonies of micro-organisms are visible inside three martian rocks that landed on Earth. If so, this would have profound implications for our understanding of life in the universe.


More at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=proof-of-martians-to-come-this-year-2010-01

[Systematic Chaos]

1. What fucking asshole unrec'ed this?

Back to zero.

:P

[jgraz]

2. Probably some Martian who wants his privacy.

[pokerfan]

4. Fundies are extremely nervous about discovering non-terrestrial life

for some reason.

[drm604]

8. I'm waiting to see what the denial industry for this will look like.

You just know there will be one.

It will probably be typical.

• Attempts to "debunk" the science.
  
• Exaggerations and misrepresentations about disagreements in the scientific community.
  
• Claims that it's some sort of "libruhl" plot against all that is right and decent.
  
• Creation of controversy and then pointing to that controversy as if it's some kind of proof.
  

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. You sound just like a creationist.

There are unavoidable, reasonable, and necessary questions that will arise from "proving" the presence of life on another planet by looking at rocks on this one.

There's no life anywhere but here. Prove otherwise.

[drm604]

18. I can't prove anything.

I never claimed I could prove anything. I am waiting to see what NASA and the rest of the scientific community has to say about this. I was simply saying what we'll probably see from the professional denialists if this proof is forthcoming and convincing. When I say denialists, I'm talking about those who spend their time denying things they don't like, regardless of evidence.

Certainly there will be legitimate scientific discussion and controversy. I wasn't talking about that. I thought my point was obvious.

I'll add another to my list.

• Claims that those accepting the proof, or even speculating about it being possible, sound "just like a creationist".

I wouldn't have guessed this one, but we have an early example right here.

[lumberjack_jeff]

19. Then you're operating on faith.

Don't disparage "the deniers" as being insufficiently rooted in the scientific process.

Innocent until proven guilty has a scientific analog - until there's evidence of a phenomenon, it is presumed to be nonexistent.

ET's qualify.

[drm604]

21. Are we having the same conversation?

Because you seem to be responding to things I'm not saying, or at least you're ignoring some of what I'm saying.

I never claimed I could prove anything. I am waiting to see what NASA and the rest of the scientific community has to say about this.

Do you notice those two sentences? How can you interpret that as me acting on faith? :shrug:

[jdp349]

23. You seem to be struggling with an important epistemological nuance essential to the methodology

Presuming the nonexistence of something does not make it none existent, it's just a default position of the methodology. In the face of uncertainty of the existence of something we are not certain by default that it does not exists but rather we TREAT IT as non existent because we have NO REASON to suspect otherwise, that is until we have enough evidence to make a sufficiently powerful positive claim to counter the default. This is by no means a strong enough position to be certain of non existence, we are uncertain which is why people are inquiring into the possible existence of extra terrestrial life.

It is essential that when uncertain into the existence of something conceivable we TREAT IT as non existent until we have reason to suspect otherwise or we would have to treat all things conceivable as true which would just be insanity, we'd have almost no way to determine what is and isn't.

A lot of people miss this nuance. Not to bring god into the equation but theists and atheists always mix this up as well.
Atheist: There is no god
Theist: Prove it!
Atheist: You can't prove a negative! Therefore there is no god!
Theist: bickering
Atheist: bickering

applying the logic above you can see the atheists response is rather absurd, to be certain about the non existence of something due to a required default position for their methodology. What they mean to say is that there is no compelling reason to suspect there is a god, much like there is no reason to suspect there is an invisible cat walking around my living room. There might be, but so might an infinite number of other conceivable invisible creatures and believing there is the cat on the grounds that it might be there is arbitrary and requires me to accept an infinite number of other possibilities to justify the position.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. Maybe one that didn't like bad science journalism?

[Ozymanithrax]

3. Life on mars, John Carter has known about this for ages.

I look forawrd to seeing this proven.

[roguevalley]

9. Ah, Barsoom. :)

[frog92969]

5. I remember about 2 years ago...

there was a Mars mission and a report that there would be an announcement
having to do with life there after they reported to bu$h.

I watched and waited but no announcement came.

This doesn't sound related but I just wanted to know,
was I stoned?

[drm604]

7. I seem to remember something like that also? n/t

[frog92969]

10. It made me want to put my hat on

:tinfoilhat:

[RagAss]

17. I don't know either .. I was stoned for those eight years.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. It might mean that some of the planetlife may be

extra-planetary.

[AllenVanAllen]

11. This announcement would be very cool.

"I could have been somebody, if my planet hadn't died..."

[Systematic Chaos]

12. Oh, look. It's a Simon-based life form!

:silly:

[AllenVanAllen]

14. Lol!

Simon is Martian based technology I believe. :hi:

[RT Atlanta]

13. OVER-THE-TOP COOLNESS!

Really, just fucking awesome and I look forward to literally watching the heads of shit-stains like Pat Robertson and his ilk explode at this news.

[Ready4Change]

20. BS reporting, or BS researchers.

I can do this too.


'Cold Fusion to produce industrial grade baseline power by 2nd quarter of 2011' says Ready4Change, a top researcher in the field of corn chip induced Cold Fusion. "A break through is just around the corner, I just know it. Maybe even in this next bag!"

"Considering the shear number of bags of Frito-Lay products in existence, the chances of finding a corn chip with the exact physical structures needed to induce a cold fusion reaction are orders of magnitude greater than they would be, if we were limited to a single bag. So it's gonna happen, 100% guaranteed."


Researchers cannot predict WHAT they will discover, and certainly not WHEN. The fact that some of them are trying to make such a prediction puts anything they DO find into question, in my opinion.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love for this discovery to be made. But I don't want it to be a force-fit discovery.

[usregimechange]

22. Very small elderly martians