This is the most earth-shaking, or Mars-shaking, news I’ve ever missed. Throughout a week when I couldn’t turn on a radio or conduct a search for news online without running into people excitedly talking about which late night TV hosts would be broadcast through which networks, this story completely passed my notice: A week ago today, Spaceflight Now is quoting David S. McKay, chief of astrobiology at the NASA Johnson Space Center as saying that 2010 will probably be the year when evidence of life on Mars in meteorites from that planet will be settled for good.
“We do believe that we are very, very close to proving there is or has been life there,” McKay is quoted as saying. The proof he’s talking about will come from advanced microscopes looking at not just one meteorite from Mars containing what appear to be fossilized microbes, but three such meteorites. At the same time, other exobiological projects focused on Mars are underway, described toward the end of the same Spaceflight Now article.
What would it take for you to accept evidence of life on Mars?
Wouldn’t it be something if Mars was the last place humanity resided, eons ago, before some cataclysmic action, or, similar to the condition we’re in now, our own stupidity, greed, lack of intelligence forced the species to transplant to Earth? (Great idea for a sci-fi book, but it’s probably already been written.)
New Scientist magazine has done pieces on Mars, and will probably be all over this in the weeks to come, giving balanced reporting of the successes, failures, hopes and facts of the exploration. If one “believes in” science the details will become known over the next bunch of years and space missions (by other countries as well as our own), fitting the evidentiary pieces together to come up with a probable scenario that fits the facts.
Well, it would take evidence of life on Mars to convince me of evidence of life on Mars.
I’m not going to hold my breath: this is a prediction about the future, and just because a scientist makes a prediction about future discovery doesn’t mean it’s going to come true. I remember watching NOVA as a kid in the 1980s, and there was this very earnest scientists explaining that mathematically speaking the probability of an accidental nuclear warhead explosion in the next fifteen years was almost certain. Where’s the rubble?
I’ll be very excited to see the evidence if and when it is uncovered. But until then, it’s not news for me: it’s just a neat possibility.
little green men cleaning up our mess here on earth would be pretty convincing. if they had to mow down some opposing forces with laser beams, that would make some converts. if their spaceships hovered over the playboy mansion west and started beaming up bunnies some pretty hot babes would believe right quick, i bet.
or, i don’t know, some leftover water vapors in some old rocks?