Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Mars rovers find evidence of past hostile environment

As a science nut and a space nut I saw the above headline and sprang into action. Well okay I clicked into the story reasonably fast.

It's worth a look but don't ecpect too much. 4 billion years ago there were volcanic eruptions, and couple that to the extremely acidic soil and you've got bupkus when it comes to sustaining life. From the headline I was expecting something along the lines of thousands of years ago, or maybe even millions, but fer chrissake the entire solar system was one big volcano 4 billions years past.

But the life-as-we-know-it idjits will grasp at any straw to draw the unwary into their web of flashing ads and garish depictions of life-as-we DON'T-know-it, and I should have known better but science is science and knowledge all by itself is cool too.

There's not another living thing anywhere in the system, and probably nothing above the level of mold anywhere in the galaxy. Fermi had it right when he asked where is everybody. A 12 billion year old universe means intelligent life would have a 7 billion year head start on us, and do the math to see how far they should have traveled in all that time. Use half the speed of light as your spedometer because we could just about work that out for ourselves if we put our minds to it.

What's that? They HAVE visited us and are still making crop circles and gutting cows in Canada? Okie doke.

PS: there doesn't appear to be any truth to the rumor that once done with Mars, the two plucky rovers will then be sent to California to determine if there is, or ever was life at Pajamas Media.

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