Tag Archives: life on mars

Earth-like Planets Abundant in the Cosmos

Geoff Marcy, a professor of astronomy at Berkeley, talks to The PBS News Hour about earth-like planets. __________ “Earth-like,” as used by Marcy, means a rocky planet orbiting in the Goldilocks zone (neither too close nor too far from its … Continue reading

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Fresh Water! Mars Rover Curiosity Finds 3.5 Billion-Year Old Lake Sediment in Gale Crater That Could Have Supported Life

There was some big news yesterday that you might have missed. It appeared in the science section of the The New York Times (December 9, 2013): [L]ife [on Mars], at least in the ancient past, is at least plausible. John P. … Continue reading

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Curiosity at Rocknest

A pretty stunning Mars photo from Rocknest was released by NASA a couple of weeks back. Here it is in the event you missed it. __________ Of course, there’s also something distinctly gloomy about the photo, for it shows a … Continue reading

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Mars Rover Curiosity: Watch for News of Glenelg

__________ Glenelg may yield big Mars news. Notice by the color shadings in the photograph above how Glenelg rests as an intersection point for three quite distinct geological areas. Also notice that the word “Glenelg” is a palindrome (it reads the same … Continue reading

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Mars, the Book

A miracle. This is not the American Southwest, but part of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater on Mars. The (apparently sedimentary) rocks exposed here are more than three billion years old. Curiosity is about six miles from them. Behold the Book of Mars. We’ll … Continue reading

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Are We Alone? Mars News You May Have Missed That Seems Pretty Important

This appeared at New Scientist back in 2006, but it seems pretty important to thinking about what Curiosity is up to now: [A] paper by Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the University of Mexico and others demonstrates that the GCMS instrument [organic … Continue reading

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Curiosity and Consequences: What It Will Feel Like If Life On Mars Is Discovered

It will feel like the man leaving Plato’s cave in the below video. As with one coming out of Plato’s cave, a greater vista on the truth will have been apprehended, and we will pity those who came before us and reasoned about their existence not … Continue reading

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Mars Curiosity: Let the Frickin Zapping Begin!

Curiosity zapped its first rock today, and here’s the image NASA provided: ___________ Here’s part of what NASA said about this: ChemCam recorded spectra from the laser-induced spark at each of the 30 pulses. The goal of this initial use … Continue reading

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Gilbert Levin’s Claim: If Curiosity Discovers Organics in the Martian Soil, Mars Has Life

Gilbert Levin is a man on a mission. For the Viking missions to Mars in 1976, he was the person who designed one of the experiments that searched for life. The results came back positive. So positive, in fact, that … Continue reading

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NASA Has a Gun: The Mars Moment to Listen for News about on Sunday, August 18th

This is from the NASA website in a press release: On Saturday night, Aug. 18, ChemCam is expected to “zap” its first rock in the name of planetary science. It will be the first time such a powerful laser has … Continue reading

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Mars Rover Curiosity Hits the Alluvial Fan: Watch for News of Rock Varnish and Organic Microfossils

The Mars rover Curiosity has landed in a sweet spot: an alluvial fan. As such, in listening for news concerning the Mars rover Curiosity, my ears will perk up if there is any discussion of rock varnish or palynology (the study of … Continue reading

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Two Key Things to Watch for in NASA’s Curiosity Mars Mission: The Alluvial Fan and Mount Sharp

Now that Curiosity has landed, where did it land? Well, first and most obviously, it landed in a five billion-year-old meteor impact crater named Gale Crater. Gale Crater was, for a time, filled with sand and rock, but then wind and … Continue reading

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Curiosity is John Wesley Powell on Mars

Last night, my wife Rachel and I took our two daughters, Lia and Aria, to the Will Geer Theatricum in Los Angeles to see a hippie rendition of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. But though the Will Geer production was colorful and I … Continue reading

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Life Found on Mars? Neuropharmacologist and Biologist Joseph Miller is “99 Percent Sure There’s Life” on Mars

The Discovery News website this week is reporting some pretty mind-blowing stuff on whether there is bacterial life on Mars, accompanied by an exciting quote from neuropharmacologist and biologist Joseph Miller (who is at the University of Southern California’s Keck School … Continue reading

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Mars Life Missions Cancelled: Short Sighted and Evidence of America’s Decline

The following is in the New York Times this week: Just as NASA is on the cusp of answering the most fascinating questions about Mars — is there, was there or could there be life there? — the money needed to provide the answers … Continue reading

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NASA’s Felisa Wolfe-Simon Appears Poised to Announce Arsenic Based Life in Mono Lake

Today (Thursday), at 11:00 AM Pacific time, a team of NASA scientists appears poised to announce a discovery of arsenic based life at Mono Lake in California. The implications of this discovery are enormous. It means that NASA might begin an intensive … Continue reading

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Life on Mars? A new paper says maybe

In 1976, did the scientists responsible for interpreting Viking data underestimate some important evidence that actually points to life on Mars? A new scientific paper says maybe. The New York Times earlier this week: For the veteran Mars researcher Gilbert V. Levin, … Continue reading

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Why I’m an Agnostic (and Not an Atheist or Theist)

I would liken my agnosticism about God and the afterlife to someone who is agnostic about life on Mars. At this point in the 21st century, we have enticing Martian clues about methane on the planet, but nothing definitive (it could be … Continue reading

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Something (Organic) is Burning—on Mars?

A song for the underground organic life that scientists say MIGHT be on Mars:

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Scientific American TODAY Asks: “Is Something Organic Brewing on the Red Planet?”

Money quote: Michael Mumma, a senior planetary scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and his colleagues report in the online edition of Science that they used ground-based telescopes to spot a significant belch of methane … Continue reading

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