During yesterday's press conference they said there is an area in the rock they call the "blueberry bowl" in which many of these sphereoids have collected. They are going to place the spectrometer on them to determine their composition within the next few days. ---------- From: Joe Bauman Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 8:56 AM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] More comments to irritate everybody You're absolutely right that they should be cautious. But it's NOT cautious to automatically rule out possibilities without investigating them. And NASA has not mentioned it's even mulling any thoughts that these things might involve life. Unless the "blueberries" are so similar to natural material we have on Earth that there's no question about them, NASA scientists could at least admit the possibility they might be something really, really strange. I'm not calling for NASA to make some stupendous announcement based on "it looks odd," but it would be nice if they said, hummmm, wonder if these things could be fossils or present lifeforms. -- Joe
After NASA jumped the gun with the Mars meteorite several years ago (when they made a big deal about some natural formations looking like bacteria), the last thing they're going to do is to reach another premature conclusion. This is also in the context of the original Viking landers. NASA thought certain chemical processes were lifelike until they determined that natural processes were much more likely.
I want us to find life on Mars every bit as much as anyone here, but you have to remain skeptical if you're to do good science. If those little nodules are the result of life processes, they have to be able to withstand intense scrutiny. You can't use the X-Files criterion "It looks odd, must be supernatural". You've really got to beat on the evidence and try every approach to break it. Only when it stands up to that sort of onslaught can you open the door to a more radical interpretation.
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