Evidence of Life on Mars?...

Via Instapundit, an article in Space.com suggests NASA scientists may have found evidence of life on Mars -

A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.

The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in     Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed.

Unfortunately, it ain't so, the story is based on hearsay. From Carol Stoker -

1. On Sunday night we were attending a private partyof space exploration enthusiasts in which there was a discussion about the possible meaning of the resultsfrom recent Mars missions.  We engaged in the discussion and expressed thoughts and opinions as individual scientists  on our own time and did not represent ourselves as speaking for NASA.

2. No one at the party identified themselves as a reporter, and in fact no reporters were present.  This article is based on hearsay about what somebody at the
party thought they heard us say. We think this represents extremely poor journalistic standards.

Also, NASA's issued a press release -

News reports on February 16, 2005, that NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect.

NASA does not have any observational data from any current Mars missions that supports this claim. The work by the scientists mentioned in the reports cannot be used to directly infer anything about life on Mars, but may help formulate the strategy for how to search for martian life. Their research concerns extreme environments on Earth as analogs of possible environments on Mars. No research paper has been submitted by them to any scientific journal asserting martian life.

That's too bad, I was hoping it to be true. It's only a matter of time before we do find life on Mars; as soon as we get our ass off this planet.

Comments

[Bob Roof]

I think you should give appropriate attribution to the false story. See Nasa's own website for more on 'lfe on mars' at the following URL http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/marslife.html . You'll soon see, it was insiders from NASA who spread the false runor... not surprising, given the tendency of NASA to dramatize anything that might get them more recognition... and funds.

[Brian]

Excuse me, but there is life on Mars...and you can drive there...
http://www.purvisbros.com/mars/marstop.htm

[Abigail]

I think that NASA is just a big welfare program for rich government contractors.

[big dirigible]

It's not a welfare program for government contractors (although there are justifications for that, in some cases - at least one of Galbraith's books is concerned with nothing else), so much as a den of featherbedders. I suspect that any government agency has only a few years - maybe five, max - before it's infiltrated by people who live only to game the system. I did some aerospace engineering work a decade ago (but was not an employee of NASA, DOD, or any of the big alphabet-soup names), and you will not believe what useless clowns far too many of the career guys are.

[Reid]

I do aerospace engineering work now and interact frequently with NASA folks. Like in any large organization, some are deadwood but, an awful lot are also some of the brightest folks on the planet and, they work for a government salary, which is a fraction of what they could get in private industry, because they believe in the dream of space.

The public gets an incredible deal from NASA, which is the premier space exploration agency in the entire world and something of which Americans should be proud. It is not an object of derision from bloated gasbags like "big dirigible".

[Abigail]

Yes, NASA has a bunch of lifers making government salaries, but like all government programs, the real money is spent on contractors. The Space Shuttle wasn't built in house by government employees, it's built by big government contractors. And I assure you that the big-wigs at companies like Lockheed Martin are making huge salaries.

[Vern Straysner]

There is no life on Mars. Did you ever see Rocketman, with Harland Williams? True Story.

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