Is there a Life On Mars Conspiracy?

Times Online ^ | 06/11/2009 | Michael Brooks

[Scythian]

Some pesky scientists have just pointed out an appalling design error in NASA’s latest attempts to find life on Mars. This is beginning to look like a conspiracy. Does someone not want us to find life on Mars?

NASA has tried looking for signs of life on Mars precisely once, in the 1976 Viking mission. The result was positive. The reason nobody says there is life on Mars is that another experiment, part of the same mission, couldn’t find any carbon-based “organic” chemicals in Martian soil. This, NASA decided, overruled the other result: with no carbon present, there could be no microbes living on or under the surface of Mars.

Last year, the Phoenix lander repeated the carbon search and failed to find organic molecules. The problem is, we know that there ought to be organic molecules on Mars. Asteroid and comet impacts will have put them there. So what’s going on?

[SunkenCiv]

It is widely doubted, but IMO The Viking Labeled Release Experiment and Life on Mars designed by Gilbert V. Levin found it. I've never found the supposed evidence from the supposed Martian meteorites compelling though.

[KevinDavis]

I think there is, but I think that sending humans to Mars can do a better job than robots..

[Vaquero]

I think there is, but I think that sending humans to Mars can do a better job than robots..

yup we, as humans, need to go to Mars, but in style, in Freeman Dyson's original Orio,n a-bomb propelled spacecraft....get there in a couple-a-weeks....come back whenever we please, not having to wait for orbit alignments.

but if Reagan and the Bushes couldn't swing it....you sure as hell wont see it from the messiah.

[onedoug]

Fossils. And the only way we’ll know is to go there and dig them out. After being obamafied though, that’ll be a real long time. ‘Guess I won’t know in this life anyway.

[colorado tanker]

Wow, is this guy a great urinalist!!?? Yep, the recent Bilderbergers meeting in Greece was to coordinate a brilliant conspiracy to keep the world from knowing about Bigfoot life on Mars and how they built a spacecraft to come to Earth, all so they can can hold us all hostage from their threat of a Martian invasion to further their evil plan of worldwide domination! NASA was created by these evil geniuses just to further the conspiracy!

Who knew the Bilderbergers were fronting for Christian fundamentalist fanatics?? Is that brilliant or what??!!

And Doctor Evil is orchestrating it all! For a measly million bucks! Mooooohhhaaaaahhhhaaaa!

[BlueStateBlues]

Fossils—Richard Hoagland over at enterprisemission.com found pretty good evidence for a fossil in an early Mars Rover photograph.

[onedoug]

Yeah, but to be sure we’ve got to go with our collective hammers, brushes and geological wonder.

[SunkenCiv]

[onedoug]

Might I ask for a link?

Thanks.

[drangundsturm]

It's 9.8 on earth, not mars.

But of course I'm still wrong as the gravity at the surface of mars is only 3.73 m/s^2.

(Yeah I'm not so nerdy that i actually research things like this for joke post!)

But the cool thing about google is you can actually type this in and get the answer:

3.73 meters in cubits

And it dutifully spits out 3.73 meters = 8.15835521 cubits

So in cubits the correct value for acceleration due to gravity at the surface of mars is about 8.15 cubits/s^2 and since the nasty creationists changed it to 9.2 that is easily enough to cause the vessel to fire its retros wrong and crash.

[Buck W.]

I was just having a bit of fun with my nerd credentials! Top this one: years ago, garage door openers had to be set manually using an 8-position inline switch, ie, 8 switches set in one of two positions. My house number was 237, so I programmed the door opener code to be 237 in binary. That’s nerdy.

[drangundsturm]

Dude, that is good but I have you beat. When I was 14 I got my first computer, an ohio scientific C1P, and I memorized all the op-codes for the 6502 processor and programmed it directly in machine code, sans assembler. Don’t remember a blasted one now though, 34 years later.

[Buck W.]

I remember that one—I had a Trash-80!