Why NASA still believes we might find life on Mars

WAPO ^ | July 30, 2016 | Sarah Kaplan

[PROCON]

OK you scientific and astronomy types, what say you?

[Olog-hai]

Will Obama go there and tell them they need to accept human refugees who only dream of a better life away from Earth?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Why NASA still believes we might find life on Mars

I think there's a good chance that if life is found on Mars, it will be some bacterial contamination from an Earth rover or probe.

[Axenolith]

I’d be surprised if there wasn’t. Surface conditions were amenable to it in the past and there is doubtless viable conditions in the subsurface for microbial life to survive.

[wally_bert]

I’d like a more modern version of Manchester and Cortinas for everyone.

[2ndDivisionVet]

[al baby]

Half the population of mars already voted obama

[Fungi]

Hogwash.

[Charles Martel]

That was only a minor energy flux reading on one dynoscanner. Might be something we can transplant.

[editor-surveyor]

There are undoubtedly microbes there now, since we landed our contaminated hardware there.

But otherwise there would be no purpose for life to be on mars.

[dowcaet]

I would hate to see a perfectly good planet be dotted with a ton of Starbucks. I wonder if Martians like Frapuccinos?

[Olog-hai]

Cortina, eh? Always wondered why that didn’t make it over to the USA; the only British Ford that did from that era was the (Mercury) Capri. The Cortina’s replacement, the Sierra, showed up in the 1980s as the Merkur XR4Ti.

[digger48]

"Caffeine makes me very very angry!"

[Axenolith]

“Hogwash” doesn’t cut it in a discussion over the possibility of some type of life having arisen on a terrestrial planet. Care to offer any thermodynamic or biological counterpoints?

[wally_bert]

Gene Hunt drove one. If it wasn’t for Life On Mars, I may never have learned about them at all.

The Quattro in Ashes To Ashes was more fitting for the character.

[quantumman]

I was a business associate of Gil Levin when I lived in Richmond in the 80’ and I also have a degree in astronomy. I was satisfied with his presentation at that time and I belive there is primitive life on Mars - I think the case can be made that there were sentient beings there before the ascent of hominids several MYA.

[dragnet2]

Agree. It seems something caused some big changes to occur in the past. Some images clearly indicate significant amounts of water once existed.

[Tucker39]

Weren’t there a few FoMoCo products called Cortinas sold here briefly in the ‘70s, maybe? Little units similar to the Pinto, etc?

[blackpacific]

Hogwash dittos.

[Tucker39]

Yes. Ford Cortina in Britain from ‘62 to ‘82. Somehow some of them made it to the States, because a geeky engineer I knew had one.