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To: John H K; Dialup Llama
Do the rovers have microscopes capable of seeing Martian single celled bugs? Do they have life detection experiments on them? ~ Dialup Llama

Nope. Absolutely nothing on the Rovers is specifically designed to look for life. It's designed to look for evidence of past water. ~ John H K

And yet, it looks like it may be in a sea of fossils:

Mars rover Daily Updates -Spirit Making Ground - Opportunity-A Beautiful Grind

19 posted on 03/01/2004 8:14:35 PM PST by null and void (Or we could just be deluding ourselves...)
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To: null and void
Well,

To be honest there has been a bit much of well-meaning people not really qualified to assess the microscope pics staring a bit too hard at them (and allowing their hopes to get the better of them)

I haven't seen anything in them that looks particularly fossil-ish to me. Not that I'm qualified either, but I can turn off the "what I hope is there" part of my brain. (Though many on FR would submit I can turn off ALL of my brain, but I digress.)

People have gotten the strange idea that ANY sort of even vaguely organized structure or symmetry is a sign of life. It isn't.

There are a great many self-organizing or apparently organized structures in nature that have nothing to do with life.
27 posted on 03/01/2004 8:20:41 PM PST by John H K
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