Some scientists think humans descended from Martian microbes

Palm Beach Post ^ | Monday, April 03, 2006 | Stacey Singer

[planetesimal]

Astrobiology sounds like the stuff of lava lamps and Jetsons reruns.

Yet seven years after NASA launched a formal astrobiology research program, scientists of every stripe — geologists, biologists, chemists, paleontologists, oceanographers and astronomers — have rallied to the quest.

They've spent as much as $65 million a year trying to solve a mystery that has underpinned religion and inspired thinkers from Seneca to Carl Sagan: How did life on the lonely Earth begin? And is Earth really the only source of life in the universe?

With the help of modern tools such as the genome, high-powered computer modeling and robotics, they're finding some out-of-this-world answers, ones that may lead to Mars and beyond.

[r9etb]

During the whole UFO craze the gov was getting nervous and wanted to ridicule the UFO movement. So they went and asked whether entertainment industry could help them out there, and make some nice cartoons which made aliens, UFO's and people that believed in them look so silly that nobody would believe in it anymore.

Hooooooookay...... I think we're all stupider for having read that.

[Junior]

Space aliens are simple demonic manifestations. Nothing more, nothing less.

A personal belief, or do you actually have some evidence?

[taxed2death]

"Just read yer Bible and save us some tax dollars.."

or...the book of Enoch.

[Junior]

A single bacteria? Are you stoned? Nothing in that article or in any literature said anything about "a single bacteria."

I swear, some people think they have a license to make things up if they're doing it "for a good cause."

[Liberal Classic]

Little green men
They look so funny
Funny green men
I want one to have and to hold and to
Silly green men
Where do they come from?
Should we run away?
Should we start to pray?
Or is it a movie that they’re filming?

[windcliff]

ping

[Hermann the Cherusker]

A personal belief, or do you actually have some evidence?

Due to the relativisitic effects of travelling anywhere close to light speed, interstellar travel is a practical impossibility due to the length of time required. Therefore, there are no space aliens visiting us. Therefore, people seeing space aliens are hallucinating or are seeing manifestations from the spiritual realm. Since these space aliens generally tend to lead people away from belief in Christianity and even towards worshipping and communing with these manifestations, I conclude they are demonic.

[wideawake]

Interesting. Since the evolution cultists have failed again and again to replicate their mythic "life from primordial soup" through experiment, now some are claiming an extraterrestrial source.

For them, any explanation, no matter how farfetched, is plausible - as long as it avoids the inexorable answer.

[js1138]

Therefore, people seeing space aliens are hallucinating or are seeing manifestations from the spiritual realm.

An exhaustive list of possibilities, no doubt.

[Junior]

I'll go with the hallucination part. The "evil spirit" thing sounds as whacked as the "little green men" thing -- and for pretty much the same reasons.

[MineralMan]

"So how does the rock leave Mars? Does it leap off the planet?"

No. As you may know, Mars' gravity is somewhat lower than ours. The rocks get here when Martian teenagers, lacking anything better to do, construct crude catapults, then load stones into them. They fire these stones into the air, and some of them reach a high enough velocity to escape Mars' gravitational field. A few of those manage to reach Earth.

It's such a common phenomenon on Mars that government studies have been done, leading to the conclusion that the youth of Mars no longer respect their elders have stopped reading the scriptures and are going to Hell in a handbasket.

I hope that helps.

[null and void]

That's the sort of god one gets when one's prophet crawls into caves to hear allah...

[Zionist Conspirator]

Never mind the origin of life. I'm still trying to figure out how the "big bang" was a purely natural phenomenon when nature didn't exist until afterward!

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Why would the assumption that life existed on other planets mean that there is no God?

[AxelPaulsenJr]

And Christians have "blind faith"?

As Carl Segan is no doubt saying, "I'm gonna be here for billions and billions of years"?

LOL, nice post!

[jps098]

Stoned? I'm referring to the original press conference when the "Mars Rock" was touted as just such an object. I also remember that a number of scientists on the research team completely dismissed the "Mars Rock" conjecture as bunk. Too bad that didn't make much news at the time, for some reason.

Because the area "looked" like a bacterial growth, the claim was made. Search Lexis-Nexis and read the original press statements.

[TChris]

...and those Martian microbes came from... Magic!

LOL!

[Junior]

No. What looked like stuff left behind by bacteria was found in that rock. No one said anything about a "single bacteria" -- which was your claim and the one I'm commenting upon. Like I said, some people feel they can just make up any old thing and post it.

[taxed2death]

"Due to the relativisitic effects of travelling anywhere close to light speed, interstellar travel is a practical impossibility due to the length of time required."

Nice.

Physics from the early 1800's.

[Sam Cree]

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