4 ms·

Photos show evidence of life on Mars, Ohio entomologist claims

34 points by lelf 7y ago

philwelch 7y ago
I want to give the benefit of the doubt because this person seems like a legitimate scientist, but this is an extraordinary claim and the evidence seems a lot like cloudgazing to me. Is there a source with more detail on this? Edit: Found this (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cd3gmtja551h6l1/AAABGYzMsjlN7UemkHecQqmfa?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cd3gmtja551h6l1/AAABGYzMsjlN7Uemk...)...still looks like cloudgazing to me, though.
- ksaj 7y ago
  That is stunningly bad, as far as "evidence" goes. I find it amazing that the rocks are so clear, and the snakes and bugs look exactly like the rocks. It's interesting that the snakes and bugs don't actually look like snakes and bugs, and in order to see what he sees, you have to forget how clear the rest of the picture is and except his analysis at (blurry?) face value. Just like backward masking in music, or the word SEX toasted into your Ritz crackers and wrinkled into some girl's socks, it requires text arrows, shape outlines, and highly specific descriptions before you can just almost see/hear it. Imagine if National Geographic had to go through such extremes before we could see bugs and snakes in their pictures of them. On Mars, sometimes a rock is just a rock.
ceejayoz 7y ago
I see we're doing this again. Previously: Face on Mars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars... Bigfoot on Mars: https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2008/1305.html https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2008/1305.h... The actual explanation, of course, is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia.
- Thrymr 7y ago
  A "Life on Mars" paper was actually published in Science in 1996 too: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/273/5277/864 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/273/5277/864
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    I find it entirely believable that there may have been life on Mars, and even that some of it survives today in extremophile microbial form. That doesn't make this guy's conference poster any less silly, though.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  Arthur C. Clarke's banyan trees on Mars: https://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2001-12/banyan-trees-mars/ https://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2001-...
yathern 7y ago
This is a really weak article, right from the opening paragraph > Romoser's research shows that we already have the evidence [of life on Mars] A single blurry picture of what might look like a bug is not evidence of life on Mars, any more than the "Mars Man Face" is. This seems like Pareidolia but for someone who looks at insects all day. Wikipedia article itself shows another Mars example... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
rpmisms 7y ago
Isn't this roughly comparable to estimating an entire dinosaur from a leg bone?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  It's roughly comparable to squinting at a pile of rocks, seeing what looks kinda like a leg bone, and declaring "dinosaurs walk among us!"
viach 7y ago
I can clearly see a honey badger on this photo.
anotheryou 7y ago
sure looks like a yeti to me "There's a large, out-of-focus monster running around the countryside. That's extra scary to me. Run, he's fuzzy!" (mitch hedberg)
jotjotzzz 7y ago
Well it complements this article: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/mysterious-oxygen-spike-seen-on-mars-puzzles-scientists/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/mysteriou...
scarmig 7y ago
I'm skeptical, but a genuine question: If we had an "Earth rover" that took similar photographs as the Mars rover did, would it find examples of insect fossils? If not, it seems like this is just seeing Jesus in a piece of toast.
- Enginerrrd 7y ago
  For what it's worth, I've lived on earth my whole life and I've never seen an insect fossil outside of a museum.
  - scarmig 7y ago
    Same, but I also don't know what to look for. I probably wouldn't know an insect fossil if I saw it. So even though the Mars structures look like noise to me, they probably would even if they were fossils.
  - ivoras 7y ago
    Same here... lived my whole life on Earth an never seen Jesus on toast... seems like a shame, really.
- dekhn 7y ago
  You can find surface fossils, but it's super-duper rare. However, you don't have to do much- basically anywhere there is a lot of sedimentary rock that has been recently uncovered you can expect to find fossils. So I would say if the rover just covered the surface, it would not see fossils unless you placed it in a likely area, and there were conditions that exposed fossils.
Enginerrrd 7y ago
This is beyond a reach and doesn't even make sense. What would tiny wings do on a planet with a thin atmosphere roughly equivalent to being over 100,000 ft high on earth? That last article about life on mars was much more compelling: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we-found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinc...
- nsxwolf 7y ago
  Mars's atmosphere may have been thicker in the past, and wings could be vestigial appendages from the creature's ancestors.
  - lazzlazzlazz 7y ago
    Surely they would have been strongly selected against given many thousands of generations in a harsh environment?
    - nsxwolf 7y ago
      And worse for my idea, looks like Mars probably lost its atmosphere billions, not millions of years ago.
  - ksaj 7y ago
    Then they'd have the problem of not being able to fly very easily in still weather, and being blown to the other side of the globe during the dust devil / wind storm events.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
chasing 7y ago
This is also pretty good evidence that Ohio exists.
nategri 7y ago
Today I learned entomologists have pareidolia for bugs.
carapace 7y ago
Noooooo... This is an old man with pareidolia. However, see "I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we-found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinc... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229390 The atmosphere of Mars is not in chemical equilibrium. (Cf. Lovelock, Gaia hypothesis.)
netdur 7y ago
If you could find any alien living with head and legs, that would be very stranger than finding alien life itself, or life on earth come from the same origin.
- outworlder 7y ago
  Not entirely. Legs have independently evolved multiple times on Earth, as have heads (or things that are similar to heads). It pays to have a lot of sensory organs on an appendage that can articulate – said sensory organs being close to the brain is also an advantage, assuming you have one single central brain. And 'legs' are good way to achieve locomotion over uneven terrain. Even on Earth that was done using different mechanisms: we use muscles attached to tendons, spiders use hydraulics. Even though an alien lifeform could conceivably have a 'head' and have 'legs', they would probably look nothing like what we have here. For a good story about how some alien lifeform would look like, I would recomend reading Blindsight: https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm The author uses some of his marine biology background to design the lifeforms. I think he does a pretty good job at trying to identify mechanisms which would hold true anywhere, but also making the result completely alien.
briga 7y ago
"When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere." I'd be willing to believe that there is fossilized life on Mars, maybe even complex arthopod-type life, but saying that there is still life flying around on Mars is a pretty extraordinary claim. Is there a paper or any more information around here? Outside of the two pictures in the articles I can't find anything.
ilaksh 7y ago
What an amazing find! In case you aren't aware, there are also giant human-like life forms living in the clouds on Earth. This has already been widely reported though.

34 points by lelf 7y ago

I want to give the benefit of the doubt because this person seems like a legitimate scientist, but this is an extraordinary claim and the evidence seems a lot like cloudgazing to me. Is there a source with more detail on this? Edit: Found this (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cd3gmtja551h6l1/AAABGYzMsjlN7UemkHecQqmfa?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cd3gmtja551h6l1/AAABGYzMsjlN7Uemk...)...still looks like cloudgazing to me, though.

ksaj 7y ago
That is stunningly bad, as far as "evidence" goes. I find it amazing that the rocks are so clear, and the snakes and bugs look exactly like the rocks. It's interesting that the snakes and bugs don't actually look like snakes and bugs, and in order to see what he sees, you have to forget how clear the rest of the picture is and except his analysis at (blurry?) face value. Just like backward masking in music, or the word SEX toasted into your Ritz crackers and wrinkled into some girl's socks, it requires text arrows, shape outlines, and highly specific descriptions before you can just almost see/hear it. Imagine if National Geographic had to go through such extremes before we could see bugs and snakes in their pictures of them. On Mars, sometimes a rock is just a rock.

ceejayoz 7y ago

I see we're doing this again. Previously: Face on Mars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars... Bigfoot on Mars: https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2008/1305.html https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2008/1305.h... The actual explanation, of course, is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia.

Thrymr 7y ago
A "Life on Mars" paper was actually published in Science in 1996 too: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/273/5277/864 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/273/5277/864
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  I find it entirely believable that there may have been life on Mars, and even that some of it survives today in extremophile microbial form. That doesn't make this guy's conference poster any less silly, though.
Apocryphon 7y ago
Arthur C. Clarke's banyan trees on Mars: https://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2001-12/banyan-trees-mars/ https://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2001-...

yathern 7y ago

This is a really weak article, right from the opening paragraph > Romoser's research shows that we already have the evidence [of life on Mars] A single blurry picture of what might look like a bug is not evidence of life on Mars, any more than the "Mars Man Face" is. This seems like Pareidolia but for someone who looks at insects all day. Wikipedia article itself shows another Mars example... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

rpmisms 7y ago

Isn't this roughly comparable to estimating an entire dinosaur from a leg bone?

ceejayoz 7y ago
It's roughly comparable to squinting at a pile of rocks, seeing what looks kinda like a leg bone, and declaring "dinosaurs walk among us!"

viach 7y ago

I can clearly see a honey badger on this photo.

anotheryou 7y ago

sure looks like a yeti to me "There's a large, out-of-focus monster running around the countryside. That's extra scary to me. Run, he's fuzzy!" (mitch hedberg)

jotjotzzz 7y ago

Well it complements this article: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/mysterious-oxygen-spike-seen-on-mars-puzzles-scientists/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/mysteriou...

scarmig 7y ago

I'm skeptical, but a genuine question: If we had an "Earth rover" that took similar photographs as the Mars rover did, would it find examples of insect fossils? If not, it seems like this is just seeing Jesus in a piece of toast.

Enginerrrd 7y ago
For what it's worth, I've lived on earth my whole life and I've never seen an insect fossil outside of a museum.
- scarmig 7y ago
  Same, but I also don't know what to look for. I probably wouldn't know an insect fossil if I saw it. So even though the Mars structures look like noise to me, they probably would even if they were fossils.
- ivoras 7y ago
  Same here... lived my whole life on Earth an never seen Jesus on toast... seems like a shame, really.
dekhn 7y ago
You can find surface fossils, but it's super-duper rare. However, you don't have to do much- basically anywhere there is a lot of sedimentary rock that has been recently uncovered you can expect to find fossils. So I would say if the rover just covered the surface, it would not see fossils unless you placed it in a likely area, and there were conditions that exposed fossils.

Enginerrrd 7y ago

This is beyond a reach and doesn't even make sense. What would tiny wings do on a planet with a thin atmosphere roughly equivalent to being over 100,000 ft high on earth? That last article about life on mars was much more compelling: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we-found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinc...

nsxwolf 7y ago
Mars's atmosphere may have been thicker in the past, and wings could be vestigial appendages from the creature's ancestors.
- lazzlazzlazz 7y ago
  Surely they would have been strongly selected against given many thousands of generations in a harsh environment?
  - nsxwolf 7y ago
    And worse for my idea, looks like Mars probably lost its atmosphere billions, not millions of years ago.
- ksaj 7y ago
  Then they'd have the problem of not being able to fly very easily in still weather, and being blown to the other side of the globe during the dust devil / wind storm events.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

chasing 7y ago

This is also pretty good evidence that Ohio exists.

nategri 7y ago

Today I learned entomologists have pareidolia for bugs.

carapace 7y ago

Noooooo... This is an old man with pareidolia. However, see "I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we-found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinc... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229390 The atmosphere of Mars is not in chemical equilibrium. (Cf. Lovelock, Gaia hypothesis.)

netdur 7y ago

If you could find any alien living with head and legs, that would be very stranger than finding alien life itself, or life on earth come from the same origin.

outworlder 7y ago
Not entirely. Legs have independently evolved multiple times on Earth, as have heads (or things that are similar to heads). It pays to have a lot of sensory organs on an appendage that can articulate – said sensory organs being close to the brain is also an advantage, assuming you have one single central brain. And 'legs' are good way to achieve locomotion over uneven terrain. Even on Earth that was done using different mechanisms: we use muscles attached to tendons, spiders use hydraulics. Even though an alien lifeform could conceivably have a 'head' and have 'legs', they would probably look nothing like what we have here. For a good story about how some alien lifeform would look like, I would recomend reading Blindsight: https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm The author uses some of his marine biology background to design the lifeforms. I think he does a pretty good job at trying to identify mechanisms which would hold true anywhere, but also making the result completely alien.

briga 7y ago

"When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere." I'd be willing to believe that there is fossilized life on Mars, maybe even complex arthopod-type life, but saying that there is still life flying around on Mars is a pretty extraordinary claim. Is there a paper or any more information around here? Outside of the two pictures in the articles I can't find anything.

ilaksh 7y ago

What an amazing find! In case you aren't aware, there are also giant human-like life forms living in the clouds on Earth. This has already been widely reported though.