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I'm a fan of all the missions so far, but when I hear that none of the rovers have been "properly equipped to find microscopic life", I fear that some of the mi
by gojomo 14y ago
I'm a fan of all the missions so far, but when I hear that none of the rovers have been "properly equipped to find microscopic life", I fear that some of the mission planning may be trying to "preserve the mystery", trickling out plot revelations to keep the viewers/funders hooked.
Couldn't Curiousity have had some agar plates and just dragged them through the dust, for subsequent observation over weeks? (Even if any organisms detected were eventually suspected to be earth-originated contaminants, their growth details would be new info, right?)
- Dylan16807 14y agoThe problem with relying on that method is that finding life on mars could be like finding life at geothermal vents; deep down in hard-to-reach volcanic pockets. If you don't poke around some of those areas before bringing masses of earth contaminants to the surface, you could easily screw up future searching.
- gojomo 14y agoThis makes no sense to me. You can't just test the soils and easy-to-reach places for microorganisms until you can also test the deep places? And how do easy surface tests contaminate things any more than all the earth-originated equipment we've already dropped there?
- Dylan16807 14y agoSurface tests are perfectly fine, but they're not enough. prawks was talking about how we're wary of introducing Earth organisms to the planet. We should keep that attitude until we've done proper searching for life all over, not just the easiest tests.