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It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 11:33:37 AM   
homersimpson_esq


Posts: 19969
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: Springfield
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19144464

Is there life on Mars?

Can't believe this has gone under the radar, mainly because of the Olympics!

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RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 12:46:19 PM   
Chief


Posts: 7012
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: The Kingdom, Scotland

(in reply to homersimpson_esq)
Post #: 2
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 1:38:05 PM   
jonson


Posts: 8069
Joined: 30/9/2005

quote:

ORIGINAL: homersimpson_esq


Is there life on Mars?



No.
I could have saved billions of pounds answering that question. Beardy fuckers.

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RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 1:43:20 PM   
UTB


Posts: 8977
Joined: 30/9/2005
Total Recall publicity stunt!


*tinfoil hats it*

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Post #: 4
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 1:47:27 PM   
boaby

 

Posts: 2788
Joined: 29/12/2006
From: Aberdeenshire
 Doesn't have the romance of Mercury, Gemini or Apollo. Less cynicism and political jiggerypokery too.

Nothing heroic about wee robots.

Is there life on Mars. No. Was there life on Mars, well, we dunno yet do we? Interesting to know.

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Post #: 5
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 4:00:43 PM   
emogeek


Posts: 21724
Joined: 15/4/2006
From: Satan's Trampoline
 The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

Or so they say....

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RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 4:20:52 PM   
sharkboy


Posts: 6031
Joined: 26/9/2005
From: Belfast
quote:

ORIGINAL: Chief






quote:

  Nothing heroic about wee robots.


Take it you've never seen Wall-E then?   And while there may not be anything "heroic" in the robot itself, there is plenty to admire in the brains of the people who designed it, programmed it, built it, managed to get it across a couple of hundred million miles of empty space, then landed it perfectly from a hovering sky crane!  There's more to heroics than just being "spam in a can" as the Mercury guys used to describe themselves.

Is there life out there?  Well, there used to be a climate and water, so it's not unfeasible.  And now we've got a few years of data from Curiosity to look forward to, we'll be better placed to answer the big question.  I, for one, can't wait.

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Post #: 7
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 5:49:27 PM   
boaby

 

Posts: 2788
Joined: 29/12/2006
From: Aberdeenshire
quote:

ORIGINAL: sharkboy

Take it you've never seen Wall-E then?   And while there may not be anything "heroic" in the robot itself, there is plenty to admire in the brains of the people who designed it, programmed it, built it, managed to get it across a couple of hundred million miles of empty space, then landed it perfectly from a hovering sky crane!  There's more to heroics than just being "spam in a can" as the Mercury guys used to describe themselves.


The lads and lassies in the control rooms don't die if things go tits up though. All very clever and impressive mind.

Was it the Mercury lads who called themselves "spam in a can?" I thought it was the Gemini bunch - who actually did stuff in and out of the can - who dubbed them spam.

quote:

Is there life out there?  Well, there used to be a climate and water, so it's not unfeasible.  And now we've got a few years of data from Curiosity to look forward to, we'll be better placed to answer the big question.  I, for one, can't wait.


Oh yeah. I'm very interested. But once they put an astronaut or two en route to Mars then I'll be well and truly obsessively hooked.


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Post #: 8
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 6:24:35 PM   
Hood_Man


Posts: 11277
Joined: 30/9/2005
Favourite bit:


quote:

The rover's Twitter feed announced: "I'm safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!!"


Almost worth shouting out during sex just to see the reaction.

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Post #: 9
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 6:35:47 PM   
homersimpson_esq


Posts: 19969
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: Springfield
 But only if you were having sex with Mr & Mrs Crater's daughter, Gale.

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Post #: 10
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 6:53:17 PM   
Hood_Man


Posts: 11277
Joined: 30/9/2005
So it's the over the top enthusiasm, AND yelling out the wrong name?

Dayyym...

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Post #: 11
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 7:13:54 PM   
boaby

 

Posts: 2788
Joined: 29/12/2006
From: Aberdeenshire
quote:

ORIGINAL: Hood_Man

So it's the over the top enthusiasm, AND yelling out the wrong name?

Dayyym...


Dayyym?

Dayyym... ... Jessica Ennis!

Dayyyum.




_____________________________

"Aberdonians, and with some degree of purpose and right on their side, have absolute contempt for Glasgow. There is a side of Aberdonians who, let's be absolutely honest about this, feel so superior to Glasgow that you can measure it by the yard."

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Post #: 12
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 9:54:11 PM   
Lucky Day


Posts: 851
Joined: 7/3/2012
From: Dundee
 Before I get shot down, I fully admit I'm not the brightest when it comes to this stuff.......

But, see when scientists go on about how the presence of water is a main indicator that a planet can or could have supported life, surely that is only relative to our (human beings) understanding and experiences? Is it not arrogant to assume that other life forms on other planets would have to have evolved in line with life on this planet? And is it not conceivable that alien life forms could possibly survive in entirely different ways to any life on this planet? In ways that we couldn't possibly imagine or comprehend?

Thus the presence of water ultimately, could mean nothing?

Or maybe I am way off the mark? I genuinly always wondered about that.

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Post #: 13
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 10:36:08 PM   
BigKovacs


Posts: 3143
Joined: 6/4/2006
From: Textile Street.
 Yeah it may not mean anything but we'd only know that by actually going there and looking.

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RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 11:23:09 PM   
Darth Marenghi


Posts: 2948
Joined: 10/10/2010
From: Manchester
quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucky Day

Before I get shot down, I fully admit I'm not the brightest when it comes to this stuff.......

But, see when scientists go on about how the presence of water is a main indicator that a planet can or could have supported life, surely that is only relative to our (human beings) understanding and experiences? Is it not arrogant to assume that other life forms on other planets would have to have evolved in line with life on this planet? And is it not conceivable that alien life forms could possibly survive in entirely different ways to any life on this planet? In ways that we couldn't possibly imagine or comprehend?

Thus the presence of water ultimately, could mean nothing?

Or maybe I am way off the mark? I genuinly always wondered about that.


From my admittedly hazy memories of school Chemistry, water has certain unique properties that make it conducive for carbon-based life to to have come about - as happened on this planet. And certainly it may be possible for life on other worlds to be silicon-based (I think silicon is the nearest element similar to carbon in this context), it makes more sense to look for the more common elements first. It's not the only indicator, and as you say the presence of water could easily mean nothing, but it's always a good place to start.



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RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 11:28:51 PM   
OPEN YOUR EYES


Posts: 3468
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From: Living on Lynch's quiff
 "And if anyone has been harbouring doubts about the status of US leadership in space, well there's a one tonne automobile-sized piece of American ingenuity sitting on the surface of the Red Planet right now."

'shudders'

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RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 6/8/2012 11:30:51 PM   
Shifty Bench


Posts: 14570
Joined: 30/9/2005

quote:

ORIGINAL: BigKovacs

Yeah it may not mean anything but we'd only know that by actually going there and looking.

Yeah, what it means is we can actually do it. Regardless of whether we find anything or not, we sent a spacecraft and a motorised rover onto the surface of Mars.

It's the equivalent of a someone in a moving car shooting something in another moving car but with the bullet slowing down and a smaller bullet dropping off onto the second car. It's not easy to do......


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quote:

ORIGINAL: matty_b
You have a nice face, Shifty. A face I would have a cup of tea with.


quote:

ORIGINAL: porntrooper
Shifty said it best


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Post #: 17
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 7/8/2012 9:23:28 AM   
sharkboy


Posts: 6031
Joined: 26/9/2005
From: Belfast
quote:

ORIGINAL: boaby


quote:

ORIGINAL: sharkboy

Take it you've never seen Wall-E then?   And while there may not be anything "heroic" in the robot itself, there is plenty to admire in the brains of the people who designed it, programmed it, built it, managed to get it across a couple of hundred million miles of empty space, then landed it perfectly from a hovering sky crane!  There's more to heroics than just being "spam in a can" as the Mercury guys used to describe themselves.


The lads and lassies in the control rooms don't die if things go tits up though. All very clever and impressive mind.


They die inside, Boaby, they die inside

quote:

Was it the Mercury lads who called themselves "spam in a can?" I thought it was the Gemini bunch - who actually did stuff in and out of the can - who dubbed them spam.


Admittedly my recollection is based on the brilliant The Right Stuff, but in that it was definitely the Mercury guys who coined the phrase.  I'll concede that that could have been artistic license, but I'm sure I remember the phrase in Tom Wolfe's book as well.

quote:

quote:

Is there life out there?  Well, there used to be a climate and water, so it's not unfeasible.  And now we've got a few years of data from Curiosity to look forward to, we'll be better placed to answer the big question.  I, for one, can't wait.


Oh yeah. I'm very interested. But once they put an astronaut or two en route to Mars then I'll be well and truly obsessively hooked.



Hell yeah.  I've often wondered what might have happened had NASA coninued with the Mars programme post-Viking instead of concentrating on the Shuttle - might we have seen human footprints on the surface of the Red Planet already?

Lucky, my (admittedly limited) understanding of the need for water is that it acts as the base of the primordial soup of amino acids that eventually formed the most basic organic molecules which eventually led to more complex structures. Admittedly this presupposes that any life would be carbon-based but as that is the most likely building blocks, it's not exactly a bad presumption

< Message edited by sharkboy -- 7/8/2012 9:27:35 AM >

_____________________________

WWLD?

Every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless

I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.

(in reply to boaby)
Post #: 18
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 7/8/2012 8:21:49 PM   
Lucky Day


Posts: 851
Joined: 7/3/2012
From: Dundee
 Thanks very much chaps. I never paid that much attention at school (to my detriment), also it makes perfect sense. When searching for life in the vastness of space, of course you would seek to narrow that search down, I suppose water is a big enough thing to be searching for too (relatively speaking) I never thought of it like that before.

It is pretty damn cool though. That robot is rolling about Mars as I type this. It is up there right now just doing it's thing. Kind of amazing when you stop to think about it.

This thread has made me stop and also think. Thats a good thing

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Post #: 19
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 8/8/2012 12:24:11 AM   
Saltire


Posts: 1831
Joined: 5/7/2011
From: Dundee
 I'm just so underwhelmed by our attention to Mars, I'd rather we went back to the hell-hole that is Venus, or try for a probe on Europa, Ganymede or the cool-as-fuck Io; or even going back to Titan and have a run around in that methane rain.

(in reply to Lucky Day)
Post #: 20
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 8/8/2012 12:45:04 AM   
SWOTBM


Posts: 1955
Joined: 6/5/2007
I know it's a long shot, but if we do find evidence of life on Mars (I'm talking about bacteria or something along those lines, not little green men) what impact that will have? I would be most interested to see the response from religious organisations. Hopefully it will spur further investment in space exploration (not the religious reaction btw, the discovery of life)

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RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 8/8/2012 8:32:37 AM   
Lucky Day


Posts: 851
Joined: 7/3/2012
From: Dundee
quote:

ORIGINAL: SWOTBM

I know it's a long shot, but if we do find evidence of life on Mars (I'm talking about bacteria or something along those lines, not little green men) what impact that will have? I would be most interested to see the response from religious organisations. Hopefully it will spur further investment in space exploration (not the religious reaction btw, the discovery of life)


Much like Dinosaurs, they would find a way of making it fit I would imagine.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/1999/11/05/dinosaurs-and-the-bible

quote:

Because of this wickedness, God warned a godly man named Noah that He was going to destroy the world with a Flood (Genesis 6:13). God therefore commanded him to build a great ship (the Ark) so that all the kinds of land animals (which must have included dinosaurs) and Noah’s family could survive on board while the Flood destroyed the entire Earth (Genesis 6:14–20).

Some people think that dinosaurs were too big, or there were too many of them, to go on this Ark. However, there were not very many different kinds of dinosaurs. There are certainly hundreds of dinosaur names, but many of these were given to just a bit of bone or skeletons of the same dinosaur found in other countries. It is also reasonable to assume that different sizes, varieties, and sexes of the same kind of dinosaur have ended up with different names. For example, look at the many different varieties and sizes of dogs, but they are all the same kind—the dog kind! In reality, there may have been fewer than 50 kinds of dinosaurs.





< Message edited by Lucky Day -- 8/8/2012 9:07:05 AM >

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RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 8/8/2012 1:22:51 PM   
Chief


Posts: 7012
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: The Kingdom, Scotland
 What if life on Mars is thriving but it's just invisible to our primitive sight?

(in reply to homersimpson_esq)
Post #: 23
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 8/8/2012 4:25:03 PM   
superdan


Posts: 7228
Joined: 31/7/2008

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucky Day

Much like Dinosaurs, they would find a way of making it fit I would imagine.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/1999/11/05/dinosaurs-and-the-bible

quote:

Because of this wickedness, God warned a godly man named Noah that He was going to destroy the world with a Flood (Genesis 6:13). God therefore commanded him to build a great ship (the Ark) so that all the kinds of land animals (which must have included dinosaurs) and Noah’s family could survive on board while the Flood destroyed the entire Earth (Genesis 6:14–20).

Some people think that dinosaurs were too big, or there were too many of them, to go on this Ark. However, there were not very many different kinds of dinosaurs. There are certainly hundreds of dinosaur names, but many of these were given to just a bit of bone or skeletons of the same dinosaur found in other countries. It is also reasonable to assume that different sizes, varieties, and sexes of the same kind of dinosaur have ended up with different names. For example, look at the many different varieties and sizes of dogs, but they are all the same kind—the dog kind! In reality, there may have been fewer than 50 kinds of dinosaurs.








There's so many things wrong with that quote that I don't even know where to begin.

(in reply to Lucky Day)
Post #: 24
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 8/8/2012 4:54:20 PM   
Chief


Posts: 7012
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: The Kingdom, Scotland
quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucky Day

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/1999/11/05/dinosaurs-and-the-bible



That link is brilliantly mental.

(in reply to Lucky Day)
Post #: 25
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 8/8/2012 8:39:29 PM   
Lucky Day


Posts: 851
Joined: 7/3/2012
From: Dundee
quote:

ORIGINAL: Chief


quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucky Day

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/1999/11/05/dinosaurs-and-the-bible



That link is brilliantly mental.


quote:

there are no real mysteries at all, once you have key information that is not generally known and is withheld from the public






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Post #: 26
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 8/8/2012 8:57:11 PM   
kumar


Posts: 5080
Joined: 2/10/2005

quote:

ORIGINAL: SWOTBM

I know it's a long shot, but if we do find evidence of life on Mars (I'm talking about bacteria or something along those lines, not little green men) what impact that will have? I would be most interested to see the response from religious organisations. Hopefully it will spur further investment in space exploration (not the religious reaction btw, the discovery of life)


What could the dangers be if they bring it back? If natasha henstridge is a consequence then im all for it.


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Post #: 27
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 8/8/2012 9:43:03 PM   
Hood_Man


Posts: 11277
Joined: 30/9/2005

quote:

ORIGINAL: boaby


quote:

ORIGINAL: Hood_Man

So it's the over the top enthusiasm, AND yelling out the wrong name?

Dayyym...


Dayyym?

Dayyym... ... Jessica Ennis!

Dayyyum.




*takes notes*


*pretends not to look bothered*

(in reply to boaby)
Post #: 28
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 13/8/2012 1:22:20 PM   
Phubbs


Posts: 660
Joined: 3/4/2012
Looks like Earth, like we could live there right now!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2187416/Nasas-Curiosity-Rover-undergoes-brain-transplant-taking-stunning-panorama-pictures-Red-Planet.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

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Post #: 29
RE: It's a god-awful small affair - 13/8/2012 1:29:38 PM   
MonsterCat


Posts: 6220
Joined: 24/3/2011
From: St. Albans, Hertfordshire
quote:

ORIGINAL: Phubbs

Looks like Earth, like we could live there right now!





Think it might take a little more work before we can live there, sir.

Those pictures are absolutely stunning. I get chills just from looking at them.


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Post #: 30
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