8 Things You Need To Know About NASA Finding Water On Mars
1. Can We Just Throw Everything In A Freezer And See If It Grows?
This was another gem from the press conference and really the crux of where the point has been spectacularly missed by some.
In the search for life on Mars, why even bother going up there? We could just simulate Mars-like conditions here on Earth (in a big freezer or something) and see if anything grows, great idea!
Well no, one of the reasons why the announcement is so exciting is that the discovery of these liquid flows is a proof of concept for the NASA scientists, because we don't really know what the surface of Mars is like. Certainly not enough to accurately reproduce it here on Earth.
The discovery of what those RSL really are means that we have one more jigsaw piece in our puzzle of the universe.
We're not really trying to find out whether stuff can grow in a refrigerator here on Earth anyway (as they said, we know that it can, you should see the back of my refrigerator), we're trying to find out what the rest of our solar system, galaxy and ultimately the wider universe looks like.
We're trying to find life, not particularly so that we can gain some new, little green friends, but in order to establish how common it is throughout the universe. If we were to find that life has formed on two of the eight planets in the solar system then that's a pretty good ratio - for a start, it essentially doubles the number of planets we know can do it.
If something goes from unique to not unique, it becomes infinitely more likely...that's if it's not just something to do with our own solar system.
Anyway, the real take away from all of this is that a NASA scientist pronounces "Gif" as "Jif" - perhaps this is the debate settled once and for all?