Apr 30
NASA Refutes Claims of Life on Mars
Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
NASA is strongly refuting claims circulating in the intertubes that it has just discovered life on Mars.
On Wednesday, the U.K.’s “The Sun” newspaper ran an article entitled, “NASA: Evidence of Life on Mars,” saying that the agency had discovered “compelling evidence” for organisms, Space.com reports.
NASA officials and veteran Mars scientists alike are all saying that it’s not true. “This headline is extremely misleading,” said Dwayne Brown, a NASA spokesperson, in the report. “This makes it sound like we announced that we found life on Mars, and that is absolutely, positively false.”
The piece reported that the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity discovered pond scum, which the paper said contains “the building blocks of life as we know it.” But Steve Squyres, the mission’s principal investigator, disputed the claim. “I can only assume that the Sun reporter misunderstood,” Squyres said in the report. “What Spirit and Opportunity have found is sulfate minerals… not organic materials, not pond scum, and not the building blocks of life as we know it.”
Back in 1996, NASA did announce that they found evidence of life on Mars on a Martian rock, but over the course of the following decade, many scientists found non-living explanations for the rock’s various markings, as the report points out. (Image credit: NASA)
