Curiosity has discovered something on Mars

[Powerogue]

going to go with liquid water, or maybe even some naturally occuring amino acids, though that could be stretching it. We shall see.

[IdTheDemon]

All it takes is one fossil, hell one strain of dna.....and the world goes mad.

[AeneasBK]

Well this would all coincide nicely with the mass awakening of human conciousness thats due soon... 21/12 or something....

[wdmshmo]

If we discover life on another planet, perhaps we will again be a world of explorers rather than a world focused on greed and domination.

[muto]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Francium

[warex00]

I'm going to guess it is something related to water. I highly doubt it's related to life.

Water is related to life lol

[Gothicshark]

The other half of the Mayan calender that goes all the way up to 3012?

Umm the myan calander goes up a lot higher than the people realize, we are at the end of the first pictun, which has a count of twenty. This is not the highest count either, the alautun which counts to 20 has a count of 63,081,429 years which means the Mayan calendar is good until 1,261,628,580ce +- 10k years, I seriously doubt any human will be around when it runs out.

[Diurdi]

Prothean Tech?

[Gothicshark]

All it takes is one fossil, hell one strain of dna.....and the world goes mad.

The device used possibly detected DNA. Which will not cause the world to go batty, because the possibility that bacterium has passed between the Earth and Mars has already been presented.

[ati87]

All it takes is one fossil, hell one strain of dna.....and the world goes mad.

Rightly so.....

Space exploration has stagnated since the moon-loading because their isn't a clear objective.

If their was clear evidence that some planets had sustained any kind of life then governments would probably be more active in space related technology. And it may sound useless for normal people but eventually we the normal people will also benefit from investments in sci fi alike technology.

[iamthedevil]

If we discover life on another planet, perhaps we will again be a world of explorers rather than a world focused on greed and domination.

Oddly enough, everyone/everyplace in the past that was a world explorer was driven by greed and domination.

Hopefully this will get us back out there though!

[Belize]

OBVIOUSLY, they found a Mass Effect ring

[Hyve]

Here's a number of possibilities I considered:
- Gems, powder or other earthly "precious"
- Water, oil or traces of other liquids
- Any kind of product that could be used as fuel
- Fossils or any kind (hence the "history" reference)

All four of these hopped into my mind. Expecting one of these.

[Geminiwolf]

This has been a mainstay plot device in sci-fi movie scripts going back to the 1950s but it's not how things work in reality. Think about it: the organizational structure of NASA missions like Curiosity is comprised of various teams of scientists, from the individual instruments themselves to the project as a whole. All the mission details and findings are shared throughout the teams with the principal investigator in the lead, keeping the project manager up to speed, and so on down the line to the Science Operations Working Group.

It's not like when they discover something new that they have to go outside the agency to Congress and the White House asking "Hey guys, is it okay if we share these results with the public?" and then wait for a thumbs-up or otherwise. Communicating their results with other scientists and the public is an existing part of their job responsibilities, for which they already have approval. These guys are all tied in to educational institutions and laboratories in addition to whatever capacity they hold as NASA employees. There is no way you could keep entire teams of excited scientists, engineers, and academics quiet about anything.

Additionally, NASA as a whole has an existing obligation to share its information. That's why such huge quantities of documents, pictures and data are available to scientists and the public. NASA would get in serious trouble for hiding anything, and it's not like they'd want to anyway. A truly earth-shattering discovery like the existence of microbial life on Mars would guarantee significant increases in funding for science operations and likely future human exploration.

Seriously, it's time to leave the conspiracy angle in cheesy science fiction movies where it belongs.

So you're saying that if we did find evidence of intelligent life, they would just come out and say "hey guys that stuff we found, it was intelligent life forms and they're here on Mars!" You think the government would be ok with that letting NASA tell the whole world that there are intelligent life forms other than us? I don't think so. Every religion that people believe in would change and the super over religious nut jobs would go insane starting riots and all sorts of chaos. So to prevent this sort of stuff the government covers it up and says to NASA "No you can't release this information, what you will say is that it was a new type of element that could possibly be a future source of energy or fuel." Then after that they will cover the shit out of it and will be known as just a possible future energy source or fuel.

You don't even know what the government is doing. For all we know they may really be working with aliens with laser guns and spaceships and we don't even have a clue that that's going on while were just going on with our lives. All the government cares about is that us sheep continue being sheep and go on with our lives not worrying about what's in space. To say that there are intelligent life forms on Mars would get people to start thinking for themselves and the government doesn't want that, they want to keep those fences closed so that us sheep can stay within the shepherd's eye sight.

[Lizbeth]

It's probably a meteor from Earth or Obama shaped sand dune or some such.. never get your hopes up for these things, you will be disappoint (ed).

[poser765]

Water is related to life lol

Not really. While most think water is a requirement for complex life it doesn't mean that the reverse is true...ie there has to be life present for there to be water.

[bufferunderrun]

here a news

http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/news/en...e-on-Mars.html

[Sayl]

So you're saying that if we did find evidence of intelligent life, they would just come out and say "hey guys that stuff we found, it was intelligent life forms and they're here on Mars!"

As has been the case for anything else discovered by NASA, yes. Despite your hypotheticals, I don't understand why you find the concept so foreign.

You think the government would be ok with that letting NASA tell the whole world that there are intelligent life forms other than us?

Yes, I do. Who said anything about intelligent life, anyway? We were discussing the possibility of life on Mars, and if any exists there it's almost assuredly in microbial form.

I don't think so. Every religion that people believe in would change and the super over religious nut jobs would go insane starting riots and all sorts of chaos.

Any field of study under NASA's scope inevitably involves topics and facts that are incompatible with various belief systems, religious or otherwise. Oddly enough, that's never once prevented NASA from announcing or releasing information to the public. I seriously doubt such an announcement would yield the chaos you seem to envision. If anything, I'd imagine the initial reactions would vary primarily between celebration and skepticism. Riots? Please.

So to prevent this sort of stuff the government covers it up and says to NASA "No you can't release this information, what you will say is that it was a new type of element that could possibly be a future source of energy or fuel." Then after that they will cover the shit out of it and will be known as just a possible future energy source or fuel.

"The government"... I'm sorry, but this sounds like the vaguest, most convenient catch-all for some sort of personal distrust. I don't think you realize how difficult it would be to conceal this sort of information from the public, especially given the numbers of scientists involved.

You don't even know what the government is doing. For all we know they may really be working with aliens with laser guns and spaceships and we don't even have a clue that that's going on while were just going on with our lives. All the government cares about is that us sheep continue being sheep and go on with our lives not worrying about what's in space.

I find this neither rational nor supported by a shred of evidence. Like I said, the types of things you're introducing here are straight out of movie scripts.

To say that there are intelligent life forms on Mars would get people to start thinking for themselves and the government doesn't want that, they want to keep those fences closed so that us sheep can stay within the shepherd's eye sight.

Then why even have government agencies like NASA in the first place (or NOAA, or a host of others)? You may not be aware of this, but agencies like NASA commit a significant amount of time and resources to public education and outreach. That's rather the opposite of this cover-up nonsense you're suggesting.

[Kazefiend]

Prothean Tech?

A dead reaper?

[Sayl]

The schedule has been set for Monday's press conference:

Mars Rover Curiosity’s Investigations in Gale Crater
Monday, 3 December
9:00 a.m.

NASA’s newest Mars rover, Curiosity, has been investigating past and modern environmental conditions in Mars’ equatorial Gale Crater since August. This briefing will offer findings from examining the composition and textures of targets touched by the rover’s robotic arm. Curiosity is the car-size rover of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. At the time of the AGU Fall Meeting, it will be four months into a two-year prime mission.

Participants:
Michael Meyer, Program Scientist for Mars Science Laboratory; NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., USA;
John Grotzinger, Project Scientist for Mars Science Laboratory; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA;
Paul Mahaffy, Principal Investigator for Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM); NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA;
Ralf Gellert, Principal Investigator for Curiosity’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer; University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada;
Ken Edgett, Principal Investigator for Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI); Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, California, USA.

That's 9 AM Pacific, so Noon EST (17:00 GMT). It'll be broadcast live online (here).