So what ever happened to that big find on Mars?

[Pony Soldier]

Remember a couple of months ago they announced that Curiosity discovered something big and would be announced on the first week of December? Whatever happened to that announcement, does anyone know? I haven't even heard anything about it, not a thing. It was apparently so big of a find that they said "This data is gonna be one for the history books" and "It's looking really good." So if it was that good why haven't we heard about it? Did it end up just being nothing worth announcing or something?

Call me a "tinfoil hat" person but it just seems kind of suspicious to announce a big find on Mars and say that they will reveal it soon and then when the time comes they don't say anything about it. Was it "too big" of a find to announce??

[Reg]

Verifying data? *shrug*

[Reeve]

They did announce it. They said they'd found organic materials on Mars, but not life, and that it was possible that the materials were contaminated by organic molecules from the rover itself. In other words, they may have found the building blocks of life on Mars, or they may not have.

[Pony Soldier]

They did announce it. They said they'd found organic materials on Mars, but not life, and that it was possible that the materials were contaminated by organic molecules from the rover itself. In other words, they may have found the building blocks of life on Mars, or they may not have.

Oh ok that's cool did they have a news article somewhere or something? I've never seen anything about it.

[Reeve]

Oh ok that's cool did they have a news article somewhere or something? I've never seen anything about it.

Yeah they had a press conference like a month ago or something.

[someotherguy]

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/201...very-revealed/

seems like they found nothing of consequence to your average Joe

On Monday, Dr. Grotzinger said he was referring to the richness and quality of the data coming from Curiosity’s sophisticated instruments on the soil sample, not that it contained a major discovery. Dr. Grotzinger and other Curiosity scientists said their analysis did not provide definitive evidence for the building blocks of life as some had speculated.

We don't get to have a pet Martian just yet.

[Deleted]

apparently, scientists claim that there is a very high chance that Earth 2.0 will be the highlight of 2013.
Let us all hope we find a planet with dinosaurs.

[Deleted]

What happened was people who call themselves "reporters" (glorified bloggers sitting at home in their underwear "reporting" on "news") wrote on some sites (*cough* huffpo *cough*) that there would be some huge news incoming, after having read an interview with one of the NASA scientists, and misunderstood what he said.

Fact checking? What's that?

[Deleted]

Shame, would be nice to have some really good news for a change, it has been doom and gloom for the most part this year.

[Daerio]

The problem is, if we DO find anything in this solar system relating to life - it won't be alien. With the amount of transference of materials between planets in our solar system (it happens all the time) it would be a MUCH bigger surprise if we did find something in this solar system that wasn't related to us. If we did find bacteria of some sort on Mars, or wherever else... no big deal. It might be a little surprising to see how it evolved differently if it was over a vast amount of time, but it wouldn't be alien in origin.

The search for alien life has to be outside of our solar system.