Mars Rover 'Curiosity' Team Reportedly Will Reveal Major Discovery In December

When the discovery was "Earth Shattering", another ATSer (he/she should get the credit) suggested that they had found limestone. This seems to fit the bill in so many ways:
- It is a shiny rock, it may have been one of the shiny rocks that they scooped up
- It is a simple calcium carbon compound - the analyser would be able to work out the proportion of each element quite easily.
- [Here comes the bombshell] On earth it is created from mollusc shells and hence is a sign of previous abundant life.

Other than finding life directly, this would be a phenomenal find. Here's hoping.

You know with so much negative news & bad things happening in the world any discovery is welcome in my book no matter how small.
It might nothing but there is always that little piece of me that thinks it could be pretty good,this is why i still hang around ATS,something good & positve to talk about.

As to what it is ?? it could be anything to be honest..looking forward to the reveal in december

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
reply to post by TrueBrit

 

Yes. John Grotzinger is a human being, not an emotionless robot, and it is quite possible that he got a little overly excited when he was talking to the NPR reporter than he should have been.

When talking about big discoveries, it is important that these big discoveries are confirmed, double-checked-and reconfirmed prior to make a public announcement, and John Grotzinger (being human) perhaps got a little giddy and he spilled the beans a bit too early, going outside NASA's organizational "check valves".

I neglected to add to my previous post (above) one important caveat:
Things that may make a NASA scientist "giddy and excited" may not seem that exciting to others.

The Space.com website now has a short video presentation by Dr. Grotzinger, explaining a little about the new discovery with Curiosity. In it he reports that some material was found in the soil sample, which was not minerals, but which appeared amorphous under x-ray examination. Soil on Earth, we know, is made up of minerals, organic matter, water, air, and living creatures. Of these substances, organic matter and living creatures are complex enough to appear amorphous in X-rays. I tried repeatedly to link to this video without success. Suggest than anyone interested visit the site to view it.

reply to post by Ross 54



getting a 404 with that link.

Yes, I know. Sorry. I double checked the link address. It was correct, but does not work, so I removed it. One can see the video at space.com. Click on the video icon at the top of its page. This will take you directly to the Mars video.

Originally posted by Ross 54
Yes, I know. Sorry. I double checked the link address. It was correct, but does not work, so I removed it. One can see the video at space.com. Click on the video icon at the top of its page. This will take you directly to the Mars video.

The Space.com video is also on Youtube:

Dr. John Grotzinger - What did Curiosity find on Mars?

Nice thought. Just to say on Earth limestone is usually formed from marine organisms but some varieties form just by precipitation from the solution of calcite or aragonite, such as travertine
en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

Which you would think makes it more likely that there might be limestone on Mars, but harder to tell if it is organic or not, they would need to look at the isotope ratio perhaps.

reply to post by templar knight

reply to post by robertinventor


Also - you got me thinking - I tend to think that life on Mars can't have advanced to multi-cellular life because surely by now one of the rovers would have found a fossil.

But - what if the life was multi-cellular but soft bodied like the creatures that left their imprint in the Burgess shales? They would be much harder to spot and there might be just one or two places on Mars where conditions are favourable to preserve the remains of early multi-cellular soft bodied life forms - and they also might still survive to this day if they are that hard to spot maybe survive underground.

Though - to have any multi-cellular life on Mars it must have evolved far more quickly than on Earth - either that or was able to keep evolving during periods when there was much less water on Mars than on Earth. I wonder whether having a huge global ocean - you assume that helps with evolution to have many more organisms to experiment with evolutionary steps - but maybe - with Mars at a similar date - you had many sometimes temporary and isolated small regions suitable for life, might that also be good for evolution to progress rapidly?? Maybe it continued at a similar pace through the Hesperian and even well into the Amazonian maybe still evolving underground in small suitable habitats??

Looking at the positive side in favour of multi-cellular life. I get the impression most scientists would be astonished to find multi-cellular life on Mars, especially if it evolved there from scratch, just because it took so long for it to evolve on Earth as far as we know, billions of years, and all the oceans and larger bodies of water on Mars were gone completely within 1.5 billion years - but even that - with only one example for comparision- who knows, maybe it just evolved three or four times more quickly on Mars for some reason, we know so little about how easy or hard it is for life to evolve

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People

I neglected to add to my previous post (above) one important caveat:
Things that may make a NASA scientist "giddy and excited" may not seem that exciting to others.

true. But NASA has a really good PR team that makes sure that what they report is considered "cool" to everyone not directly involved with NASA. As with anything in science (and this is not a insult) if I can explain it to my five year old (he's a pretty smart kid with an active imagination), I can explain a science fact to anyone.

Originally posted by PrplHrt
reply to post by PhoenixOD

 

"We found mud."

NASA always fans the flames and makes a big deal out of the announcement and then it's something absolutely insignificant.

NASA doesn't do that, alarmist journalists do and scientists have to dig deep to make whatever they found sound "cool" to the uninitiated--hire Hollywood 3D artists and scour up a Hans Zimmer soundtrack to follow.

Why beat around the bush? I guess this is part of the process. Mars had life at one point and now they're just trying to reverse-engineer a belief we've long held about Mars. Our scientists are fascinated as hell about studying the possibility of life on Mars because they're mostly certain of it--just have to find the right combination.

This is purely conjecture obviously but I'm certain that Mars not only had life but was populated and no, that's not wishful thinking. Some things you just know and short of evidence can't explain how I know.

The waiting is the hard part.

reply to post by nv4711


Heh its funny seeing that video and hearing that they clean out the scoop by rattling around a few scoops and then just dumping them out...

Wonder what gets scooped up and thrown away in the cleaning scoops

I mean what if scoop 1 for cleaning had something in it that was monumental but just gets tossed aside, do they inspect whats been scooped up before giving the scoop a good shake. I mean sure the chances of them scooping up something just under the soil in just that one spot and then tossing it away is remote without finding more of it in the other scoops, but you never know... maybe they found something but just threw it away without even realizing...

Originally posted by PrplHrt
reply to post by PhoenixOD

 

"We found mud."

NASA always fans the flames and makes a big deal out of the announcement and then it's something absolutely insignificant.

First of all "Absolutely Insignificant" is a relative term. Something that is highly significant to a scientist who makes his living studying planets and space may seem like nothing to you -- but it still may be highly significant to science.

Secondly, NASA hold new conferences at regular intervals to discuss their latest scientific findings, but the RARELY ever mention the details prior to the news conference. It is the PEOPLE that get alarmist.

It happens almost every time NASA schedules one of the re regular news conference -- i.e., some of the people here on ATS start wildly speculating about what it could be -- alien contact, Nibiru, huge asteroid impact...
...However, it ends up being something mildly interesting, like the time they found the planet that orbits a double-star system -- which is scientifically significant, but most common people don't care about such things.

Why not sampling were there is tons of mystery in key martian areas ?
reply to post by PhoenixOD


oi48.tinypic.com...

Originally posted by thetiler
Why not sampling were there is tons of mystery in key martian areas

?
reply to post by PhoenixOD

 

oi48.tinypic.com...

The area the rover is investigating IS a key martian area.

NASA knows Gale Crater was once a watery place. They knew this ahead of time because orbital analysis showed an abundance of clays in the soil -- and clay only forms in watery environments. There is a good chance that the entire Gale crater was once a huge lake. That's the main reason for picking Gale Crater as the landing site for Curiosity.

NASA also thinks that Mt. Sharp (the name given to the high area in the crater) was formed from layers of sediment that were laid down by that water. there are plenty of accessible canyons in which the rover can go and investigate the layers of strata that make up Mt. Sharp -- strata that was put there while it was under water.

I think it is damn exciting to think they can study these sedimentary layers.

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People

Originally posted by thetiler
Why not sampling were there is tons of mystery in key martian areas

?
reply to post by PhoenixOD

 

oi48.tinypic.com...

The area the rover is investigating IS a key martian area.

NASA knows Gale Crater was once a watery place. They knew this ahead of time because orbital analysis showed an abundance of clays in the soil -- and clay only forms in watery environments. There is a good chance that the entire Gale crater was once a huge lake. That's the main reason for picking Gale Crater as the landing site for Curiosity.

NASA also thinks that Mt. Sharp (the name given to the high area in the crater) was formed from layers of sediment that were laid down by that water. there are plenty of accessible canyons in which the rover can go and investigate the layers of strata that make up Mt. Sharp -- strata that was put there while it was under water.

I think it is damn exciting to think they can study these sedimentary layers.

I am just trying to learn how to post an image (my first one in full view . Of course I have an intense interest with things that are mysterious, but I am just not that enthused about scoping out desert rocks and soil when you have anomalies that are the most incredible images in the history of mankind. Again, it is not to say that scientist don't have the right to learn but not at the expense of images that have been revealed by Malin that are of earthshaking importance. So important in fact that images of the tubes, the bio sprayer - gadgets by the tons and nothing to very little is done to bring that out -HELLO !

No surprise really. It seems the entire project was done to reveal "life" on Mars. It would come as no surprise. In the meantime, where is Andrew Basiago and all of his claims about life of Mars etc?

Just as a shameless plug also, we did a podcast covering the possibility of life on Mars from the Biblical Christian view. Ya'll can check it out here: www.canarycryradio.com... iracy-and-bible-curiosity/

Originally posted by FaceLikeTheSun
No surprise really. It seems the entire project was done to reveal "life" on Mars. It would come as no surprise. In the meantime, where is Andrew Basiago and all of his claims about life of Mars etc?

Just as a shameless plug also, we did a podcast covering the possibility of life on Mars from the Biblical Christian view. Ya'll can check it out here: www.canarycryradio.com... iracy-and-bible-curiosity/ [/quote
There seems to be every effort to try to make light on questionable people and put an evil slant or taint people and it goes on and on. But there is something that is just too obvious to ignore. Artifact photos should never be swept under the rug when there is so much evidence that is authentic and valid.

I love looking at artifacts of mars that seem true in every way. I just hope more people realize that people realize that you don't HAVE to look it learning and interest the way the scientist do. Because there is such a thing as painters, musicians, poets etc. that can see (and have the right to see) in a different slant. That is what makes the world go round. Different strokes for different folks