Civilians flooding NASA with Mars 'discoveries'

[Ediacara]

Civilians flooding NASA with Mars 'discoveries'

Faye Flam
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Mar. 8, 2004 12:00 AM

Forget about ancient traces of water on Mars. There's a little white bunny up there.

And stone tools.

And dinosaur fossils.

Plants, art, even letters of the alphabet.

While NASA scientists pore over the latest Red Planet images for shreds of evidence that it might have supported algae or pond scum, thousands of earnest civilians are scanning the same pictures and pointing out all sorts of things the professionals missed or have not acknowledged.

More at the Arizona Republic

[cprise]

1. HA!

Looks like those rovers are going to be running around like maniacs just double-checking some of these 'discoveries'.

:evilgrin:

[DarkPhenyx]

2. I just spewed Ramen all over my computer.

NASA scientists believe the "bunny" was probably a piece of the landing air bag or some other bit of human-generated trash, Christensen said. On one Web site, an outraged writer accused NASA of intentionally running over the bunny with the rover.

I hope this person was joking. If not they really need to be taken out of the gene pool.

[CaptainClark23]

3. Ssshhhhhhh....

We're hunting bunny wabbits....

[DarkPhenyx]

4. With the rover?!?

Dude! That thing dosen't move fast enough to run down a turtle!

[Dogmudgeon]

5. "They need to be taken out of the gene pool"

Do you mean to say that they should be killed? Or just sterilized?

I hope you're just flaunting your scientific hipness.

There's lots of strange things to be seen in pictures from Mars. The treatment they usually get from the Alpha Nerd contingent isn't exactly helpful.

Incidentally, the thing looked more like a germinating seed than a "bunny". Whatever it is, it's gone now.

--bkl

[DarkPhenyx]

7. Your pick. I'm easy.

I agree taht there are things to be seen which may require more explaination to the common man which we are not getting from the scientists. however...a bunny?

[Dogmudgeon]

11. A Bunny ...

... or a sprouting seed?

Here it is again:



The "consensus" among the Mars anomaly crowd is that it was some kind of plant (or maybe a fossil), not a "bunny". That epithet was adopted by NASA scientists who decided that amateurs have no right to offer hypotheses and receive cogent explanations. (This is why I no longer consider myself to be a "skeptic" -- mockery isn't education, empirical doubt, or a blow to defeat the barbarians besieging the gate of the citadel of reason.)

Incidentally, the rover actually did run over it, leaving a whitish splotch that argues against it being a piece of the probe or its airbag(s). It would have been interesting to get a closer look. And NASA has done this to at least one other interesting find after having received messages from anomalists.



These hypotheses include the possibility that there are trees or lichen beds on Mars (proposed by Arthur C. Clarke) to the most outlandish-sounding theories about the "Face" at Cydonia. The history of how NASA has dealt with the Face makes for interesting reading. No matter how wierd the beliefs of the pro-Face contingent have been (although there are several well-regarded scientists who have proposed that the Face may be artificial), NASA's spokespeople have usually managed to embarass only themselves.

My own personal theory is that about 99% of these anomalies are just interesting features of the Martian landscape. That leaves about 1% that are strange enough for a closer look.

But the clamor of the barabarians at the gate of NASA has led to a number of policies that are extremely promising. For one thing, they no longer sit on data in order to pre-screen it for the consumption of the proles. I hope that they will start to treat people they like to dismiss as "nuts" as sincere students of space science who may have an idea or two worth considering, in spite of any "laff riot" it may provoke around the Cape. Because if we really do discover multicellular life on Mars, the nuts are going to make the scoffers look mighty bad.

--bkl

[mobuto]

12. Really?

The "face" was photographed by the Mars Global Surveyor and it looks to be a completely natural rock formation. Oops.



Photograph taken April, 2001.

[Dogmudgeon]

16. Not quite

Terrain analysis -- using a number of well-validated models -- still shows it to be highly anomalous. An equivalent satellite photograph of the Earth would be analyzed as having a high likelihood of being artificial. But it should go without saying that Mars isn't the Earth.

Anomalous doesn't necessarily mean that the aliens built it -- just that it defies analysis based on existing models of how things get to be the way they are -- the geology, or in this case, areology.

Incidentally, the first version of that picture was released after first processing it through a high-pass filter, making it look unnaturally flat. That was the so-called "catbox" photograph that later backfired on NASA. It backfired because they trotted it out and had a good laugh at the expense of the "pseudoscientists", who easily saw through the ruse. Did NASA really fear that the Face was an alien artifact? Their behavior defied logic.

The real loss is that NASA has a long history of ignoring anomalies and anomalists out of a sense of institutional pride that they, and they alone, are fit to issue judgements on a still-poorly-understood planet. Many of these "alien artifacts" may, in fact, turn out to be just as interesting as they look, even if aliens didn't make them.

--bkl

[rman]

15. "public has no right to offer hypotheses and receive explanations"

That's right.
The public does have a right to offer hypotheses and they do have a right to be informed about science. But NASA scientists are under no obligation to offer explanations for other people's hypotheses.
"I have this wild theory, now you go and prove it". Right.

NASA has its own hypotheses to worry about. That takes a little while, and in due time most of the public's hypotheses will turn out to be either true or false.

[Dogmudgeon]

18. Rights and Wrongs

True, the public has no right to demand that NASA test every hypothesis they are sent.

The public DOES have the right to offer theories for consideration WITHOUT condescension or ridicule -- even if those theories are privately laughable. And they -- we -- have a right to demand that NASA deal with them seriously.

For one thing, nearly all of the work being done on these theories is conducted by private individuals who have staked their time and resources on ideas that, on the balance, will be disproven -- in the hope that their idea is one of the few that will be verified. NASA does owe such people respect in a public dialog. And NASA has improved greatly over the past couple of years, but it is still dismissive of anything originating outside of NASA, whether it comes from nuts, intelligent laypeople, non-NASA scientists or other space agencies. It's the "NIH" Syndrome: "Not Invented Here".

NASA is accountable to the people that give it money -- the citizens of the USA. The very fact that so many people are offering informed hypotheses is a positive development. NASA need not spend huge amounts of money fielding questions from all comers, but they should be responsive to public interest in space science beyond the usual science-fair public information.

We could be on the brink of several revolutions in science and philosophy. Finding verifiable living beings on Mars (I'm talking about monocells or small multicells here, not Little Green Men) would do the trick. A dismissive attitude isn't going to do anything except eventually make NASA look like the fools, not to mention jeopardize its public support.

--bkl

[mobuto]

19. Really?

Where in the Constitution does it say you have a right not to be ridiculed? Bunnies on Mars is just ridiculous.

[Zero Gravitas]

20. "bunnies"

no-one is seriously claiming that the object is a "bunny" its just a nickname for the object.

However NASA does not, IMO, need to check out any or all of the hypothesis sent in by the public. If they investigated every little thing that some random person thought up they'd never get anything meaningful accomplished.

[Dogmudgeon]

24. Ridicule by the Government?

Is that what you're implying? That the people we elect (and their subordinates), who we pay, and who are, in theory, our employees, should ridicule us simply because they don't like some of the things we may espouse?

There's a well-known guy who believes just that. He lives in the White House, and I was under the impression that we were trying to evict him.

--bkl
I'll trade a Mars Bunny for Bush any day.

[mobuto]

27. I'm not saying whether they should or shouldn't ridicule you

that comes down simply to ethics of interpersonal behavior. But what is clear is that you have no right, express, implied or otherwise, not to be ridiculed by anybody under any circumstances.

[DarkPhenyx]

25. "The public DOES have the right to offer theories for consideration

WITHOUT condescension or ridicule"? Since when? Everytime you offer an opinion you have to be ready that some may redicule it. You absolutely have to be willing to be proven wrong. That's part of the game you have chosen to play. If you don't like the "rules" don't play.

[DarkPhenyx]

22. I would say neither fossil nor plant.

Could it be something? Of course. Reality? Probably not. Considering the probability of it being anything, and the extremely limited research window available I say drive on and forget it.

Just my opinion.

[Zero Gravitas]

23. Airbag material

especially seeing as the reflected light spectra matched that of the airbag material and was unlike any of the spectra from anything & everything that was unequivocally Martian in origin.

[prodigal_green]

6. Mars needs

Bunnies?

If only it were true--the only creature to survive whatever ecological disaster hit the red planet is the humble rabbit. That would be awesome!

[Zero Gravitas]

8. Mars Bunny

Here's NASA's take on the "bunny" : http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/opportunity/b19_20040304.html

Of course its all part of the coverup. They sent the rovers there to cover up information about life on Mars or something like that :crazy:

[Ediacara]

9. it's not just a bunny, but a playboy bunny!

Obviously Heffner is marking his property early!

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Great link!

Don't be too quick to dismiss the critics, though. Most of them are not saying it's a bunny, but a plant or a fossil.

The animated GIF is awesome -- showing the thing moving in a breeze of the thin Martian atmosphere.

But sadly, NASA never checked it out, as it could have easily done. If there actually is multicellular life on Mars, it's disturbing to think that they would run over it just to score points on their critics.

--bkl

[Ediacara]

14. or it could just be a rock....

You know Mars, has a lot of those, and there are plenty of white minerals...

[Zero Gravitas]

17. They did check it out

according to the article they did assign a scientist to try and determine what it is, and they did not run it over. It was blown by the martian wind underneath one of the lander's egress ramps, not crushed benath one of the rover's wheels.

[Dogmudgeon]

21. Good theory, but ...

... in the article, they argue for it by hand-waving. Understandably, it's a lay publication, but the "bunny" is like the "WOW!" signal received by SETI some years ago. That, too, was eventually analyzed to be anomalous-but-explained, but you just don't explain something as potentially important as non-Earthly life with a smile and a paragraph.

It will be interesting to read the write-up that the scientist (Jeff Johnson of the USGS) does. I'm assuming that he's correct, and I'm encouraged that Steve Squyres is more responsive to the public than previous mission supervisors. Still, one of these days, a "bunny" is likely to turn out to be real. And there's an even chance that it will be an amateur who first realizes what it is.

--bkl

[Zero Gravitas]

26. Life?

What about this object indicates anything related to non-Earthly life? Why would martian life (or fossil) reflect light in exactly the same way as the airbag material from the lander?

[RedCloud]

10. I lived near Cape Canaveral/Kennedy

I was told by those inside, that the cost of space travel would be so prohibitive they will "leak" things to oil the public's fantasy and spending desire.

Wait 'til they find something vaguely resembling a cross!