Conversation

In the pilot of Futurama, Fry starts out complaining that he hates his life as a delivery boy but at the end when he’s landed in the future as a delivery boy on a spaceship, he’s all “yay!” about it. That’s kinda how I feel about photos of rocks from other planets.
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Titan (Huygens, 2005), Venus (Venera 9, 1975).... it’s rocks, rocks, everywhere
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On the one hand it’s just rocks On the other hand it’s rocks... on other worlds! It’s kinda oddly satisfying to learn that other worlds are made of the same stuff The differences are intellectually fascinating but the similarities are emotionally satisfying
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Mercury is actually the hardest place to get to... needs high velocities and hard braking (all rocket like the moon since there’s no atmosphere for parachutes) Venus is the most toxic place to operate. Kinda amazing how far the Soviets got with Venera missions.
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I doubt Mars is worth settling as is, but I for one am all for extreme terraforming experiments all the way to nukes and crashing asteroids. I’m betting 99% there won’t be even bacterial life for Perseverance to find, so it’s basically a spare blank planet for us to reformat.
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1/ The experiment injected radioactive C14 into the soil sample along with some water. It then identified radioactive CO2 gas being emitted back over next 48 hours. Hard to call that autocatalytic. In addition there was a sterilization control, that was also highly suggestive.
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2/ Repeating the same experiment, but heating the sample to 160C resulted in no emissions detected. A third sample was heated to 50C which greatly reduced, but not eliminated, the emissions. This is important because a temp of 50C has no effect on almost all oxidizing chemicals.
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Perseverance may find evidence for life based on observation, but it will not test for it. After 1976, NASA (for unstated political reasons) has explicitly refused to fund any kind of “life detection testing” experiments on Mars missions & has rejected multiple such proposals.
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