Reality Check: Spheres on Mars Not Fossils

[Lionel]

Mars has a long history of being misinterpreted, from conjurings of apparent canals that signaled an alien civilization to the infamous NASA photo of a supposed giant face. Now a close-up picture of tiny spheres embedded in a Martian rock has some people seeing fossilized life. This alternate, perhaps hopeful view of a picture taken by NASA's Opportunity Rover and released Monday has been expressed in e-mail messages to reporters and geologists. Mission scientists anticipated it and were ready yesterday with a response.While the spherules, as the small structures are called, are incredibly interesting, they are not that incredible, according to Steven Squyres, principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project from Cornell University."There simply is no reason to promote a biological origin for these [spherules] when there are so many other, far more probable ways of making them," Squyres told SPACE.com.Squyres quoted his former teacher and friend, the late Carl Sagan, who popularized the phrase, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

"To claim a finding of fossils on Mars would certainly be extraordinary," Squyres said, "yet there are many different and very ordinary ways in which Nature makes spherical objects of this size by non-biological processes."

View: Full Article | Source: space.com

[geeohn]

interesting, and the colors on the rocks reminds me of a cavern with alot of colorful lightings which everone had to pay to see.