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Is there a Life On Mars Conspiracy?


mcrom901

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Michael Brooks, consultant for New Scientist and the author of 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, sends us a new perspective on the riddle of the empty planet next door

Some pesky scientists have just pointed out an appalling design error in NASA’s latest attempts to find life on Mars. This is beginning to look like a conspiracy. Does someone not want us to find life on Mars?

NASA has tried looking for signs of life on Mars precisely once, in the 1976 Viking mission. The result was positive. The reason nobody says there is life on Mars is that another experiment, part of the same mission, couldn’t find any carbon-based “organic” chemicals in Martian soil. This, NASA decided, overruled the other result: with no carbon present, there could be no microbes living on or under the surface of Mars.

Last year, the Phoenix lander repeated the carbon search and failed to find organic molecules. The problem is, we know that there ought to be organic molecules on Mars. Asteroid and comet impacts will have put them there. So what’s going on?

Both of the searches for organic molecules, it turns out, have been deeply flawed. In 2000, the chief engineer on the 1976 experiment finally admitted that his experiment was simply not sensitive enough to overrule anything. Put bluntly, it didn’t work properly – and it never had, even during testing on Earth.

Now a handful of brave NASA scientists have exposed a problem with the latest attempt to pronounce that Mars was dead.

The best argument for why no one has even found carbon brought in on asteroids and comets is that chemicals called perchlorates, also thought to be in the Martian soil, have destroyed it all. When perchlorates get hot, they burn up carbon-based molecules. That’s why NASA uses them in rocket fuel.

The problem is, as NASA's Douglas Ming (the Merciless) has pointed out in a recent paper, the experiments to search for carbon involve heating soil samples to a few hundred degrees and sniffing the vapours. If the soil contains carbon molecules and perchlorates, the carbon molecules will simply burn up. No wonder they couldn’t find any.

Gilbert Levin, who ran the 1976 experiment to search for life, the one that got a positive result, thinks it’s all down to a religious conspiracy dating back to the early 1960s. When I was researching my book 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, I travelled to Levin’s Maryland offices and listened to his account of the run-up to Viking. In 1961, he told me, the Executive Director of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, invited him to attend a meeting in Washington. When Levin arrived, he found himself among fifteen of the top scientific minds in the US. None of them knew what the meeting was about until John Olive told them he had been charged by NASA with directing an effort to look for life on other planets.

“Phil Abelson, editor of Science magazine, was sitting next to Dean Cowie, a nuclear physicist,” Levin told me. “He grabbed Dean by the arm and audibly said, “Dean, let’s get out of here. The Bible says there can be no life on Mars.”

I was skeptical at first. No one likes a conspiracy theory more than I, but John Olive died in 1974, Dean Cowie died in 1977, and Philip Abelson died in 2004. There is no independent written source on this secret Washington meeting. And it’s not like the search for life didn’t go ahead.

But I have to admit there is a troubling history here. Rocket scientists joke about the “curse of Mars” because the success rate of spacecraft bound for Mars is lower than 50 per cent. The most famous failure is perhaps the 1998 Mars Climate Orbiter mission, which crashed onto the surface because one team of engineers used imperial units in their design, while the other team used metric.

So, the question remains: have attempts to explore Mars been secretly scuppered by religious scientists keen to keep planet Earth “special”? Have they been hiding their sabotage under a veil of incompetence? Or is it that scientists really can be astonishingly incompetent without any outside help? Only Dan Brown’s next novel can tell us.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/200...conspiracy.html

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Wow...i like this topic!!! :)

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Well, Im sure that there is more to Mars than meets the eye/camera.

Is there somekind of cover-up going on... I doubt it.

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I dunno, just because any organics that might be present are "burned up" doesn't mean that they just went away. It seems like if the perchlorates are oxidizing the proposed organic compounds when heated during the test, then there should still be carbon dioxide, some carbon monoxide, and other products of incomplete oxidation, which should have been detected if the equipment was testing the vapors given off by the samples. Can someone who knows more about the specifics of the test expand on this any?

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Well, Im sure that there is more to Mars than meets the eye/camera.

Is there somekind of cover-up going on... I doubt it.

A cover-up is possible, though - think about it. Before we get to see the footage, who does it go to? NASA - and anything the military/government doesn't want us to see does not get shown to us. It sort of makes you wonder what, exactly, the government is hiding? Not just in terms of ET life either, but regarding other things (top-secret projects, operations, etc.)

Edited by Alienated Being
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A cover-up is possible, though - think about it. Before we get to see the footage, who does it go to? NASA - and anything the military/government doesn't want us to see does not get shown to us.

Actually, no, it doesn't necessarily go to NASA. In fact, by far the most of the image analysis is not done by NASA, but externally to NASA. And image data is not routed through NASA, but typically go directly to the independent research institutions doing the actual work under various grants.

It sort of makes you wonder what, exactly, the government is hiding? Not just in terms of ET life either, but regarding other things (top-secret projects, operations, etc.)

The reason for not acknowledging life is because scientific data doesn't support it yet. Maybe it is there, maybe it isn't. But you will not get any scientist to make a conclusion either way that cannot be sufficiently substantiated. That is really all there is to it.

Cheers,

Badeskov

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Actually, no, it doesn't necessarily go to NASA. In fact, by far the most of the image analysis is not done by NASA, but externally to NASA. And image data is not routed through NASA, but typically go directly to the independent research institutions doing the actual work under various grants.

All-right, but I am still wondering if they would honestly want the general public to see ET bases on Mars.

The reason for not acknowledging life is because scientific data doesn't support it yet. Maybe it is there, maybe it isn't. But you will not get any scientist to make a conclusion either way that cannot be sufficiently substantiated. That is really all there is to it.

Cheers,

Badeskov

Our bodies contain the same elements found in the cosmos. That leads me believe that if we can exist, as can other civilizations.

Edited by Alienated Being
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Ground control to Major Tom! :whistle:

Edited by DONTEATUS
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Actually, no, it doesn't necessarily go to NASA. In fact, by far the most of the image analysis is not done by NASA, but externally to NASA. And image data is not routed through NASA, but typically go directly to the independent research institutions doing the actual work under various grants.

The reason for not acknowledging life is because scientific data doesn't support it yet. Maybe it is there, maybe it isn't. But you will not get any scientist to make a conclusion either way that cannot be sufficiently substantiated. That is really all there is to it.

Cheers,

Badeskov

Thanks, Bade!

That about sums the whole truth up in a nutshell!

:tu:

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"Religious scientists" might have so much clout that they've suppressed evidence of civilisations of Mars? I'm not sure how much influence religious scientists would have, seeing how the public face of science is so much represented by people like Mr. Dawkins, who is, um, not a religious scientist. I really don't know if the "religious scientist" element would be that influential.

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Has anyone been watching the movies lately? Of course there is life on mars!!!!!

Transformers

Destination: Mars!

Doom

Mission to Mars

Red Planet

Escape from Mars

My Favorite Martian

all these and more prove life is on mars....i mean you know entertainmently speaking sorta....k I admit it there may or may not be life on mars. But im more inclined to say yes there is

Edited by jesspy
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One thing that makes me sceptical about this is the fact that huge, enormous, vast quantities of money would flood in to NASA and other similar organisations if they could support a claim to have found microbes or anything else on Mars. I'd have thought that, as an organisation at least, they'd have more to gain than to lose by finding life elsewhere.

Plus consider the fact that a lot of these people will have gone into this field precisely because they're excited by it and want to find things. I can't see a conspiracy being feasible.

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I think there are things we are not being told about, i remember reading a while back about mars, on how its not all red as they let us believe...that the cameras have certain lens on them that make it look that way, maybe most people knew that before, but why would NASA not clarify it so we would know, the guy who pointed it out gives a step by step plan on how to convert the pictures from mars to the true color.

Its possible that there is a space cover up, not to hard to believe, people are capable of lying and deceiving...not saying it is a cover up, but i wouldn't be surprised, would be curious of what they're hiding.

Nice post

Edited by shaka5
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To answer the question:

HELL YES.

The whole of the ad usum Delhini is just about as true as a Donald Duck comic.

Given this to be the case, one could do none other than to SERIOUSLY question.. well..

just about everything being fed to the mainstream as being truth.

Salus populi suprema lex

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http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/members/mbara.htm

A context- relevant interview from Mikael Barra, a consulting engineer for Boeing Aircraft in Seattle.

Richard Hoagland mentioned in your link here leads to some credibility issues ;) Richard Hoagland sees life/faces/statues what have you, everywhere in our solar system. According to him little green men live on pluto lol.

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Thanks for Mike Barra interview link, Noteaph...will watch it ASAP...

OK.....the following images come from here....http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com/

This site is having ahem 'problems' at the moment.... :blink: and you can read what the host of

the site has to say about the problems on the Home Page.

But I had already kept the following close up pics...and if they are what THEY LOOK LIKE.

And what else could they be? Well.....we are WAY past the microbe stage when it

comes to Life on Mars.

linked-image

linked-image

Although loads of the site is unavailable...there was this small pic. that shows the area where these

close ups come from.

linked-image

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To answer the question:

HELL YES.

The whole of the ad usum Delhini is just about as true as a Donald Duck comic.

Given this to be the case, one could do none other than to SERIOUSLY question.. well..

just about everything being fed to the mainstream as being truth.

Salus populi suprema lex

Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur

Basing a call to SERIOUSLY question, well, everything as untrue based on the assumption that it is untrue is a somewhat circular argument.

"We should question the truth of this report!"

"Why?"

"Because this report is untrue!"

Now, there's plenty of reasons to ask questions, but if out of all those reasons you choose such a logically weak one as that, the rest of the argument is going to suffer.

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But I had already kept the following close up pics...and if they are what THEY LOOK LIKE.

And what else could they be?

I'm almost afraid to ask, but what is it they are supposed to look like? I can't even tell.

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I think there are things we are not being told about, i remember reading a while back about mars, on how its not all red as they let us believe...that the cameras have certain lens on them that make it look that way, maybe most people knew that before, but why would NASA not clarify it so we would know, the guy who pointed it out gives a step by step plan on how to convert the pictures from mars to the true color.

Its possible that there is a space cover up, not to hard to believe, people are capable of lying and deceiving...not saying it is a cover up, but i wouldn't be surprised, would be curious of what they're hiding.

And the people you remember saying that were and still are wrong. You can gauge the color of Mars with a good amateur telescope from Earth, which many has done already. And the lenses on cameras in space are all different and rarely made to capture a true color photograph as your own pocket camera here on Earth. They have many different purposes besides making pretty color pictures for your mantel piece. ;)

Cheers,

Badeskov

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Richard Hoagland mentioned in your link here leads to some credibility issues ;) Richard Hoagland sees life/faces/statues what have you, everywhere in our solar system. According to him little green men live on pluto lol.

Hi ST;

That isnt the only thing hoagland believes, He also says there is life on Mars, Saturn.> Jupiter,> and > Pluto, His credibility is useless to any scientific comunity, He even made it on the the ufo Hall of shame,

Regards;

TFF

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linked-image

I'm almost afraid to ask, but what is it they are supposed to look like? I can't even tell.

A HUGE structure of some kind...with other massive structures (of some kind) around it.

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