Innocent ‘till proven alive: The Martian Dilemma.

Percival Lowell, Map of Mars, 1895 Depauw University http://libguides.depauw.edu/content.php?pid=358241&sid=2930109

Figure 1: Martian canals as depicted by Percival Lowell. CREDIT: Public domain (Image featured on www.space.com)

At the beginning of December, it was highly speculated by NASA scientists that Curiosity had made some ground-breaking discovery. The lead mission investigator, John Grotzinger, said: "We're getting data from SAM … this data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good."However, in less than four days, NASA officials took their time to diminish the value of these ‘theories’ stating that at this early stage of the process, the idea that there would be ground-breaking discoveries being done now, was incorrect. In an article featuring in www.space.com, Clara Moskowitz elaborates on five of the greatest overhyped facts about Mars by past explorations on the planet, and consequent speculations. The first most overhyped “fact” was the Martian canals. It was theorized that these canals were dug by living organisms, which established some sort of possibility towards life on Mars. Apparently, later technology proved them to simply be optical illusions.

Our second most overhyped “fact” was the existence of flowing water on the planet. On July, 2000 NASA did happen to announce information that supported this, but to present day, including now through the Curiosity observation, this evidence is apparently not supported. It is, though, believed that water once did flow on the Red Planet’s surface. Our third overhyped “fact” is related to the face of Mars. Let’s observe the following picture:

Figure 2: This picture, taken from www.space.com,features outlines of faces on the surface of the red planet. These faces were later theorized to, one more time, be optical illusions, but irrefutable evidence as to what they are still remain uncertain.

The fourth overhyped “fact” is associated with a mysterious meteorite that landed in Antarctica tens of thousands years ago, which was basically a piece of the red planet. This sample was studied and determined to possess magnetite, a compound which on earth are associated with microbial life. Also, carbonate minerals were found, indicating existence of water about 16 million years ago. This piece of rock, however, still faces skepticism from many scientists. The fifth and last most overhyped piece of information according to this source is the possibility of microbes on Mars. Even though previous space missions have yielded evidence of chemical reactions of metabolic origin in the Red planet, scientists established that microbes would not necessarily be the source of them. These theories, and the skepticism associated with them don’t stand irrefutable, once again, but they create the basis to the typical behavior exhibited by scientists when faced with a probable discovery. It is a scientist’s job to possess a fair level of skepticism until sufficient proof is yielded. This is just information in retrospect to see how NASA may or may not react to the suggested ground-breaking news that would ‘’go to the history books’’, as stated by the Curiosity mission lead investigator. More to come in the future…

Reference: http://www.space.com/18723-most-overhyped-mars-discoveries.html

Biology group: Jorge Alcina and Glenn Havee.