
Mysterious Martian “Cauliflower” May Be the Latest Hint of Alien Life - Anchor
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/mysterious-martian-cauliflower-may-be-latest-hint-alien-life-180957981?no-ist
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nsajko
For those without intuition on Fahrenheit degrees; (-13,113)°F = (-25,45)°C.

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static_noise
You might want to use a dot for those non-Germans over here.

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vectorjohn
It's a temperature range. You see there four integers.

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Rexxar
Indeed, I think brackets would be more explicit than parenthesis.

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stcredzero
Sci-fi scenario: We find evidence of microbial life from billions of years
ago, when Mars was briefly a warm, wet place. Decades hence, a researcher
realizes that Mars still has microbial life, but that it has evolved as its
environment has, so it's as arid and rarefied as its present atmosphere, wispy
and almost not there. Sadly, she realizes that human activity has already
doomed it to extinction.

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etangent
Alternative dystopian scenario: we eventually find evidence of (sometimes
extinct) life on all planets and moons that had encountered specific chemical
conditions for a long enough period of time. We realize en masse (more than we
realize now) that life isn't a unique snowflake, but simply a geological
process, not that far removed from rocks and volcanoes. The realization causes
a broad spiritual/existential crisis and irreversibly changes human culture,
mostly for the worse.

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mds
I don't think you'd have to assume that's a dystopian scenario. The Copernican
Revolution and associated existential crises -- that we're not in a privileged
location at the center of the universe -- changed human culture mostly for the
good.

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etangent
My question was "what if we realize that life isn't special?" \-- not "what if
we realize that humans aren't special?". The fact that three commenters
misinterpreted the former for the latter is only a proof of our anthropic
bias.

We are not at all post-Copernican, strictly speaking. We value living things
like we never did before. You occasionally hear discussion about granting
rights to non-human animals: dolphins, apes, etc. That almost never happened
in human history (save for a few cultures where certain animals are held to be
holy). You are talking about moving away from anthropocentrism, while the
scenario I'm describing is a bleak world where all life as such isn't valued.
In that world, there isn't even any point of talking about "saving the
planet," because "for whom are you saving it for? For polar bears? How are
they any better than lifeless rocks: both products of geology?"

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CuriousSkeptic
I think I can speak from experience, you mostly describe may way of looking at
life. It's not without respect though. Even if life is nothing special in the
grand scheme of things, it can still be very special from a subjective
perspective.

For me the respect, and awe, for life comes from how each individual is the
proverbial snowflake, as an instance of life, and an incredibly complex,
emergent and dynamic one at that.

Take something completely lifeless like a stalactite as a reference. Tehy can
take millenniums to form, but the process really isn't very special, just
water dripping from the ceiling. Which most people realize, yet most people
still feel a certain amount of awe when presented with one, and would be
appalled if someone just decided to take it down for no reason. That would be
disrespectful.

It's the same thing when we talk about species going extinct. Most of us has
no particular connection to most species, and shouldn't be bothered. But
still, every species has its own unique character and beauty, which will leave
an emptiness behind of possibilities lost, so is a sad thing to loose for that
reason alone.

So I think discovering more instance of living things would not make life less
valued, on the contrary, more uniqeness would only bring more things to be in
awe of.

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etangent
Yes, we agree that living processes are special, but part of what makes them
so special is because we believe them to be unique and rare. My whole point
was, what if we discover, at some point in the future, that life in the
universe is not rare, but rather an inevitable process of geology, like the
stalactite you're describing? (that was a great analogy, btw.)

We will still think of species' as unique (identical biochemistry is
exceedingly unlikely), yet life will become somewhat "commodified" in a sense,
if you understand that comparison. Obviously, I took some liberty in
describing a nightmarish "moral crisis" scenario; I am just surprised that my
comment garnered so many responses, all of them misunderstanding my main
argument in one way or another.

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maxander
> “micro-digitate silica protrusions”

Or in Thing Explainer-speak, "little rock fingers that stick out."

Its interesting that it was Spirit that detected this- big new discoveries are
still coming up after driving the same robot around on the planet for years!
Humanity has just barely scratched the surface (as it were) of understanding
Mars.

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wahsd
My guess, efflorescence formations.

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bencollier49
Absolutely, this looks exactly like the stuff that grows out of the walls in
our local hospital.

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bmcooley
I'm taking a class with Jack Farmer right now on Astrobiology. I can't wait to
talk with him about this!

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jldugger
Of course, weather on earth can make complex structures as well from non-
organic materials:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_rose_%28crystal%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_rose_%28crystal%29)

