
Photos show evidence of life on Mars, Ohio entomologist claims - lelf
https://phys.org/news/2019-11-photos-evidence-life-mars-ohio.html
======
yathern
This is a really weak article, right from the opening paragraph

> Romoser's research shows that we already have the evidence [of life on Mars]

A single blurry picture of what might look like a bug is not evidence of life
on Mars, any more than the "Mars Man Face" is. This seems like Pareidolia but
for someone who looks at insects all day. Wikipedia article itself shows
another Mars example...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia)

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carapace
Noooooo... This is an old man with pareidolia.

However, see "I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s"
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-
convinc...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we-
found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229390)

The atmosphere of Mars is not in chemical equilibrium. (Cf. Lovelock, Gaia
hypothesis.)

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philwelch
I want to give the benefit of the doubt because this person seems like a
legitimate scientist, but this is an extraordinary claim and the evidence
seems a lot like cloudgazing to me. Is there a source with more detail on
this?

Edit: Found this
([https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cd3gmtja551h6l1/AAABGYzMsjlN7Uemk...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cd3gmtja551h6l1/AAABGYzMsjlN7UemkHecQqmfa?dl=0))...still
looks like cloudgazing to me, though.

~~~
ksaj
That is stunningly bad, as far as "evidence" goes.

I find it amazing that the rocks are so clear, and the snakes and bugs look
exactly like the rocks. It's interesting that the snakes and bugs don't
actually look like snakes and bugs, and in order to see what he sees, you have
to forget how clear the rest of the picture is and except his analysis at
(blurry?) face value. Just like backward masking in music, or the word SEX
toasted into your Ritz crackers and wrinkled into some girl's socks, it
requires text arrows, shape outlines, and highly specific descriptions before
you can just almost see/hear it.

Imagine if National Geographic had to go through such extremes before we could
see bugs and snakes in their pictures of them.

On Mars, sometimes a rock is just a rock.

------
Enginerrrd
This is beyond a reach and doesn't even make sense. What would tiny wings do
on a planet with a thin atmosphere roughly equivalent to being over 100,000 ft
high on earth?

That last article about life on mars was much more compelling:
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-
convinc...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we-
found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/)

~~~
nsxwolf
Mars's atmosphere may have been thicker in the past, and wings could be
vestigial appendages from the creature's ancestors.

~~~
lazzlazzlazz
Surely they would have been strongly selected against given many thousands of
generations in a harsh environment?

~~~
nsxwolf
And worse for my idea, looks like Mars probably lost its atmosphere billions,
not millions of years ago.

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scarmig
I'm skeptical, but a genuine question:

If we had an "Earth rover" that took similar photographs as the Mars rover
did, would it find examples of insect fossils?

If not, it seems like this is just seeing Jesus in a piece of toast.

~~~
Enginerrrd
For what it's worth, I've lived on earth my whole life and I've never seen an
insect fossil outside of a museum.

~~~
ivoras
Same here... lived my whole life on Earth an never seen Jesus on toast...
seems like a shame, really.

------
ceejayoz
I see we're doing this again. Previously:

Face on Mars:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_\(Mars\)#%22Face_on_Mars%22)

Bigfoot on Mars: [https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2008/1305.h...](https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2008/1305.html)

The actual explanation, of course, is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia).

~~~
Thrymr
A "Life on Mars" paper was actually published in Science in 1996 too:
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/273/5277/864](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/273/5277/864)

~~~
ceejayoz
I find it entirely believable that there may have been life on Mars, and even
that some of it survives today in extremophile microbial form.

That doesn't make this guy's conference poster any less silly, though.

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anotheryou
sure looks like a yeti to me

"There's a large, out-of-focus monster running around the countryside. That's
extra scary to me. Run, he's fuzzy!" (mitch hedberg)

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briga
"When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything
else out and find that thing everywhere."

I'd be willing to believe that there is fossilized life on Mars, maybe even
complex arthopod-type life, but saying that there is still life flying around
on Mars is a pretty extraordinary claim. Is there a paper or any more
information around here? Outside of the two pictures in the articles I can't
find anything.

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nategri
Today I learned entomologists have pareidolia for bugs.

------
netdur
If you could find any alien living with head and legs, that would be very
stranger than finding alien life itself,

or life on earth come from the same origin.

~~~
outworlder
Not entirely. Legs have independently evolved multiple times on Earth, as have
heads (or things that are similar to heads). It pays to have a lot of sensory
organs on an appendage that can articulate – said sensory organs being close
to the brain is also an advantage, assuming you have one single central brain.
And 'legs' are good way to achieve locomotion over uneven terrain. Even on
Earth that was done using different mechanisms: we use muscles attached to
tendons, spiders use hydraulics.

Even though an alien lifeform could conceivably have a 'head' and have 'legs',
they would probably look _nothing_ like what we have here.

For a good story about how some alien lifeform would look like, I would
recomend reading Blindsight:
[https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm](https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm)

The author uses some of his marine biology background to design the lifeforms.
I think he does a pretty good job at trying to identify mechanisms which would
hold true anywhere, but also making the result completely alien.

------
jotjotzzz
Well it complements this article:
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/mysteriou...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/mysterious-
oxygen-spike-seen-on-mars-puzzles-scientists/)

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ilaksh
What an amazing find! In case you aren't aware, there are also giant human-
like life forms living in the clouds on Earth. This has already been widely
reported though.

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chasing
This is also pretty good evidence that Ohio exists.

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viach
I can clearly see a honey badger on this photo.

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rpmisms
Isn't this roughly comparable to estimating an entire dinosaur from a leg
bone?

~~~
ceejayoz
It's roughly comparable to squinting at a pile of rocks, seeing what looks
kinda like a leg bone, and declaring "dinosaurs walk among us!"

