
The student who discovered water on Mars says it was a 'lucky accident' - scriptstar
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34390462/the-student-who-discovered-water-on-mars-says-it-was-a-lucky-accident
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xj
Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits
préparés. (In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.)

\- Louis Pasteur
([https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur))

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thibaut_barrere
It didn't happen by accident, but rather because he "(looks) at both visible
light and infrared light and based on how different materials absorb light,
(he) can compare that with the laboratory data and make some inference about
what kind of materials are present.", and before that because he learned the
required stuff to end up doing this.

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Loughla
This is the kind of thing that ends up being just another 'don't have to try
too hard to succeed' story. It's like Einstein being bad at math.

People like to just believe that brilliance is only possible at random, and
nothing they can do will help, unless they get lucky.

It's the same reason the lottery still exists.

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littletimmy
Lottery exists because for some people the thought of being rich is more
enticing than the reality of owning an extra buck.

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bcruddy
The lottery still exists because there are a lot of people who are bad at
statistics.

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drdeca
I'm not sure that that is why.

Just because someone realizes that the expected value of their purchase is
negative to being almost the same as the cost, doesn't mean that they can't
make the purchase.

Whether it makes sense depends on their utility function.

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bostonpete
It's not clear what the accident was. (?)

It's also not clear why they included a picture of him playing guitar with a
caption about his band...

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dspillett
_> It's also not clear why they included a picture of him playing guitar with
a caption about his band..._

There is a bit of a push at the moment, and has been for a while, to show that
scientists and other technical types are normal people too, not just the
stereotype anal retentive hyper-dedicated socially disconnected Asperger
afflicted geniuses. You'll often see a little bit of information about the
people in question that is ultimately completely irrelevant to the
science/tech being discussed.

If it does help break down the stereotype a bit then it is a good thing: many
kids are put off science in part because of such things.

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doorty
Yea, seems to be going in the opposite direction. Pop culture like tv shows
Big Bang Theory and Silicon Valley are showing that it's actually cool to be
geeky or into tech and startups.

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cLeEOGPw
> Big Bang Theory

> it's actually cool to be geeky or into tech

Is this satire?

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EvenThisAcronym
You should know by now that all of HN is a parody of itself.

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Osmium
I haven't been following this too closely. Are the salt streaks where the
water is too? Are we actually seeing the water itself in these images or not?

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sp332
Yes, the water is extremely salty (which is why it's not frozen solid) and
when it evaporates, it leaves visible salt deposits.

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Osmium
Thanks for your reply. I've seen an animated image of these salt deposits
forming online. It's my understanding these images were taken over a period of
several months. Now we know what to look for, would it be possible to watch
this happen in real time, or not? Would there be any benefit of a
geostationary satellite that just observed the same spot over a long period of
time?

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bioinformatics
>"Using a Nasa instrument called Crism, Lujendra and his team were able to
tell that these 'streaks' are covered with salts."

Hard to believe that an undergraduate at the time would have "his team". He
was probably the part of a larger team that gave the undergrads the
opportunity to look at the images generated by the equipment, and he was the
student who found the evidence. Not saying that he shouldn't be given credit.

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Tiksi
I took that to mean "his team" as in "the team he was part of" as opposed to
"the team that he led".

