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The top comment here and on reddit is the same!! Either kaax is martian, or just a plagiarist. Here's the link: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/10vrag/are_those_sp...
Pardon my idiotic question, but why don't they just drive over there and check them out? Or are they just in a totally different place than the rover (like asking why someone in North America can't just hop over and check out Uluru)?
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_%28space_exploration%29#A...
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_rover#Design_and_co...
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover#Specifications
This is awesome! I love that Mars continues to baffle, astound, and fascinate us. Sometimes our 21st century hubris makes us think we are reaching some kind of peak knowledge, but moments like this prove that we yet know so little. In particular, the geology of Mars in an incredibly fascinating topic. If you're looking for a good primer on the subject, I highly recommend Mapping Mars by Oliver Morton. Mapping Mars co…
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I'm not a xenobiologist so I couldn't quantify the relative chance of them being 'plants'. But this is the kind of stuff we can speculate on. First, we'll need to be a bit loose with our definitions since 'plant' means a very specific kind of thing. So if we define a 'plant' as a chemical process which creates structure in the presence of certain chemicals such that a transformative chemical reaction is enabled where…
Why not literally a plant? Like leafy, relies on water, comes from a small seed, reproduces via pollen/wind, based on a cell structure. We have plants in the desert here on Earth that blossom once every X years or decades. Is there a reason such a "plant" could not have survived the harsh later years of mars post surface water? Bonus idea: if these are plants relying on ground water, their location would give away th…
So while it is not "impossible" that an equivalent to plants evolved into exactly one species or micro-eco-system which exists in this one place on Mars, the chance that this occurred and didn't cause the whole planet to have evidence of their existence is really really small.
But don't let that discourage you from trying various plant hypotheses. The way to pursue that is to then try to figure out what things would be true if they were plants, and see if any of the data we have from Mars would allow you to get closer to proving or disproving your hypothesis. The last time I checked you could ask for and get the a copy of the raw data from JPL if you asked for it (well not some 'give me all your data' kind of ask, but "I'd like to get HiRise imagery from this part of the planet ...")
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Why not literally a plant? Like leafy, relies on water, comes from a small seed, reproduces via pollen/wind, based on a cell structure. We have plants in the desert here on Earth that blossom once every X years or decades. Is there a reason such a "plant" could not have survived the harsh later years of mars post surface water? Bonus idea: if these are plants relying on ground water, their location would give away th…
How would those plants have gotten onto the surface Mars?
The top comment here and on reddit is the same!! Either kaax is martian, or just a plagiarist. Here's the link: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/10vrag/are_those_sp...
It is a spammer that takes HN comments and reposts them at Reddit. Someone should report that behaviour at http://www.reddit.com/r/reportthespammers
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Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines
Breaking Headline! "Is Betterridge's Law of Headlines actually a Law?"
A good image of the formations is on Wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/PIA11858_...
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How would those plants have gotten onto the surface Mars?
How did they get here?
Here's to hoping it's life, but not as we know it.