FFS those are "blueberries"! Honestly, this was the dumbest thing I have ever seen Robin Hanson tweet (and I say that with respect to Robin who usually tweets very high quality content).
Anyone who followed the Spirit and Opportunity rovers remembers how they studied the "blueberries" ad nausea.. even drilling into them and imaging them with a microscope. They even found one that was split in half and imaged that with the micrscope, IIRC. The rest of the pictures have very prosaic explanations. It was a weird seeing so many people get drawn into this paper -- wishful thinking, I guess. Yet, actually it's good there's no life -- if there was life Mars colonization would get harder because there would be concerns about humans ruining whatever ecosystem exists.
FFS those are "blueberries"! Honestly, this was the dumbest thing I have ever seen Robin Hanson tweet (and I say that with respect to Robin who usually tweets very high quality content).
Anyone who followed the Spirit and Opportunity rovers remembers how they studied the "blueberries" ad nausea.. even drilling into them and imaging them with a microscope. They even found one that was split in half and imaged that with the micrscope, IIRC. The rest of the pictures have very prosaic explanations. It was a weird seeing so many people get drawn into this paper -- wishful thinking, I guess. Yet, actually it's good there's no life -- if there was life Mars colonization would get harder because there would be concerns about humans ruining whatever ecosystem exists.