Thaindian News

May 1, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Regardless of current information generated by the media that NASA has unearthed verification of life on Mars, the American space agency has divulged that corroboration that human beings are not alone is still a lengthy distance away.

An account on Wednesday in the British broadsheet, The Sun, was labeled, ‘NASA: Evidence of Life on Mars.’ This account revealed that the agency had disclosed undeniable confirmation of the existence of Martian organisms. But NASA bureaucrats and competent scientists involved in the Mars assignment have repudiated this report.

Dwayne Brown, a spokesperson for NASA, verbalized that the aforementioned headline is tremendously disingenuous.

He vocalized that the headline makes it appear as if NASA has enunciated that it has discovered life on Mars. This is wholly inaccurate.

The report in the British broadsheet proclaimed that the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity has been turning around the surface of the red planet since January 2004. The report stated that it has located pond scum, which the newspaper referred to as the building chunks of life as all of us are aware of it. Brown voiced that the broadsheet must have adopted this information in isolation.

Such a breakthrough would truly have been revolutionary in view of the fact that pond scum, scientifically acknowledged as cyanobacteria, are essentially a type of life themselves, not just building chunks for it.

The planetary scientist of Cornell University, Steve Squyres, is the foremost researcher of the Mars Exploration Rover project and he was cited in the report of the British broadsheet. He declared that he imagined that the Sun correspondent was a victim of misinterpretation. He said that what Spirit and Opportunity have witnessed is sulfate minerals. They have not unearthed natural materials, not pond scum, and not the building chunks of existence as we are aware of it.

The article, which has been extensively cited across the Web, came into sight after NASA scientists communicated with the journalists during an astrobiology convention that was held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of exploration zoomed in on hunting for life beyond earth.

The British report asserted that the latest assignments of NASA have collected proof of sulphates on Mars, which is a credible sign of water existing on the planet and therefore life as well.

Squyres emailed that evidence of the existence of water does not signify that there is life. Water is essential for life, but is insufficient to guarantee life. Hence, the ‘therefore life’ component of the report is wholly incorrect.

Brown has expounded that NASA’s diverse Mars undertakings, counting the rovers and spacecraft such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the 2001 Mars Odyssey, are disclosing an ocean of indications about the likelihood of life there. It is just too soon to be aware with certainty.