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Aliens

Life on Mars

Sometimes aliens are the only things that make us care about Mars. They’re the gateway drug to the hard science. There’s no shame in dreaming about aliens.

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LIFE ON MARS

"Is there life on Mars?" might feel like just a brilliant David Bowie lyric, but it’s actually a legitimate and central question. It’s worth a tiny digression to talk about the "life on Mars" issue before we get back to humanity’s first interplanetary ground- breaking ceremony.

Sometimes aliens are the only things that make us care about Mars. They’re the gateway drug to the hard science. There’s no shame in dreaming about aliens. Even the most stone-faced scientists on the Phoenix Mars lander team imagine what might happen if they turn on the electron-scanning microscope and see tiny cells mucking about. Even better, if Phoenix found some wide-eyed E.T.s lounging on the ice, NASA would get a huge new budget, Martian Summer book sales would be through the roof, and Peter Smith and the Phoenix Lander would share a Nobel Prize. Win-win-win.

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