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During a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Tuesday, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher managed to baffle and amaze when he asked about life on Mars.
[...] "You have indicated that Mars had a, was totally different thousands of years ago," the California congressman said, addressing a panel of space science experts.
"Is it possible that there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago?".
[...] Kenneth Farley — NASA Mars 2020 rover project scientist — had to start off his answer by correcting Rohrabacher's question.
"So, the evidence is that Mars was different billions of years ago, not thousands of years ago," Farley said.
[...] "Would you rule that out? That — see, there are some people — well, anyway," Rohrabacher said.
Farley answered: "I would say that is extremely unlikely."
Source: Mashable
(Score: 2) by Weasley on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:35AM (2 children)
You're jumping the gun a bit. There's no reason to look for a civilization if there's no evidence of life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @08:08AM
The life is underground. Keep digging.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:45PM
Well, not much of one, but there's a non-negligible chance Mars used to be hospitable enough to have evolved intelligent life - and if it did then then there's a fair chance that there's at least the remains of an underground civilization still there. At least if they developed any sort of technological civilization to begin with.
After all, any civilization would probably strive not to die with their planet, and planetwide emigration probably isn't feasible without *extremely* advanced technology. Gradually moving underground into increasingly self-contained environments as the atmosphere thins though? That's easy.
Would I bet on it? No. But I would absolutely go looking for it - especially if the romance of the idea helped secure funding to go looking for more pedestrian subterranean life of any sort. After all, if there was *ever* life on Mars then there's probably still lots of microbial life to be found if you go deep enough - deep-rock lithovores aren't going to much care what happens on the surface, and they'll be carrying the genetic-equivalent history of a branch of life very alien to our own.