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posted by n1 on Saturday July 22 2017, @04:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the Idiocracy dept.

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


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 22 2017, @12:45PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 22 2017, @12:45PM (#542877) Journal
    Wikipedia had this to say:

    The Nazis did use chemical weapons in combat on several occasions along the Black Sea, notably in Sevastopol, where they used toxic smoke to force Russian resistance fighters out of caverns below the city, in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol.[61] The Nazis also used asphyxiating gas in the catacombs of Odessa in November 1941, following their capture of the city, and in late May 1942 during the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula in eastern Crimea.[61] Victor Israelyan, a Soviet ambassador, reported that the latter incident was perpetrated by the Wehrmacht's Chemical Forces and organized by a special detail of SS troops with the help of a field engineer battalion. Chemical Forces General Ochsner reported to German command in June 1942 that a chemical unit had taken part in the battle.[62] After the battle in mid-May 1942, roughly 3,000 Red Army soldiers and Soviet civilians not evacuated by sea were besieged in a series of caves and tunnels in the nearby Adzhimuskai quarry. After holding out for approximately three months, "poison gas was released into the tunnels, killing all but a few score of the Soviet defenders."[63] Thousands of those killed around Adzhimushk were documented to have been killed by asphyxiation from gas.[62]

    It also notes that many parties in the war had stock piles of chemical weapons, but didn't use them mostly due to the fear of retaliation in kind.

  • (Score: 2) by deadstick on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:28PM (1 child)

    by deadstick (5110) on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:28PM (#542894)

    but didn't use them mostly due to the fear of retaliation in kind

    More, I suspect, because gas is a lousy weapon. Absent a static trench war like WW1, it's largely useless because you don't dare attack the area you just gassed. And the wind always threatens to change.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:44PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:44PM (#542898) Journal

      Absent a static trench war like WW1, it's largely useless because you don't dare attack the area you just gassed.

      Germany could have gotten a lot of mileage out of using mustard gas (or a mustard gas/nerve gas mix) in 1944 on the Eastern (Russian) Front (and later on the French. They were retreating everywhere on that front and hence, had relatively low risk of getting poisoned by their own weapons. Similarly, using chemical weapons in Italy and France would have been relatively low cost for them as they were retreating in those places as well. The problem would have been that it would have given the Allies a pretext to use chemical weapons on German cities, which is a thing that wasn't possible in the First World War. That would have greatly increased the mortality rate (of people Germany cared about) of the war.