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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @08:57AM (1 child)
Huh? This was based on the hypothesis that a long time ago Mars was more Earth-like. That cannot currently be ruled out as far as I know.
Besides, in a billion years there will be a lot of asteroid impacts alone, throwing material into the atmosphere and covering up the surface. Let alone small amounts of wind-spread erosion material building up over time. And even a small amount of atmosphere blowing around dust grains would erode buildings after awhile. I do not think you appreciate the timescale.
You seem to be responding to me as though this is some kind of crazy conspiracy theory or religious thing. I am just saying it is possible.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday July 23 2017, @09:38AM
A lot of people fail to grasp just how long 1 billion years is. Dinosaurs were around 1/10th of that time ago.