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posted by on Thursday April 09 2015, @07:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the as-far-away-as-flying-cars dept.

They are not expecting large-headed, lanky humanoids with oval-shaped black eyes hiding behind a crater on mars; instead they fully expect to find microbial life very soon for a number of reasons. Mainly, we finally are starting to "know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology."

From the article:

[Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA] also described another recent study that used measurements of aurora on Jupiter's moon Ganymede to prove it has a large liquid ocean beneath its icy crust. The findings suggest that previous ideas about where to find "habitable zones" may have been too limited. "We now recognize that habitable zones are not just around stars, they can be around giant planets too," Green said. "We are finding out the solar system is really a soggy place." He also talked NASA's plans for a mission to Europa, another moon of Jupiter with an icy ocean. "I don't know what we are going to find there," he said.

NASA associate administrator John Grunsfeld, said part of what excites him most about the search for life beyond our planet is to see what that life looks like. "Once we get beyond Mars, which formed from the same stuff as Earth, the likelihood that life is similar to what we find on this planet is very low," he said.Grunsfeld said he believes that life beyond Earth will be found by the next generation of scientists and space explorers, but Green said he hopes it is sooner than that.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 09 2015, @09:34PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday April 09 2015, @09:34PM (#168507) Journal

    Fortunately there's a simple way to avoid being probed by large-headed, lanky humanoids with oval-shaped black eyes hiding behind a crater on Mars. Simply don't visit Mars. Even if you get probed anyway by large-headed, lanky humanoids with oval-shaped black eyes, at least they cannot hide behind a crater on Mars.

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    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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  • (Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Thursday April 09 2015, @11:14PM

    by mrcoolbp (68) <mrcoolbp@soylentnews.org> on Thursday April 09 2015, @11:14PM (#168544) Homepage

    I may have gotten a little carried away with that description; I admit, I am tired of seeing "little green men" = )

    Did I go overboard with that one?

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    (Score:1^½, Radical)
    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday April 10 2015, @05:54PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday April 10 2015, @05:54PM (#168792) Journal

      I actually enjoyed that description. An I'm sure the large-headed, lanky humanoids with oval-shaped brown eyes hiding behind a crater on Mars are not too upset that you've got their eye colour slightly wrong. ;-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.