[meteorite-list] OCEANS ON MARS

From: Rob McCafferty <rob_mccafferty_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:19:34 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <505093.42184.qm_at_web50901.mail.re2.yahoo.com>

--- samc <samc at btinternet.com> wrote:

> I get more convinced as time passes, that we *will*
> find either active
> or fossil life forms on Mars in my lifetime.
>


Don't kid yourself Mark,

I think you'd get better money if you put it on Mars
being proven to be a lifeless lump of rock and always
having been so.

Did you ever do that calculation in physics where you
work out the probability of all the air molecules in a
shoe box randomly moving into one half of the box
leaving the other half momentarily in a vacuum making
the box half collapse?
If not, it works out that the chances are that you
have to leave the box for something like 10^20 times
longer than the universe has been around for to have a
chance of it happening or something ridiculous like
that.
My point is that random chemical production of complex
amino acids is one thing but DNA is quite the other
and how it manages to develop from a molecule to
sentience is off any scale.

A group of British scientists predicted finding life
on extrasolar planets in the next 10 years in the last
week.
How presumptious is this??? You really have to believe
that life will form wherever it can which is not the
same as life finding a way to hang on (as it does on
earth in nasty places, like rocks in antarctica,
sulphur lakes in Yellowstone, mid-oceanic vents, the
Gobi desert, New York, etc)

I have started my stopclock. In 9 years, 11 months and
22 days I'm going to be sending Leicester University a
big blown raspberry if my scepticism proves to be
right and I REALLY think it will be.

If I am as wrong as I could possibly be on this, send
me a mail and I will send you a real, bonafide picture
of me actually eating a massive slice of humble pie.
(ohhh, geez, I hope proof isn't found next week)

Rob McC




 
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Received on Wed 13 Jun 2007 06:19:34 PM PDT