"Dolores Claman" wrote in message ...
"Sander Vesik" wrote in message
...
Dolores Claman wrote:

"Jon Berndt" wrote in message
...
"Dolores Claman" wrote:

I heard Prof Pillinger (Beagle 2 notoriety) on Sky last night.
He was basically saying that there was no way that either of the
NASA rovers would be able to determine whether life had or
currently existed on Mars.

The press has screwed this one up. The rovers are not meant to search
for
life and their instruments are for geology. The stated purpose for
these
rovers is to examine the rocks and soil for signs of water, etc. --
i.e.
to
determine if *conditions* might have ever been conducive to
*supporting*
life.

Pillinger is exactly correct.

He and you are both wrong. Fossil finds by the Mer rovers would
prove that life had existed. End of story.


The MER rovers are incapable of distinguishing the only type of fossile
that could possibly be found on mars from some other kind of structure.
I heavily doubt they even have such microscopes as would be needed.

Thats complete rubbish, the microscopic analyzer is perfectly capable
of seeing a fossil.


You're wrong. The scope on the rovers is for geologic survey and not
a true microscope. It can only resolve things as small as .03 mm.
The suspected bacteria fossils found in a Mars rock and similar
found in native earth rocks in Washington State are only
..01 to .02 mm in size. So tell me how you would see them with the
imager on the rover? Keep in mind that you only get one pixel of
image data per .03 mm.

As far as identifying bones... all you can count on is being able
to find that there is something unusual about a rock's composition
and maybe it's shape but there ARE certain kinds of volcanic rock
on earth that look like lifeforms even though they were never
associated with anything living. Like you can find rocks shaped
like bones, automobiles, internal organs and so on. Just because
something looks familiar doesn't mean much... now if you find
multiple examples or you know how the material formed that's a different
story.

You are making ridiculous assumptions about what kind of life may
be found in a martian fossil record.

One thing I do know.. even if you set a Mars rover to work in
your backyard, the chances of you finding an obvious fossil in a
rock within 90 days are next to zero unless you happen to live
in a fossil rich area.

-McDaniel