Politics & Government
Letter to the Editor: Mars Matters
Mark Perkel argues that it's important to keep searching for life in space.
The following letter was submitted last week in regards to the landing of Curiosity on Mars, a huge victory for NASA. Since then, the vehicle has sent high resolution photos of the planet's surface back to earth.
Forget the Olympics. The real event came last Monday night starting at 10 p.m. when NASA landed the newest Mars rover Curiosity in a Martian crater to see if they can find evidence if Mars has, or has ever had life.
Since the time that humans have realized that Earth is a planet among one of a trillion trillion planets in the universe, we have wondered if we are alone? Is there life on other planets? Most scientists believe that microbial life is probably common and intelligent life is anyone's guess. This mission isn't likely to find the skeletons of little green men, but if we find some kind of evidence of life on Mars, it boosts the likelihood that some day when humans move out into space that there will be others to meet.
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Finding life is important — not just to find it, but to study it in order to determine how it is both like life on Earth and how it is different. Does it have DNA, and is its DNA like our DNA? Or is it something completely different? This will help us understand who we are and how we got here. So Monday night I stayed up to watch the new rover land safely and starts operating on the surface of Mars.
I'm Marc Perkel - And I approved this message!
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Did you watch Curiosity land last week? Do you think it's important to spend money on projects like this? And hey, do you believe in aliens? Tell us in the comments!
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