"NASA's main goal [in the Mars program]
is looking for life. And so life means looking
for water," said Arizona State University geologist
Phil Christensen. --AP Story
Every popular press article on Mars has a similar
quote, or line of argument. Mars-Water-Life.
Mars-Water-Life. (Christensen reversed the usual
order, but whatever.) Journalists fear that if they
don't raise hopes of finding ET in the first
paragraph, the public won't read the rest of the
story ("It's just about boring rocks and stuff"),
and scientists are afraid of losing their funding.
We're desperate, as a species, for an
extraterrestrial Daddy figure who's going to explain
it all to us: God's been something of a
disappointment the past few thousand years, so now
we're pinning our hopes on gnarly little beings with
big eyes and chicken hands. I keep hoping some
scientist will tell the Times, "Look, stop putting
words in my mouth about water and life
and all that crap. Chances are excellent
that Mars and Europa and every place else in the
solar system we're looking at are dead,
dead, dead as fucking doorknobs. Please tell your
readers that what this is really about is
astrophysics, geology, chemistry, and other
subjects they slept through in school."
It'll never happen, but I can dream.
The Onion picks up my gripe, more humorously.
Deader than doorknobs: dead herrings...
Whatever.
There's a passage from Bruce Sterling's novel Schismatrix I've been meaning to post where half-mechanical men groove on clicks of cosmic radiation and the psychedelia of sunspots. He's a writer who trusts his readers to create their own imaginary, animated cosmos. (The book has ETs too, but they come from outside the solar system.)
Stanislaw Lem's Solaris also deals beautifully with the existential tragedy of not finding a cosmic mirror in the form of little green people.
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is looking for life. And so life means looking
for water," said Arizona State University geologist
Phil Christensen. --AP Story
Every popular press article on Mars has a similar
quote, or line of argument. Mars-Water-Life.
Mars-Water-Life. (Christensen reversed the usual
order, but whatever.) Journalists fear that if they
don't raise hopes of finding ET in the first
paragraph, the public won't read the rest of the
story ("It's just about boring rocks and stuff"),
and scientists are afraid of losing their funding.
We're desperate, as a species, for an
extraterrestrial Daddy figure who's going to explain
it all to us: God's been something of a
disappointment the past few thousand years, so now
we're pinning our hopes on gnarly little beings with
big eyes and chicken hands. I keep hoping some
scientist will tell the Times, "Look, stop putting
words in my mouth about water and life
and all that crap. Chances are excellent
that Mars and Europa and every place else in the
solar system we're looking at are dead,
dead, dead as fucking doorknobs. Please tell your
readers that what this is really about is
astrophysics, geology, chemistry, and other
subjects they slept through in school."
It'll never happen, but I can dream.
- Tom Moody 4-09-2001 12:37 am
The Onion picks up my gripe, more humorously.
- tom moody 4-14-2003 2:13 am [add a comment]
Deader than doorknobs: dead herrings...
- frank 4-14-2003 2:19 am [add a comment]
Whatever.
There's a passage from Bruce Sterling's novel Schismatrix I've been meaning to post where half-mechanical men groove on clicks of cosmic radiation and the psychedelia of sunspots. He's a writer who trusts his readers to create their own imaginary, animated cosmos. (The book has ETs too, but they come from outside the solar system.)
Stanislaw Lem's Solaris also deals beautifully with the existential tragedy of not finding a cosmic mirror in the form of little green people.
- tom moody 4-14-2003 2:49 am [add a comment]