Unfortunately, it fits right in with history. NASA no longer has any credibility on the extraterrestrial life front. I've lost count of all their announcements, which have without fail turned out to be anything from arguably-fraudulent (though not quite provably so) up through so dubious it means nothing, like the previous meteorite results.
They have a pretty picture in the news story, certainly, but I will wait for independent confirmation before I even begin to consider the possibility that this may be true, as opposed to a carefully-selected picture culled from gigabytes of data. Not because I have preconceptions either way, but because that's how little I value NASA's announcements on this front.
The announcement of "arsenic-based life" was particularly bad, as it turned out to just be normal life that can survive in a higher than normal concentration of arsenic.
Comments
Unfortunately, it fits right in with history. NASA no longer has any credibility on the extraterrestrial life front. I've lost count of all their announcements, which have without fail turned out to be anything from arguably-fraudulent (though not quite provably so) up through so dubious it means nothing, like the previous meteorite results.
They have a pretty picture in the news story, certainly, but I will wait for independent confirmation before I even begin to consider the possibility that this may be true, as opposed to a carefully-selected picture culled from gigabytes of data. Not because I have preconceptions either way, but because that's how little I value NASA's announcements on this front.
The announcement of "arsenic-based life" was particularly bad, as it turned out to just be normal life that can survive in a higher than normal concentration of arsenic.
To be fair, this just a scientist who works for NASA who filed the paper, not NASA itself.