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#1 2003-12-19 10:03:09
- Rxke
- Member
- From: Belgium
- Registered: 2003-11-03
- Posts: 3,669
Re: Letter To Beagle - Find Life?
Anybody read Stuart Atkinson's Letter to Beagle?
He claims Beagle will find life. Bold predictions, but if one probe can do it, it will be Beagle.
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#2 2003-12-19 11:31:22
- Josh Cryer
- Moderator
- Registered: 2001-09-29
- Posts: 3,830
Re: Letter To Beagle - Find Life?
I'm skeptical. 
Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.
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#3 2003-12-19 17:59:05
Re: Letter To Beagle - Find Life?
Yep, it's a bold prediction, but I just have this gut feeling that before 2004 is very old we'll all have something to celebrate. I've done half a dozen radio interviews in the last week re. Beagle 2, and every time I asky myself if I really believe Beagle will do it I think "yeah, it will," and I stand by that.
Go Beagle!
Stu
Stuart Atkinson
Skywatching Blog: [url]http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/Cumbrian-Sky[/url]
Astronomical poetry, including mars rover poems: [url]http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/TheVerse[/url]
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#4 2003-12-19 18:11:23
- Shaun Barrett
- Member
- From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia
- Registered: 2001-12-28
- Posts: 2,843
Re: Letter To Beagle - Find Life?
It's good to be skeptical, Josh; Carl Sagan always said we owe it to ourselves to be that way.
Without skepticism, we start to believe in all the old witchcraft and black magic that kept us in thrall for millenia, before the art of science came along.
On the other hand, if skepticism becomes too dominant and people are castigated and ridiculed for seeing merit in a new hypothesis or a different paradigm, just because it flies in the face of currently held beliefs, then I tend to shy away from skepticism.
That kind of skepticism can take away our originality of thought and undermine our ability to imagine and to dream. Science is good at winnowing out the bulldust from the gems in any batch of hypotheses but only the inspiration of the human mind can create those hypotheses in the first place.
Let's not let anything dampen the enthusiasm of original thinkers!
The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down. - Rita Rudner
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