海角大神

In its haste to become the first newspaper to print the 鈥溾�� headline, the UK鈥檚 Sun website caused a stir last week. Not only was this headline incorrect, it was a wee bit irresponsible.

For starters, no evidence for life has been found on the Red Planet. Second, NASA has not proclaimed such a discovery. In fact, The Sun riled the U.S. space agency so much, this headline prompted NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown to issue the following statement:

鈥淭his headline is extremely misleading. This makes it sound like we announced that we found life on Mars, and that is absolutely, positively false.鈥�

IN PICTURES: Mars Spirit rover

So where did it all go so wrong?

This story stems from celebrating the 50th anniversary of the search for alien life. At this conference, findings by NASA鈥檚 Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity were reviewed. One of these findings was the tantalizing discovery of sulfates by the rover in 2004. Where there鈥檚 sulfates, water once existed. Where there鈥檚 water, life might have existed.

In an exciting twist to this discovery, scientists studying sulfate deposits on Earth (known as gypsum) were asked by scientists in the Mars Program to investigate terrestrial gypsum deposits more closely. Up until now, it was thought that gypsum contained no fossils, but on closer inspection it turns out that ancient gypsum deposits from the Mediterranean Sea (dated to about 6 million years old 鈥� when the sea was actually dry) are stuffed full of microscopic fossils of algae and phytoplanktons.

So, on Mars we have sulfates. On Earth we have sulfates (gypsum) full of fossils of aquatic microscopic life. If we know the terrestrial deposits of gypsum contain fossils of basic life forms, perhaps sulfate deposits on Mars would be a good place to start looking for basic ancient extraterrestrial life.

Of course, for the tabloid newspaper, these Martian sulfate deposits became 鈥減ond scum鈥� and therefore 鈥渆vidence鈥� for life on Mars.

In actuality, the text of The Sun article wasn鈥檛 that misleading and actually did a good job of reporting the science (apart from the 鈥減ond scum鈥� bit). Unfortunately, the title of the article let the rest of the article down, ultimately undermining the journalists鈥� work.

But, coming from the same publication that printed the silly 鈥溾�� article from 2008, the 鈥淓vidence for life on Mars鈥� headline is pretty tame.

Now, time for the same news with a more appropriate headline by Irene Klotz on Discovery News: 鈥溾��

Thanks to Astroengine.com reader Judy Mason for inspiring this post.

Ian O'Neill blogs at AstroEngine.

View all of the AstroEngine posts on the Monitor.

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Related

Blog: Ancient lake shore on Mars: Primo spot for hunting signs of past life?

Blog: Mars methane: from microbes or minerals?

British tabloid finds life on Mars. NASA disagrees.

IN PICTURES: Mars Spirit rover