White House briefed by Mars scientists? (Earth, universe, life, see)

[Mister]

It'll be interesting to see how this turns out:

"It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more "provocative" than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface. This news comes just as the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) confirmed experimental evidence for the existence of water in the Mars regolith on Thursday. Whilst NASA scientists are not claiming that life once existed on the Red Planet's surface, new data appears to indicate the "potential for life" more conclusively than the TEGA water results. Apparently these new results are being kept under wraps until further, more detailed analysis can be carried out, but we are assured that this announcement will be huge…"

The White House is Briefed: Phoenix About to Announce "Potential For Life" on Mars | Universe Today

[sirron]

So I read the title of this thread, and I'm thinking: 'Scientists from Mars??'. Oh wait, that's not right!

Like the time I saw 'Over Forty Leapster Games' advertised, and thought, Oh Goody, games for us middle-agers. Duh!! Bear with me, please.

[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by sirron

So I read the title of this thread, and I'm thinking: 'Scientists from Mars??'. Oh wait, that's not right!

I dunno, it could explain a lot of things about White House policy...

Anybody wanna bet what was found?

I'd guess they found hydrocarbon traces. (Not too much of a stretch considering there are methane planets.)

Second guess- a note which translates to: "QWETZECOTL tossed his cookies on the third planet after a bender. Boy, is he disgusting. I wonder what will happen there?"

[GCSTroop]

Well, as the article mentioned the focus doesn't seem to be centered around the fact that life was found on Mars. So, I've thought about what could possibly been found and I've come to a couple preliminary guesses, more specifically as to why it needed to be so secretive.

1. They found the building blocks of life such as necessary amino acids or other molecular structures such as that which comprise RNA or DNA but I don't think the Mars lander really has the equipment to test for that?? Not sure??

2. A lot of people brought up "oil" on the blog site and at first I dismissed it as it was obviously centered around a satirical nature but what if oil was discovered? It could mean one of a couple of things. Either oil is produced naturally within a planet as some people suggest OR Mars was teeming with life for hundreds of millions of years and all of the decaying carbon has turned into a form of crude oil. That would be an enormous find.

3. Amelia Earhart

4. They've found A LOT more water than they ever expected to find.

5. They've found organic materials such as poop.

[Stormcrow73]

I think it's either:

a) something enormous and possibly highly relevant to current and future security and prosperity of this country

or

b) a publicity stunt

Most likely finds such as a lot of water, building blocks for life or even organic materials that might have represented life's previous presence are not things I would see them having to brief the Pres on and keeping it hush hush. Those types of finds would have been peer-reviewed first and that could not have been kept hidden. IMO it has all the earmarks of trying to drum up our conspiracy theories subsequent to several in-mission kinks that have yet again dissolved a lot of public interest.

[Stormcrow73]

Just found this: Toxin in soil may mean no life on Mars - CNN.com

Likely as not, the briefing with the Pres was to beg for the additional funding to keep the mission going until September so they can investigate whether the perchlorate is Earthly contam.

[Brian.Pearson]

That probably still wouldn't settle it. After all, there are critters living here on our planet living in extremely hostile environs.

[Nomander]

Ok, here is the facts of the issue. I will let you all in on the details.

You see, my real name is Howser, but I only found that out recently, so I go by the name of Quade. I had my memory erased by a company that sells memory implants. Things like memories of vacations and the like.

Well anyway, they had this secret agent package for Mars which allows you to have a memory of someone other than your real self. So I took it, but then things went wrong and I woke up in a cab, people trying to kill me, a towel wrapped around my head and a laptop with myself on it telling me to get my ass to Mars.

So, I did and while there I found a woman that I didn't remember, but apparently she remembered me by hitting me and then kissing me. While I was there, we were dodging the person managing the Mars expedition named Cohagen. He had his goons on me for some reason. Anyway, this woman took me to a mutant leader who had a mini oracle mutant that popped out of his chest kind of like that movie Alien. He probed my mind and told me there was something hidden in there about Mars, a great secret or something.

Eventually this lead me to finding the old mines that were shut down on Mars and there was all of this Alien technology there. I got into another scuffle with Cohagen, and a long story short, managed to activate these alien devices on Mars which apparently were some kind of advanced terraforming device that made the Mars habitable to humans.

So, there you have it. This is the big secret. I would tell you more, but that is all this computer will tell me. It seems my memory has been wiped again and I am now sitting at this computer terminal listening to myself and wearing another towel around my head. Wait, thats the door, something.. gotta.. go..