The Squirrel on Mars

[Bomb20]

Thought: If there were squirrels then there would be stuff that squirrels eat and there would be things that eat squirrels.

I will solve the problem now: It is a stonebiter, unlike squirrels this animal is eating stones. And there are plenty of stones there. So, no need for further arguments.

[Michal Z]

It closely resembles an arctic lemming. Some people theorize that the mars rover is actually roving the Canadian arctic. This photo is discussed about halfway through the video below. Also presented are some rover photos which appear to show walrus bones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af7Ye2BIq88

I don't necessarily subscribe to this theory, but I don't discount the possibility.

There are people in this world, given a cheque of a few billion dollars to go to mars, would rather spend a few million on an earth rover with a pink tinted webcam and pocket the remainder.
Also, NASA's guy at the beginning of the video; I'll just say that I wouldn't buy a used car from him.

[tholden]

You might have noticed something, i.e. that they only spoke of two possibilities in the video, i.e. that either there actually was a small rodent on Mars, which is obvious enough to me but which they did not want to entertain, or that the image itself is from Northern Canada and not Mars.

I would rule out the possibility of total fraud and the image coming from Canada simply due to the volume of MSL images and the fact that pretty nearly all of them show landscapes unlike anything seen on Earth.

But nobody in the video was enough of a loser or goofball to try to claim that an obvious and clear image of a small rodent was actually just a rock.

[JHL]

But nobody in the video was enough of a loser or goofball to try to claim that an obvious and clear image of a small rodent was actually just a rock.

Personally, I'm not sure how anybody with a grasp of reason is enough of a "loser or goofball" to try to claim that an obvious and clear image of rock is actually a small lungless rock-eating rodent.

[orrery]

If Darwin's theory can't account for it then perhaps we should expand on our understanding of life's adaptive capability.

Consider for instance, the Astrobiological model of Evolutionary Metamorphosis as promoted by Rhawn Joseph

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EZyFzk ... 8206BE11EE

Regarding life on Mars http://cosmology.com/LifeOnMarsStudy1.html

[Grey Cloud]

[quote="orrery"]If Darwin's theory can't account for it then perhaps we should expand on our understanding of life's adaptive capability.
Fair comment but it is highly unlikely that an alien lifeform would end up looking just like a North American grey squirrel just so a bunch of squirrely North Americans can spot it.

(Your assumption that life adapts is very Darwinian )

[tholden]

Funny thing... There is a natural evolutionist bias in nearly all science fiction. If you were to believe that life had evolved on Mars or some other body in isolation from our own planet, then you would expect living creatures you'd find there to be very weird indeed.

In real life however, what we're finding on Mars is very much more like what a religious person would anticipate, i.e. just ordinary kinds of people and animals.

[tholden]

https://lookaside.fbsbx.com/file/Mars_I ... gYE4EGDrEQ

https://lookaside.fbsbx.com/file/Mars_I ... 04AsDjo98A

[orrery]

If Darwin's theory can't account for it then perhaps we should expand on our understanding of life's adaptive capability.
Fair comment but it is highly unlikely that an alien lifeform would end up looking just like a North American grey squirrel just so a bunch of squirrely North Americans can spot it.

(Your assumption that life adapts is very Darwinian )

Oh not at all, according to the Astrobiological Theory of Evolutionary Metamorphosis and Panspermia .... similar life forms will always evolve because DNA unravels through introns in a programmed fashion to evole the same basic life forms on every world throughout the universe.

[JHL]

Funny thing... There is a natural evolutionist bias in nearly all science fiction. If you were to believe that life had evolved on Mars or some other body in isolation from our own planet, then you would expect living creatures you'd find there to be very weird indeed.

In real life however, what we're finding on Mars is very much more like what a religious person would anticipate, i.e. just ordinary kinds of people and animals.

Both of which reasons show how preposterous squirrels - and everything else - "found" on Mars are: Obvious a Martian squirrel wouldn't be recognized as such - as the lung-less space-flyng squirrel living alone eating non-existent bugs and pebbles that Martian artifact loons have conjured out the recesses of their imaginations - making their efforts more like an odd zealous religion than plausible conjecture.

...according to the Astrobiological Theory of Evolutionary Metamorphosis and Panspermia .... similar life forms will always evolve because DNA unravels through introns in a programmed fashion to evole the same basic life forms on every world throughout the universe.

I hardly think these Martian squirrels would magically evolve to so resemble lung-less space-flyng Earth squirrels living alone eating non-existent bugs and pebbles that Martian artifact loons would identify them as such. I'm reasonably certain that even these magical Martian squirrels would go so far as to identify themselves as Martian squirrels.

You can probably check with Charles himself on that. Ask him about plausible logic as deployed by mature adults at the same time, would be my advice.

[tholden]

Squirrel or some other sort of small rodent. There is no other possibility.

[tholden]

You can probably check with Charles himself on that. Ask him about plausible logic as deployed by mature adults at the same time, would be my advice.

I know at least a dozen people named "Charles"..... How many "mature adults(TM)" do you know?

[JHL]

Squirrel or some other sort of small rodent. There is no other possibility.

You can probably check with Charles himself on that. Ask him about plausible logic as deployed by mature adults at the same time, would be my advice.

I know at least a dozen people named "Charles"..... How many "mature adults(TM)" do you know?

Is it your assertion that Charles Darwin would have seen that image as absolute proof - of "no other possibility", as you definitively state it - that a single evidently legless, tail-less Earth squirrel flew to Mars to thrive in the Martian sandblaster on bugs and stones but no water, thereby to validate your unshakable faith in a grainy, unscaled photo of same?

Or is it your assertion that owing to evolution, Charles Darwin would himself take that image as proof - of "no other possibility" - that a Earth-like squirrel evolved, on Mars, to live without water, sufficient atmosphere, or known food source, underground, alone, and simply froze for his 2016 portrait? And through all of this would retain through millions of years Earth squirrel-like aspects and features so convincing that intrepid interplanetary Internet explorers would immediately find it inescapable but to conclude it was anything but an Earth-like squirrel so as to state with rock-solid certainty that, pending a blood sample or DNA test, there was simply "no other possibility"?

That Charles Darwin. tholden, the one that agrees that lungless, rock-eating Martian squirrels exactly resemble Earth squirrels through millions of years of developmental evolution? Or those responsible adults, the ones that can find absolutely no other explanation than a solitary squirrel flew to Mars where it lives on happily sans food, air, fellow squirrels, a tail or visible front feet? And that NASA is frantically shredding the drives containing all the footage of that and other Martian family squirrels scampering around the lander's shiny titanium wheels, looking for dislodged nuts, but in a fit of incompetence let that absolutely convincing squirrel-proof slide right through its press gauntlet?

I'm just trying to understand the nature of scientific proof, if you'll forgive the pun. How, exactly, does all this work, the flying interplanetary Earth squirrel or the evolving CO2-huffing, bug-snatching Martian squirrel?

How would you seriously expect Darwin to respond, given his name has been invoked as some tacit enabler of these eminent and durable scientific findings about Squirrels On Mars.

[MAG]

The entire reason for the missions to Mars is to look for signs or life, or at least an opportunity for life to exist.

If there was any indication that this was the case, NASA would not try to hide or suppress that information - there would be no gain for them in that.

[tholden]

The entire reason for the missions to Mars is to look for signs or life, or at least an opportunity for life to exist.

If there was any indication that this was the case, NASA would not try to hide or suppress that information - there would be no gain for them in that.

You don't seem to have much understanding of the US government....