Spot the human artifact - on Mars!

Human artifacts are just so easy to distinguish from natural objects.  But still this is kind of cool.  See if you can spot the human artifact in this image of Mars' surface before you enlargen the image. It's just a human thing to do; leave a mark.

Mail from alternative universes

Not everybody is happy with the idea of exporing other planets for evidence of life.  Everything about cosmological biochemistry suggests that life at the simplest level is going to be pretty common in this universe, so any evidence of prior life on Mars would be quite encouraging, but sounds like this is pretty threatening to people who don't rely on biology to explain life.  And how exciting that other people (Faye Flam in this case) get such interesting mail. 

How comforting to know that $2.5 billion of our tax dollars are being wasted (sorry, “invested”) to find evidence of life of Mars. The critical clues will be traces of water. And we all know what that means. Just get yourself some carbon (and a few other things) and JUST ADD WATER, and voila, LIFE!

Silicon is the seventh most abundant element in the universe. The planet Mars apparently has a heavy dose of it. Should NASA then say that Mars has the ingredients for computer chips and laptops, with the intended implication that computer chips and laptops may have self-assembled on Mars in the past, or might in the future?

“There's almost unanimous agreement that Mars once had conditions suitable for life as we understand it, he said. If life never arose, he said, scientists will want to know why not.”

NASA wants to know why life did NOT arise on Mars? As if to say NASA knows why life DID arise on earth? Incredible!

Then, the finale. This unintentional but damning indictment of the evolutionists and origin-of-lifers and all of junk science: “Anderson said he won't be disappointed if Curiosity fails to bring us any evidence of past life. "You have to be careful that you don't confuse what you want to see with what you are seeing."

Here's Faye's response:  Hello. I’d like you to know your letter reached our universe with success. I’ve been particularly conscious of parallel universes in the last week since I started reading “Why the World Exists” by Jim Holt. This book blends physics and philosophy to explore the question of existence. There’s much discussion of parallel universes in which the constants of nature and perhaps the very laws are different from ours.
Do you have philosophy in your universe? Is your universe apparently expanding? Ours is accelerating. Isn’t that the weirdest thing? And we’ve just confirmed that our space is pervaded by a Higgs field which gives elementary particles mass. What kinds of particles do you have in your corner of the mutliverse?
I’m intrigued that in your universe evolution is “junk science”. That’s mind-bending for us here on Earth because natural selection is such an elegant process, it’s hard to conceive of a universe in which life would emerge and not be subject to it. How does it work out your way?
Your universe seems to have quite the negative attitude toward space exploration. Where does that come from? Do you have other planets in your solar system? Do you have solar systems? You must at least have Google translate, since you message reached me in English, though I think you might have a few glitches. Anyway, nice to hear from you. Keep in touch.

Oh, Faye, such a good reply.  So nice to be friendly with alien intellects, but unfortunately such minds are all too common around the USA.