Too much wishful thinking on my part. It now seems the Space.com report on the evidence for life on Mars was a fraud. I wondered why NASA, or anyone working with or for NASA would go this far out on a limb when up to this point, NASA has done everything possible to not make any statements that suggest definitive evidence of life. One would suspect that a photo of a Martian wearing Nike shoes and holding a "We Love Michael Jordan" sign would be reported as "strong evidence supporting the possibility of some form of biological activity." I didn't see anything in the report that would suggest any evidence more definitive that what had been previously reported, but then again, popularized scientific articles generally lack detail. I had hoped that I would hear more on this from my back channel sources after the Nature article appeared. Unfortunately, that part of the story was an absolute lie: nothing has been submitted to Nature.

Ah well. NASA (or the Chinese, or somebody) will send a probe that can drill and examine some deep cores. That will answer a lot of questions. I just hope I can hang on long enough to see it.

Back to work.