Sunday, January 11, 2015

Scientist Sees Possible Signs Of Ancient Life On Mars In Rover Photos



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/08/life-on-mars-photos-scientist_n_6425392.html?utm_hp_ref=science

Howard, Jacqueline. "Scientist Sees Possible Signs Of Ancient Life On Mars In Rover Photos." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 8 Jan. 2015. Web. 11 Jan. 2015.

The article "Scientist Sees Possible Signs Of Ancient Life On Mars In Rover Photos." by Jacqueline Howard is about how photos that the Curiosity rover took could prove that there was once life on Mars. If there was life on Mars it would have existed less than 3.7 billion years ago. The life would have been in the form microscopic organisms that lived in sedimentary rock forms. The main expert of the article Dr. Nora Noffke talks about how the  microbes would have lived in communities called microbial mats. There would be trillions of microbes living in a single mat.
This story is very significant to our lives for many reasons. One of those reasons is that if there really was life on Mars that would mean that we aren’t the only living things to have existed. Another reason that this is very significant is that this would mean that there was another planet that was able to sustain life at some time, and this could also mean that at some point in the future Mars could be colonized. It could also mean that there are other planets that are capable of sustaining life.  
I thought that this was a well written article that was full of good facts. There were a few experts in the article and they were all very knowledgeable on the topic. There were also a lot of the pictures that were taken by the Rover and this was nice to have because it helped visualize what all the rocks looked like. There were no errors or inconsistencies in the article and overall it was a good article.

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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 13, 2015 at 8:06 PM

    This was a very interesting article review by Gordon Hoffman. This article talked about life on Mars in the past and future. One thing that was done well in this article review was that he gave a short and good summary of the article. Another good thing was that he explained the importance of this topic. He explained how since there was most likely some living organism on Mars, that this could lead to an expansion of humans in space. A third thing that Gordon did well is have a good flow in his article review. One thing that Gordon could have done better was the font. I could not read this at first but I copied and pasted it onto a word document and increased the font size. This was the only way I could read it. Another thing that Gordon could have improved is the grammar. There were a few instances where the grammar was incorrect. One thing that I learned from this article and I found very interesting was that the scientists are not very sure on how long ago the organisms lived. It was a very long range of 3.7 billion years ago. Overall this was a very good article review

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 14, 2015 at 10:45 PM

    I learned a lot from Richard Hoffman’s review of the article, “Scientist Sees Possible Signs of Ancient Life on Mars in Rover Photos.” I liked Gordon’s explanation of how these findings are important to our society. He included lots of reasons that really broadened my view of the importance of this topic. I also enjoyed Gordon’s critique of the article. He included the facts that the actual article included both expert quotes and pictures, which was helpful as now I know that, if I am interested, I can find valuable information in the article. A third thing I liked was that Gordon explained the more complicated terms, such as microbial mat. I did not know what these were, and it was helpful to learn how these organisms could possibly live. One thing I didn’t like about Gordon’s review was the font. Like Harry, I could not read it without getting a headache. I appreciate the concept of having a space-themed font for an article about space, but it was too distracting. Another thing that I think Gordon could have done would be to include some expert quotes in his review. I feel as if quotes from real scientists would add a new point of view and give valid scientific information, which would persuade readers more to agree with Gordon’s point of view. I did not know that there was life even remotely possible on Mars, and this knowledge will quite possibly affect our adult lives heavily, with global warming.

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