Core Chemistry
Oliver Evison
Current Event 2
February 25th, 2015
Mars Rover Finds Stronger Potential for Life
Kaufman, Marc. "Mars Rover Finds Stronger Potential for Life." The New York Times 8 Dec. 2014: n. Print.
The article, Mars Rover Finds Stronger Potential for Life, by Marc Kaufman, touches on how the Curiosity rover may have found more potential for life existing on Mars. For lifeless chemical compounds to organize into something alive, three sets of things must be present. One, there has to be a constant water and energy source. Two, there must be carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, and nitrogen on that planet. Three, there has to be a lot of time in order for the compounds to form something. The rover has found the water and energy sources, and the key elements. Scientists conclude that at least some of the planet must have been habitable long ago. One member of the Curiosity team, Roger Summons, says that, “Findings from that rover and previous missions suggest that early Mars may have been quite similar to Earth.” Interestingly enough, last spring, several members of the team reported the detection of some simple organics that appear to be Martian. The search for water and life on Mars goes back decades and with many missions, but scientists were never certain that the carved canyons and deltas of Mars were results of running water long ago. However, with recent technological advances, the team was able to conclude that the deltas and caverns do indeed show that there was once water there. Hopefully as technology gets more and more advanced, new paths will open on the road to discovering “alien,” life on Mars.
This article holds a significant purpose. That is, sharing with the world if Mars could be habitable if the Earth ever fails and the world population need a new home. As crazy as this sounds, it is not far fetched. No one knows when the world will “end,” but if it did, people want to know if any other planets in the solar system could serve as a place to go. What scientists can be certain of is that the search for life on Mars will be neither straightforward nor quick.
This article was very well written and it included many details with supporting evidence from other sources like Curiosity team members, and other scientists from universities. This article was very informative and produced a lot of facts which flowed well with the overall point of the article. Kaufman does well to introduce new ideas that compare and contrast the original statement about Mars, and by using quotes from Curiosity team members, he brings in more points of view which can help with the reader understanding more about the topic. However, Kaufman could have brought more concrete details on the table to show the other points of view in the argument (i.e. how Mars couldn’t be habitable.) All in all though, Kaufman did a very well job providing information on this current event topic.
Oliver did an excellent job in writing his first current event report of the semester. He was able to summarize a large New York Times article into an average sized paragraph, only using the most important details in his description. Oliver brought up a very interesting point when describing how this article is important to humanity. He explained how Mars could become a new home for Earth’s population because Mars contains the three properties needed to support life. I agree with Oliver’s critique of the article. Especially the sentence where he applauds the author for writing about both sides of the argument in the article. Oliver’s review could have been improved if he had included more information from the article and if he read over his report for grammatical errors. From this article and its review, I learned that Mars was almost certainly habitable billions of years ago.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteOliver did a very good job presenting his information in an organized and understandable manner. I especially liked his introduction where he broke down what was needed to support life on mars. It made complex information very easy to understand. He also did a good job of making his review interesting. Oliver brings up an interesting point about humanity's future that interests the reader in the subject. I think it would have been nice if Oliver included more information regarding ability for people to move to Mars because he brought up the point but was fairly vague. I found Oliver’s article very interesting, I learned that there could have previously been life on Mars. Overall, Oliver did a very good job of presenting this information.