Jon Gabriel wrote:
> PASADENA, California (AP) -- Radiation on Mars is so intense that it
> could endanger astronauts sent to explore the Red Planet, and it's
> unlikely that any extraterrestrial life would survive there, NASA
> scientists said.
>
> High radiation levels measured by the space agency's unmanned Mars
> Odyssey spacecraft suggest that any extraterrestrial life would have
> little chance of surviving unless it were shielded beneath the planet's
> dusty, cold surface, Cary Zeitlin of the National Space Biomedical
> Research Institute in Houston said Thursday.
Nope, I don't buy it. Life is very adaptable--I'm sure that
appropriate life forms could survive high radiation levels.
On Earth, we don't see life forms adapted to high radiation
levels. But this is because it has not been selected for here.
(Yet, anyway! Check out the inside of a nuclear waste depository
in a few thousand years...)
I see this as one more instance of the invalid argument,
"We only observe X, therefore only X is possible."
---David
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