Mars Transcript

From NMC-Campus

[edit] "Life on Mars?"

Troy McLuham (International Spaceflight Museum) at the Malcolm B. Brown Library, Oct 21, 4:00 PM SLT

[15:52] Larry Pixel: "Life on Mars?" by Troy McLuham of the International Space and Flight Museum begins in 10 min at the Malcolm B. Brown Library -- please join us!

[15:59] Sitearm Madonna: I rekkanize that library behind us I think.. saw a DVD about the Viking paper forgery controversy

[16:00] Sitearm Madonna rummages in inventory for antennae to wear to honor the Speaker Mr. McLuhan

[16:00] Lyr Lobo grins

[16:00] Larry Pixel: We'll be beginning the "Life on Mars" program in just a few minutes....

[16:00] Sabane Talamasca: :)

[16:01] Sabane Talamasca: edges closer to sitearm

[16:01] Sabane Talamasca: hehe

[16:01] Kalisten VanDornan: Hello, Larry! Nice to meet you. I'm Kalisten.

[16:01] Sitearm Madonna: hee heeeee

[16:01] Sitearm Madonna: ty !

[16:01] Kalisten VanDornan: Thanks for having this.

[16:01] Sitearm Madonna: perfect :)

[16:01] Motorato Ware: ok, there yoiu are.

[16:01] Larry Pixel: so as we are lettign folks ather, how about a roudn about of where folks are from?

[16:02] Larry Pixel: I am in Austin Texas

[16:02] Sitearm Madonna: I think we should all have antennae

[16:02] Kalisten VanDornan: Larry - er, nevermind that part in my profile about vamps... Rp suspended to that degree here for now. :)

[16:02] Sabane Talamasca: who wants some entennae? Ive got an unlimited supply

[16:02] Larry Pixel: he he

[16:02] Kalisten VanDornan: ./me is from Protland, OR

[16:02] Larry Pixel: just dressed up for the after party...

[16:02] You: Colorado *smiles*

[16:03] Sabane Talamasca: Puts his bag of entenai back in his pocket

[16:03] Lorelei Junot: Larry and Troy are you ready to get started

[16:03] Troy McLuhan: Yes

[16:03] Sitearm Madonna hands out Sabantennae indiscriminantly

[16:03] Percival Ogg: Thanks Sabane

[16:03] Lorelei Junot: I am Lorelei Junot with Info Island and pleased to be working in the NMC Library

[16:03] Larry Pixel: Please join me in welcoming a very good friend of the NMC Campus, Troy McLuham of the International Space Museum!

[16:03] Sitearm Madonna: Yay!

[16:03] Lorelei Junot: It is my pleasure to introduce Troy McLuhan of the International Space and Flight Museum

[16:03] Larry Pixel: Take it away Troy!!

[16:04] Sitearm Madonna gave you Alien Antenai.

[16:04] Larry Pixel: or Lorilei rather!

[16:04] Lorelei Junot: He has also had a pivotal role in developing the Info Island Science Center and the library itself. Thank you Troy! You are one of the innovators of SEcond Life

[16:04] Troy McLuhan: Hi

[16:05] Bill Friis: Howdy.

[16:05] Troy McLuhan: First, I'd like to thank Lorelei for inviting me to speak today

[16:05] Troy McLuhan: I'd also like to applaud the NMC for organizing this great Symposium on the Impact of Digital Media

[16:05] Troy McLuhan: I've been giving presentations at the International Spaceflight Museum for the past 6 months or so

[16:05] Troy McLuhan: Some people say that the idea of a presentation in SL is silly, because SL is capable of so much more

[16:05] Troy McLuhan: but I figured I'd start with the familiar, and in doing so I've learned that even presentations have many qualitative differences in SL

[16:05] Troy McLuhan: For starters, I quickly discovered that in SL, the audience participates more

[16:06] Troy McLuhan: (Is that because they are at home in their pajamas or because of the anonymity that SL affords?)

[16:06] Bill Friis: Just friendlier

[16:06] Troy McLuhan: So: Feel free to interrupt, make comments or ask questions during this presentation and discussion. I find those are part of what makes SL presentations so much fun

[16:06] Troy McLuhan: Today I'm going to address the age-old question "Is there life on Mars?"

[16:06] Troy McLuhan: If you are alive and from Mars, please say so. Then we can just jump to the questions and answers part

[16:06] Sabane Talamasca: ..

[16:07] Troy McLuhan: In 2005, the Steven Spielberg movie "War of the Worlds" swept through cinemas everywhere and became the 4th highest grossing movie that year

[16:07] Troy McLuhan: It was the fourth film based on H. G. Wells' eponymous novel about Martians invading the Earth

[16:07] Troy McLuhan: War of the Worlds has also been adapted into a musical version, a TV series, an arcade game, a computer game, a similar novel (with the invasion in 2005), and a graphic novel

[16:07] Katrina Bixby: ty

[16:07] Troy McLuhan: Oh, and don't forget the 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles, which caused widespread panic among people who thought the invasion was for real

[16:09] Troy McLuhan: Heh

[16:09] Troy McLuhan: The 1938 Martian invasion wasn't for real

[16:09] Troy McLuhan: (Or at least that's the *official* story...)

[16:09] Troy McLuhan: So why are we so fascinated with War of The Worlds?

[16:10] Troy McLuhan: The prospect of alien life is both awe-inspiring and scary

[16:10] Troy McLuhan: Awe-inspiring because it would mean that we Earthlings aren't the only life in the universe

[16:10] Troy McLuhan: Scary because we humans are capable of so much. Might alien life be similarly capable, or even *more* so?

[16:10] Troy McLuhan: The prospect of life on Mars is made even more fascinating by the fact that Mars is so close to Earth

[16:10] Troy McLuhan: We can send spacecraft to Mars in 6 months or less... it's practically on our doorstep!

[16:11] Troy McLuhan: This great sunset photo looks like it might have been taken in the desert

[16:11] Troy McLuhan: You can see distant hills through the haze

[16:11] Troy McLuhan: In fact, it was taken by the Spirit rover on Mars last year

[16:11] Troy McLuhan: It's a great illustration of how Mars is a place not so different from Earth

[16:11] Troy McLuhan: Mars has an atmosphere, seasons, polar caps that come and go, dust storms...

[16:11] Katrina Bixby: greetings admiral

[16:12] Troy McLuhan: Welcome!

[16:12] Troy McLuhan: For those who just arrived, feel free to ask questions or make comments at any time

[16:12] Troy McLuhan: On a hot day, the surface even gets up to room temperature (20 Celsius, 68 Fahrenheit)

[16:12] Troy McLuhan: (on Mars)

[16:13] Kari Meadowbrook: I was Halloween Costume shopping.

[16:13] Kari Meadowbrook: Nice teeth Larry.

[16:13] Troy McLuhan: :)

[16:13] Troy McLuhan: In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was widely believed that Mars had canals

[16:13] Troy McLuhan: This map, drawn by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli in the late 1800s, clearly shows the canals of Mars

[16:14] Troy McLuhan: Schiaparelli called them "canali" (in Italian), which can be translated as "canals", "channels", or "gullies"

[16:14] Troy McLuhan: Some reputable astronomers, like Percival Lowell, believed the canals were built by a Martian civilization

[16:14] Troy McLuhan: (Canals were all the rage back in the late 1800s... that's when the Suez Canal and Panama Canal got dug)

[16:14] Troy McLuhan: Not all astronomers saw canals on Mars. Some even showed how they might be an optical illusion

[16:14] Troy McLuhan: In 1924, Earth and Mars came very close to each other, so a campaign was organized to listen for radio signals from Mars. It was inconclusive

[16:15] Troy McLuhan: In 1956, the Mariner 4 spacecraft flew by Mars and took photos

[16:15] Troy McLuhan: The photo on the lower left is one such photo - the first photo of another planet taken from deep space

[16:15] Bill Friis: 1956?

[16:16] Troy McLuhan: Hmm, not that early (Sputnik was in 1957)

[16:16] Troy McLuhan: The photos from Mariner 4 showed us that there are, in fact, no Martian canals...

[16:16] Troy McLuhan: which is a pity, since some people spent a lot of time naming them all!

[16:16] Troy McLuhan: Mariners 6 and 7 flew by Mars in 1969 and Mariner 9 went into orbit around Mars in 1971

[16:17] Troy McLuhan: The Mariners found that the atmosphere of Mars is very thin (6 millibars) and consists mostly of carbon dioxide (95%)

[16:17] Troy McLuhan: The Mariners also found that Mars doesn't have much of an ozone layer, so lots of ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun hits the surface,

[16:17] Troy McLuhan: making it a nasty place for life (particularly micro-organisms like those on Earth)

[16:18] Kalisten VanDornan: I guess "IS there life and Mars" and "WAS there life on Mars" are two different questions...?

[16:18] Troy McLuhan: Yes, indeed

[16:18] Troy McLuhan: There may have been life on Mars once, but not today

[16:18] Troy McLuhan: The photo on the lower right was taken by Mariner 9. It shows an intricate network of valleys that may have been carved by flowing water

[16:19] Troy McLuhan: (In fact, that photo shows part of Valles Marineris, the huge valley of Mars, which is named after Mariner)

[16:19] Troy McLuhan: In 1976, NASA landed two robotic spacecraft on Mars - the Viking Landers

[16:19] Troy McLuhan: (The International Spaceflight Museum has a life-sized Viking Lander model made by Kanker Greenacre. The two landers were identical.)

[16:19] Troy McLuhan: The Viking Lander mission included three biological experiments designed to look for the presence of life in the soil

[16:19] Troy McLuhan: There were also cameras which could see any nearby pine trees or horses

[16:20] Troy McLuhan: In fact, Cory Linden's dad worked on some of those cameras!

[16:20] Bill Friis: Cool.

[16:20] Troy McLuhan: This photo was taken by Viking 2

[16:20] Troy McLuhan: These images were taken by Viking 1. The bottom one shows the trenches that Viking 1 dug with its sampler arm

[16:21] Troy McLuhan: The sampler arm would get scoops of Martian soil and dump them into various containers on the lander for analysis, including the biological experiments

[16:21] Troy McLuhan: I'm not going to go into the details of the Viking biological experiments - I could easily devote a whole presentation to them

[16:21] Troy McLuhan: The bottom line is that the biological experiments were inconclusive: there may well be micro-organisms (e.g. under the surface)

[16:21] Eiseldora Reisman: lori

[16:21] Troy McLuhan: More observations and experiments are needed

[16:22] Troy McLuhan: I think I wasn't picking up some of your chat

[16:22] Troy McLuhan: ok...

[16:22] Troy McLuhan: The Viking Landers were the last Mars landers to directly test the soil for signs of life

[16:23] Troy McLuhan: Subsequent Mars missions have focused on finding evidence of water, which is thought to be necessary for life

[16:23] Troy McLuhan: Is it?

[16:23] Troy McLuhan: And what is "life"?

[16:24] Troy McLuhan: In 1976, Viking Orbiter 1 took photos of Mars and one of them was the photo on the left

[16:24] Sitearm Madonna: /they used that image in Dune the Sci Fi version :)

[16:24] Troy McLuhan: Oh? I didn't realize that

[16:24] Lyr Lobo smiles

[16:24] Sitearm Madonna: /:)

[16:24] Troy McLuhan: which some say looks just like a human face, and therefore must have been built by a Martian civilization

[16:24] You: / the mouse shadow..mua'dib

[16:24] Troy McLuhan: The higher-resolution photo on the right was taken by the Mars Global Surveyor in 2001 and reveals that the feature is probably just a mesa

[16:25] Sitearm Madonna: /Mars is in our cultural whosis - genes - archetype

[16:25] Troy McLuhan: Eurpoe's Mars Express now has even higher-reslolution photos

[16:25] Troy McLuhan: Still....

[16:25] Troy McLuhan: This meteorite was found in the Allen Hills area of Antarctica in 1984 and is known as ALH84001 (Allen Hills 1984 #1)

[16:25] Kalisten VanDornan: Isn't it true that recent hi-res photos from the Brittish satellite show pyramids around the face?

[16:25] Troy McLuhan: It is thought to have been blasted off the surface of Mars some 15 million years ago, after which it traveled through space and crashed to Earth some 13,000 years ago

[16:26] Troy McLuhan: ALH84001 became famous in 1996 when Dr. David McKay of NASA published an article in the journal _Science_...

[16:26] Troy McLuhan: When looked at under a scanning electron microscope, structures that look like nanobacteria fossils can be seen

[16:26] Troy McLuhan: Fossilized bacteria from Mars?

[16:26] Troy McLuhan: Even U.S. President Bill Clinton went on TV to give a speech about it!

[16:26] Troy McLuhan: But in the final analysis, it's unclear what formed the structures

[16:27] Bill Friis: Inconclusive again.

[16:27] Troy McLuhan: Yep

[16:27] Sitearm Madonna: "More grant money is needed.. I mean studies.. :) "

[16:27] Troy McLuhan: Heh

[16:28] Troy McLuhan: In recent years, there has been conclusive evidence of water on Mars, both today and in the past

[16:28] Troy McLuhan: (Surface features have long suggested this, but there was always the possibility that they were formed by other processes not involving water)

[16:28] Jeh Zon: Do we have enough data about the Martian surface to model it well enough for avatars to walk around? Can we recreate the Martian surface to scale with SL?

[16:28] Sitearm Madonna: oohh Jeh.. Martian Sim :)

[16:29] Troy McLuhan: Hmm, I'm not sure what the current resolution is. I'm told that it is better than what's publicly available for Earth

[16:29] Kalisten VanDornan: Google Mars is pretty neat - zoomable to... 10m per pixel? Not sure...

[16:29] Troy McLuhan: In fact, the spaceflight museum is in introductory talks with NASA right now...

[16:30] Jeh Zon: Figure that might be a practical way for humans to visit Mars. Cheaper too. And in my lifetime, etc.

[16:30] Josh Jeffries: and then you see the cheese

[16:30] Troy McLuhan: This photo, taken in 2005 by the European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite, shows water ice at the bottom of a Martian crater

[16:30] Troy McLuhan: (It's not frozen carbon dioxide, because all the C02 ice had already disappeared for that summer)

[16:30] Troy McLuhan: Water is important to the question of life on Mars, because all life we know requires it

[16:31] Troy McLuhan: In recent times, scientists have discovered lots of life in places they never expected it, like near hydrothermal vents on the sea floor (as shown in this picture)

[16:31] Troy McLuhan: Some life likes living in acid, or in salt deposits, or under high pressure, or at high temperatures, or in the presence of ionizing radiation...

[16:31] Troy McLuhan: These life forms are known as extremophiles, because they love extremes

[16:31] Troy McLuhan: The extremophiles show us that life can survive in all kinds of "nasty" places --- maybe even some places on Mars

[16:31] Troy McLuhan: So... there might be life on Mars

[16:32] Erami Quamar: Cockroaches.

[16:32] Troy McLuhan: And if there's life on Mars, there's probably life elsewhere too

[16:32] Kalisten VanDornan: Google Mars uses these maps, which list the resolutions: http://jmars.asu.edu/data/

[16:32] Lyr Lobo grins

[16:32] Bill Friis: Thanks, Kalisten.

[16:32] Troy McLuhan: Indeed, we now know of hundreds of planets circling other stars

[16:32] Troy McLuhan: The galaxy may well be teeming with life...

[16:32] Troy McLuhan: I wonder what all the other living things are like

[16:33] Troy McLuhan: This concludes my prepared notes

[16:33] Troy McLuhan: If you'd like to be informed of future events like this, feel free to join the group "Spaceflight Museum Happenings". It's open-enrollment, so you don't need an invitation; just look for it with the Search tool

[16:33] Troy McLuhan: We now have time for more questions, comments, and discussion

[16:33] Larry Pixel: wow ...fantastic job!!

[16:33] Cobramax Mechanique: nice lecture

[16:33] Katrina Bixby: excellent presentation ty

[16:33] Buddercup Bellambi: APPLAUSE!!

[16:33] Josh Jeffries: great job

[16:34] Erami Quamar claps.

[16:34] Lorelei Junot: applause

[16:34] Lorelei Junot: great job

[16:34] Lorelei Junot: thank you

[16:34] Sitearm Madonna: Yay!

[16:34] Lorelei Junot: good visuals too

[16:34] Troy McLuhan: So... what *is* life?

[16:34] Sitearm Madonna: 2

[16:34] LaPiscean Liberty: Outstanding & Thank You

[16:34] Kalisten VanDornan: Well, to be alive, something must be able to reproduce, for one.

[16:34] Troy McLuhan: Mules can't reproduce

[16:35] You: hmm, has behavior

[16:35] Erami Quamar: They are alive on microscopic levels.

[16:35] Erami Quamar: Mules have reproducing cells.

[16:35] Erami Quamar: The macrocosm cannot replicate itself, but mules still count as being alive.

[16:36] Josh Jeffries: i heard that on earth there may be 10 times the amount of bio-mass living in soil and under the surface than there is above ground

[16:36] Troy McLuhan: Wow

[16:36] Troy McLuhan: I read the mass of the ants is greater than all mammals combined

[16:36] Tasha Steuben: really how?

[16:36] Kalisten VanDornan: living things consume certain elements or materials and excrete others.

[16:36] Tasha Steuben: how is that known?

[16:36] Kari Meadowbrook: Insects are probably the largest group of living things.

[16:36] Troy McLuhan: My washing machine passes that test

[16:36] Bill Friis: There are a lot of things living inside what looks like rock to us.

[16:37] Kari Meadowbrook: nodnod

[16:37] Lorelei Junot: Also while you are all here the NMC library is hoping to set up a regular series of intellectual discussions such as this one and Henry VIII on a variety of topics

[16:37] Lorelei Junot: what kinds of topics would interest you

[16:37] Lorelei Junot: as we begin to plan

[16:37] Jeh Zon: More science!

[16:37] Erami Quamar: The most plausible non-watered life I have heard of is in Star Trek: TNG, when there is an uninhabitable planet with conductive crystal formations.

[16:37] Bill Friis: But literature is good, too.

[16:37] Lorelei Junot: Troy does a wonderful series of programs

[16:37] Bill Friis: And history.

[16:37] Lorelei Junot: if he willing we can invite him again

[16:37] Jeh Zon: Science literature!

[16:37] Lorelei Junot: what kind of historical topics are of interest

[16:37] Buddercup Bellambi: Lorelei, does NMC have their own stream? Talks like this could be done with voice rather than text..would be interesting

[16:37] Josh Jeffries: that is pretty amazing...no wonder there are so many ants ready to snatch up anything left on the floor for more than 10 seconds it seems

[16:37] Josh Jeffries: heard that on www.pointofinquiry.org from a woman who has studied this for a long time

[16:38] Bill Friis: Philosophy. Invite Socrates.

[16:38] Lorelei Junot: yes

[16:38] Lorelei Junot: Larry could speak more to that

[16:38] Kari Meadowbrook: Jeh, do you mean scientific literature or do you mean scifi?

[16:38] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:38] Lorelei Junot: the audio

[16:38] Schmophitt Neruda: /sorry, I have to go, bye bye

[16:38] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:38] Jeh Zon: Yes.

[16:38] Josh Jeffries: more science topics

[16:38] Lorelei Junot: we are planning a program on Marie antoinette with the movie coming out

[16:38] Kari Meadowbrook: which?

[16:38] Erami Quamar: They absorbed minerals and replicated. The complex web of electricity within each gave them sentience.

[16:38] Kalisten VanDornan: robots can meet both of those qualities of life I mentioned as well...

[16:38] Josh Jeffries: science, legitimate science

[16:38] Bill Friis: Yes.!

[16:39] Tasha Steuben: quantum physics

[16:39] Lorelei Junot: are all those interested in science a member of the science center group

[16:39] Jeh Zon: Hear that Percival, you are alive.

[16:39] Tasha Steuben: something visual

[16:39] Tasha Steuben: to explain all the interesting concepts

[16:39] Erami Quamar: Viruses reproduce and not all of them need water.

[16:39] Josh Jeffries: how about a second life exhibit that can help explain relativity

[16:39] Bill Friis: They do while they are reproducing.

[16:39] Kari Meadowbrook: That sounds interesting Josh.

[16:39] Izira Kirkorian thinks that perhaps our ideas of what is living and what is non-living are merely the measure of our limited powers of observation.

[16:40] Erami Quamar: Of course.

[16:40] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:40] Troy McLuhan: Viruses need a host organism to reproduce, I think

[16:40] Erami Quamar: 500 years ago, a thunderstorm was summoned by God.

[16:40] LaPiscean Liberty: Key Word Need as all lifw does

[16:40] Bill Friis: Woah! It's Socrates!

[16:41] Erami Quamar: Now, it is an accumulation of electricity and water particles.

[16:41] Kari Meadowbrook: Actually, it's more like... millions of years ago a few carbon atoms got together and hung out in some water....

[16:41] Kari Meadowbrook: ;)

[16:42] Tasha Steuben: sparks flew

[16:42] Troy McLuhan: Coming back to the idea of visiting a simulated Mars, rather than the real one

[16:42] Troy McLuhan: That would be fun, but

[16:42] Kari Meadowbrook: oooh

[16:42] Bill Friis: Scale

[16:42] Troy McLuhan: you'd never discover anything new that wasn't put into the simulation

[16:43] Troy McLuhan: Hence the need to visit the real one

[16:43] Kalisten VanDornan: Well, you'd discover all teh data we have to put into the sim... which is tons of news tiff for most folks.

[16:43] Josh Jeffries: lilag is awful

[16:43] LaPiscean Liberty: :) Good Point

[16:43] Kalisten VanDornan: tiff = stuff

[16:44] LaPiscean Liberty: Perhaps we can learn by creation

[16:44] Troy McLuhan: Visiting a simulated Mars wouldn't help resolve the question "Is there life on Mars?" (or was there)

[16:44] Bill Friis: Didn't really expect it to.

[16:44] Josh Jeffries: wow

[16:44] Troy McLuhan: Hi Josh, yes I used Flickr

[16:45] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:45] Tasha Steuben: but couldnt random elemnts etc be introduced to the simulation to create new events on mars?

[16:45] Troy McLuhan: That's an interesting question

[16:45] Tasha Steuben: to see what might happen?

[16:45] Bill Friis: No, only new events on simulation.

[16:45] Josh Jeffries: no room to sit

[16:45] Troy McLuhan: Even if the simulation gave rise to life in the *simulated* Mars, does that imply it is on the real Mars?

[16:45] Lorelei Junot: espin you can sit on the ground next to me

[16:45] LaPiscean Liberty: *smiles*

[16:45] Lorelei Junot: or you can have my pillow

[16:45] Tasha Steuben: mmm

[16:46] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:46] LaPiscean Liberty: Be the mars

[16:46] Troy McLuhan: How are we to accurately model and simulate Mars without visiting it to get the data for the simulation?

[16:46] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:46] Bill Friis: Agreed. We need real Mars.

[16:47] LaPiscean Liberty: Fine then its off to Mars

[16:47] Tasha Steuben: im ready!

[16:47] Shadow Fugazi: bettery pack a lunch

[16:47] Josh Jeffries: good luck, take your gamma ray deflectors

[16:47] Troy McLuhan: Great, I should get a nap first

[16:47] Bill Friis: Lot of radiation between here and there.

[16:47] Josh Jeffries: oops, they don't exist

[16:47] Kalisten VanDornan: The satellites and rovers can collect lots of data cheaper than humans.... and humans would need to use equipment if there anyway. Are there plans for amission to *bring back* sampels from Mars?

[16:47] Erami Quamar: We have radiation protection.

[16:48] Troy McLuhan: There have been Mars sample return missions planned, but none flown yet

[16:48] Erami Quamar: The problem is astronauts out on the surface.

[16:48] LaPiscean Liberty: If we go to Mars then in fact it would have life

[16:48] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:48] Erami Quamar: Dust storms.

[16:48] Troy McLuhan: Good point, LaPiscean. In fact our landers already brought life to Mars

[16:48] Tasha Steuben: and what if something is returned which threatened our survival here on earth?

[16:48] Bill Friis: Yeah. I saw that movie.

[16:49] Tasha Steuben: :-)

[16:49] Erami Quamar: They can even build up static and kill instruments.

[16:49] Troy McLuhan: When the first astronautics returned from the Moon

[16:50] Troy McLuhan: they were kept in quarantine

[16:50] Troy McLuhan: in case they brought back nasties

[16:50] Bill Friis: So, NASA saw the movie, too.

[16:50] Troy McLuhan: Heh

[16:50] Tasha Steuben: lol

[16:51] Tasha Steuben: didnt they make a movie about the moon landing hehe

[16:51] Rocket Traveler: it was a movie lol

[16:51] LaPiscean Liberty: Whats the differance between a movie and our own creation of Mars

[16:51] Sitearm Madonna: ruh roh

[16:51] Troy McLuhan: Some things on the Moon were brought back after being there for years,

[16:51] Sitearm Madonna: what's the difference between sl and... rl

[16:51] Sitearm Madonna: o..O

[16:51] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:51] Troy McLuhan: and they still had traces of life on them

[16:51] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:52] Hailey Harlequin accepted your inventory offer.

[16:52] Troy McLuhan: SL is a simulation of RL

[16:52] Tasha Steuben: really?

[16:52] Tasha Steuben: what were the traces?

[16:52] LaPiscean Liberty: There is no diversity other than our own inability to understand ourselves

[16:52] Erami Quamar always thought that RL was the simulation...

[16:52] Sitearm Madonna: / and we're off ! ;)

[16:53] Troy McLuhan: The question "Is there life on Mars?" is much the same as "Are there aliens?" but they evoke very different responses. Why?

[16:54] Erami Quamar: The former specifies a planet.

[16:54] Bill Friis: Life could be small and easy to squish.

[16:54] Kari Meadowbrook: Well, probably at least partly because when we say life on Mars we think it could be microscopic life... versus aliens... little gray guys with no mouths and big eyes...

[16:54] LaPiscean Liberty: The object perhaps

[16:54] Rocket Traveler: what defines an alien

[16:54] LaPiscean Liberty: not the script

[16:54] Tasha Steuben: yes and the other excites our imagination

[16:54] Tasha Steuben: or fears

[16:54] Josh Jeffries: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/602/1

[16:54] Bill Friis: Both are exciting.

[16:54] Erami Quamar: The latter could apply to people from anywhere.

[16:54] Josh Jeffries: good article

[16:55] Troy McLuhan: What's that article about, Josh?

[16:55] Josh Jeffries: It's about the challenges of NASA and manned missions to mars

[16:56] Erami Quamar: And the word "alien" is synonymous with the word "foreigner," so yes, there are aliens. I'm talking to some right now.

[16:56] Bill Friis: No, we are native to SL.

[16:56] Troy McLuhan: Heh

[16:56] Erami Quamar: "Extra-terrestrial" would be a better term.

[16:56] LaPiscean Liberty: So one must again look at the forest not the tree

[16:56] Troy McLuhan: You mean ET?

[16:57] Erami Quamar: ET was an ET, yes.

[16:57] Troy McLuhan: Haha

[16:57] Erami Quamar: And so was Kevin Spacey's character in that one movie.

[16:57] Erami Quamar: And Superman.

[16:57] Troy McLuhan: Well, it looks like my hour is running out... and Larry wanted to say a few words

[16:58] Troy McLuhan: So without further ado

[16:58] Erami Quamar: But not Kevin Spacey's character in Superman...

[15:52] Larry Pixel: "Life on Mars?" by Troy McLuham of the International Space and Flight Museum begins in 10 min at the Malcolm B. Brown Library -- please join us!

[15:59] Sitearm Madonna: I rekkanize that library behind us I think.. saw a DVD about the Viking paper forgery controversy

[15:59] Lorelei Junot: Larry Katrina Bixby is trying to get in

[16:00] Lorelei Junot: I have tried teleporting her

[16:00] Lorelei Junot: and she cannot get in

[16:00] Lorelei Junot: Can you let her in

[16:00] Sitearm Madonna rummages in inventory for antennae to wear to honor the Speaker Mr. McLuhan

[16:00] Lyr Lobo grins

[16:00] Sitearm Madonna: /ao off

[16:00] Larry Pixel: We'll be beginning the "Life on Mars" program in just a few minutes....

[16:00] Sabane Talamasca: :)

[16:00] HUDDLES EZ Animator Deluxe v1.0.4: New sitting animation: floating-meditation

[16:01] HUDDLES EZ Animator Deluxe v1.0.4: New sitting animation: Outrider-Floating-Meditation