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OMG... life on Mars?

Never use a small word when a diminutive one will suffice.

What?

Take a look at the strange bright light captured on the surface of Mars and highlighted in this story.

What is causing this?

A hot pixel or two? Maybe a piece of rock which has sheared along a flat boundary (like slate does) is catching sunlight and reflecting it like a mirror? A billion-to-one uncorrected glitch in the datastream from the camera or on the downlink signal to Earth?

As I've kind of hinted in the first sentence of this column, people are often looking to overlook simplicity in the name of sensation so surely this must be a beacon operated by intelligent life on Mars.

Well it "could be" I guess... but I doubt it.

Initially I looked to check that this wasn't an April 1 story but the dateline is a week after the prank day.

This doesn't seem to be a prank because the image referenced does appear on the NASA website

Now casting my own jaundiced, skeptical eye over the picture, it looks awfully like it's some type of artifact or glitch, rather than the tell-tale signs of an intelligent being or race.

The speculation regarding these few pixels speaks to people's desire to believe the unlikely, regardless of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Indeed, this almost fits the definition of "faith" (belief without proof).

How ironic that the one thing most reliant on faith (religion) is now the thing which may well be most challenged by faith.

If we did discover intelligent life on Mars, what would the world's religion make of such a find?

Most religions make no mention of life beyond our own planet and many religious people I've spoken to are adamant that we alone are God's children. The suggestion that there may be other peoples elsewhere in the universe is unacceptable to them -- after all, surely such an important detail would have gotten a mention in the Bible... right?

Of course I strongly suspect that if/when extraterrestrial life is discovered, religious leaders will find a way to explain it through the scriptures and point to it as further proof that God exists and that we are his creation.

Do I think this Martian glow is the work of little green men?

No -- I prefer to remember the wisdom of Occam's Razor.

Do I believe in God?

Not "as preached" by the world's religions -- but I certainly don't discount the possibility that life was seeded on earth by "someone".

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