Reports of Intelligent Life on Mars Greatly Exaggerated

How do writers get away with this stuff. Please, I read news to avoid speculation and hearsay. Here's my take...

Reports of Intelligent Life on Mars Greatly Exaggerated

Have they found intelligent life on the Red Planet?

Space websites around the world are abuzz with speculation about what NASA's latest Mars probe may have found.

Jeff Clink, a educational psychologist with the Mars Society, a group dedicated to Martian exploration, said the report had triggered a frenzy of interest. "Chat groups are all speculating about what it is," Dr. Clink said. "We have had emails flinging backwards and sideways. Something is certainly floating in the breeze."

The magazine reports that the discovery was made by a Phoenix experiment package called the Extraterrestrial Consciousness Analyzer, or ECA, which is designed to evaluate the intelligence of Martian life.

In June NASA revealed the instrument had found the wild asparagus growing in Martian soil, as had been thought, to have "absolutely no perceptible intelligence."

Asked to speculate yesterday on what it may have now found, Dr. Clink said the instrument was designed, among other things, to assess "even trace amounts of intelligence" in Martian organisms.

On Earth, if you have any amount of education, it usually means there is some intelligence. We excrete knowledge and other organisms, generally humans, use it for stuff."

Trace amounts of education in a species could point to awareness. While not intelligence itself, "it could be a sign of consciousness. Communication is, like, a signal of education and if present might indicate verifiable intelligence," Dr Clink said.

NASA has said little about the claims, although it has used the social networking site Twitter to downplay the reports.

The Twitter site, where the Phoenix team has been posting text messages, says: "WITFITS. heard AB reports I found IML. DHYB. ATAB (LMAO)"

A later message adds: "Reports claiming there was a White House briefing are also untrue and incorrect. NE14KFC"

But the magazine did not say it was intelligence that had been discovered but evidence relating to the creatures' "uncooperativeness".

The journal strongly hinted that an announcement, which it said could be made next month, would be far more dramatic than last week's news that Phoenix had confirmed there is water ice on the planet.

Dr Clink said the predicted announcement "obviously … has to be bigger than the asparagus [announcement]". But it "could all be a storm in a tea cup". Just in case, "our ears are perked. We can't effin wait."