Crusade against science heralds a new dark age

We've been staring at the dirt for so long - at the cracked earth of our heating planet, at the churned mud and concrete dust on battlefields in Ukraine and Gaza, at the bloodied streets of the US amid its bitter cultural war - that it was easy to miss the news that makes us look up.

But there it was - NASA last week announced that its robotic rover, the aptly named Perseverance, had uncovered the strongest evidence yet of ancient life on Mars. Not proof. But leopard-like spots on a rock in Jezero Crater, similar to chemical compounds produced by microscopic life here on Earth, contained enough possibility to lift our gaze to the sky and wonder.

If life once flickered on Mars - even fleetingly before the planet's magnetic field shut down hundreds of millions of years ago, robbing it of its atmosphere - it also changes the story we tell about ourselves. It suggests life is not the rare accident we've always assumed, but something the universe can't help but create.

If it happened there, and here, why not elsewhere? The implications are profound - not just for traditional religions and creation myths around the world, but also for our view that everything revolves around us. That we are unique.

If Mars once hosted life, it couldn't hang on when the planet surrendered its atmosphere and water. On Earth, life has flourished, despite climatic changes and mass extinction events. Doesn't that make our responsibility heavier now that we are exhausting the fragile systems that have allowed us to evolve?

We now live in a world where awe and wonder are often regarded as an indulgence. But if questions like these don't make you pause and reflect, you've been staring at the ground for far too long.

The scientists who announced the recent discovery in Jezero Crater - once a river-fed lake before it evaporated - are proceeding cautiously. Several claims in recent years about the possibility of extraterrestrial life have turned out to be nothing more than minerals mimicking life, or data wrongly interpreted.

The only way of truly knowing is to retrieve the rocks and study them on Earth. But that now seems doubtful because of one man whose imagination and capacity for awe is limited to the amount of money that can be made from the dirt beneath his feet.

What has been a decades-long search for evidence that we are not alone in the universe is now threatened by Donald Trump's budget cuts and his ongoing war on science. Little wonder NASA's announcement was so low-key and laden with irony.

The Perseverance rover has been collecting rock and soil specimens and storing them in sealed metal tubes on the Martian surface for the past four years. A generation-spanning, multi-billion-dollar project between NASA and the European Space Agency to return those samples by 2035 is now in doubt as Trump's crusade against curiosity rips the heart out of space exploration budgets.

Trump's cuts are motivated by his distrust of science, his inability to understand evidence-based research and his desire to fund human-led space expeditions that will garner headlines but fail to match the achievements of inexpensive robotic exploration.

The slashing of budgets has left space researchers fearing the US is entering a scientific Dark Age, with uncertainty surrounding the future of other long-running projects, including those that have helped identify thousands of planets orbiting other stars.

What Trump has forgotten, or just doesn't comprehend, is that all life was originally cast in the furnace of long-dead stars. Almost every basic element in our bodies was created by nuclear fusion before being dispersed by stellar winds and supernova explosions. Is it any wonder the heavens have attracted us for so long?

What the latest news from Mars invites us to do is raise our heads again in wonder and remember that, even as we bury ourselves in the muck of constant crises, we came from the stars. It's likely we have relatives out there, too.

Something worth pondering as we dig ourselves deeper into the dirt.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Do you think we are alone in the universe? Should we send humans to Mars or continue using cheaper robotic missions? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

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THEY SAID IT: "The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." - Carl Sagan

YOU SAID IT: When Albania announced it was appointing an AI bot to its ministry, John looked at a few of our pollies to see if they'd qualify.

"Quite the funniest thing I've read in a long time," writes Phil. "I wonder if John Howard 'Hughes' tinkered in this area, building Tony Abbott (I mean, it's right there in the name) and bringing him to market prematurely before testing was finished. The tech was more primitive back then - I think Abbott probably ran on Windows XP, which would explain the sudden freezes (famously caught on camera in the 7 News interview with Mark Riley in 2011) and irrational acts (like suddenly shoving an onion in his mouth). It would also explain why, when left to function on his own, Abbott's rudimentary programming lacked the ability to switch modes from opposition to government."

Raelene writes: "I don't usually respond to Echidna, though I enjoy reading the various topics. This one was particularly amusing in regard to the quote by Erich Fromm. The word robot was originally coined from a Czech word 'robota' which effectively meant slave. So, did he actually say that the past and the future both pose dangers of slavery?"

"Thank you, John, for identifying the exquisitely unique Ms Cash as 'human' and relieving us of the threat posed by possible cloning 'AI status'," writes Old Donald. "Her free range barnyard tones can surely only be the result of our own (as Professor Richard Dawkins has it) selfish gene."

Murray writes: "If Chris Bowen is a bot, whoever built it is a genius. How would you build a machine with a fixed smug supercilious expression plastered over its face? Remarkable."

"Artificial might be very intelligent but it lacks innovation," writes Arthur. "That is a perfect setup for any corrupt human with innovative skills as well as intelligence to find a loophole and exploit the system. Most politicians behave like bots. Press the right buttons and out comes the same rhetoric formulated by the party machine. Every time."

Alan writes: "Your missive on which pollies are AI bots got me thinking about POTUS. I had almost convinced myself that he had to be a bot, but then I realised he is actually Sir Les Patterson (Barry Humphries) wearing a second-rate orange wig."