Nasa have announced a news conference on Thursday. Keep your eye on the developments, could it be a big announcment?

Nasa page
speculation

I am not saying they are doing this but there is the chance that NASA will start doing sensationalistic things to get more public support since the US Govt. has drastically cut their budget. There are a lot of scientists and engineers loosing their jobs if they haven't already lost them. Those people might release speculative information in a manner that may be perceived as something more than the facts can reliably support. NASA for many years has been known to not release or state anything unless they have very strong evidence. As such they have always been highly respected. I just hope they do not go down that flashy hype path in a attempt to save themselves in the current economy.

I think it was in 96 that nasa thought they found traces of life (long dead life) in the asteroid ALH 84001 from mars.
Speculations was in general dismissed.
In november last year some experts re-examined the asteroid with
better gear and claimed that there is strong evidence that life existed on mars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001

Maybe the data is in? =)

And even so, I would be ok if they did. I never liked the idea of slashing the budget of our space explorers and researchers.

^^Agreed. It's a damn travesty cutting research spending on space exploration and science in general while dodgy wars continue to guzzle absolutely gargantuan quantities of capital. At least that's what I think.

This has most definitely caught my attention. Part of me thinks it may be somewhat of an anticlimax, like high levels of oxygen or carbon detected or something like that, but I'll guess we'll know for sure tomorrow!

^^ Yes, it's a difficult one. I am all for pure science funding, and will gladly put my tax money behind it. The trouble is that the general public needs to see results, and needs to maintain an interest. It is far from the best solution, but I'm all for NASA doing whatever they have to do to get funding.

I hope it turns out to be the announcement that makes this funding easier to get. It is the one scientific discovery I would love to see happen in my lifetime: proof of extraterrestrial life.

Saw this to..looks interesting at least.. lets hope

They will stream the press conference live a 2pm EST, that's about 1hr from this post
=)

Looking forward to hearing it.

http://arstechnica.com/s...its-dna-and-proteins.ars