Clarification could come, however, by seeking out Mars-like surfaces on Earth and studying what, if anything, lives there. Mars is very cold and very dry but, of the two, the dryness is the more serious obstacle: water is crucial to known life. The driest place on Earth is the Atacama desert in Chile, and for years astrobiologists have been sifting the soil there, looking for hardy microbes able to eke out an existence in the hyper-arid terrain. For a while it looked as if no life whatsoever could withstand the desiccating conditions of the Atacama’s core, but then in 2006 a visiting chemist from the University of Lleida in Spain, Jacek Wierzchos, made a chance discovery.
via The key to life on Mars may well be found in Chile | Paul Davies | Comment is free | The Guardian.
Tonight, another mission to Mars (un-human-ed?). I hope to go to Mars, or perhaps, that we will get to Mars before the end of this life.
And, I hope to see the first church established on Mars. Shoot, send me. I’ll go. Would love too.
the Right Rev. Joel, First United Methodist Church of Mars.
Dude….
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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