Life on Mars...?

No, this isn't about a period cop drama, or a David Bowie song...it is literally about lifeforms on the planet Mars. Within the last fews days it has come to light that we (when I say we I of course mean scientists) have discovered that the atmosphere of the Red Planet has much higher amounts of methane than we thought. The noxious gas seems to be localised to certain areas and must be constantly replenished because it would soon be destroyed by the Sun's rays.

Now, as far as we know there are only two possible ways for methane to be excreted into the Martian air...geological activity and bacteria-like lifeforms. Either is possible. But I certainly hope that it is proof of life beyond our wee planet. Anyone who doesn't believe in Extraterrestrial life is either arrogant or stupid....probably both. They are often religious too so that certainly fits in with the 'arrogant or stupid'. The theists who deny the existence of life outside of Earth's confines do it because they believe that humans and the planet we live on were uniquely created by god(s), and are alone in the whole of existence. Denying the mathematical impossibility of this.

But then, this skewed view of the Universe is hardly new. For precisely the same reasons people use to think that the Sun orbited the Earth, and that the Earth was the central point of all Existence. When Galileo and a few other learned men challenged this view the Catholic Church persecuted them. Several were burned at the stake, Galileo himself got off relatively lightly; he was put under house arrest for the rest of his life.

There's a quote I've always liked by Camille Flammarion; "Men have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence."