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Comment by xkjkls | Hacker News Reader

Is "life on mars", really an extraordinary claim? I guess I have a hard time seeing a solar system where Earth is so unique that biological life only happened here. I agree more proof is needed of Martian life, but what we're imagining here is bacteria/fungus like life, not green spacemen.

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Yes it is an extraordinary claim. All prior evidence shows that life is nonexistent on all planets that are not Earth. So to suggest that the planet closest to us has life is far out side the norms of our current beliefs about how frequently life appears.

Attempting to extrapolate off a sample size of n=1 is dangerous. I think that puts this in the “requires extraordinary proof” bucket. Especially when considering how many times we’ve looked but failed to find proof of extraterrestrial life.

But the Earth is entirely unique in the solar system for almost everything we know is important for life - especially liquid water (maybe with some exceptions on a few moons of Jupiter) and temperatures above freezing.

The Earth is not only unique in the solar system. We are located in a radioactively calm corner of the Milky Way, in a single-star system (not that common) with planets rotating in stable, non-intersecting orbits. And that's just the beginning of the factors that make the Earth so unique.

So the next time you take that sip of coffee in the morning, just know that you can't do that for millions of light years around you - or maybe anywhere.

All previous evidence of life on Mars (which there have been a lot of claims about) have proven false. (Including similar claims about potential evidence based on rovers). That is what makes this an extraordinary claim.

Actually it is, since we've seen zero evidence of it that can't be explained away by other means. So yeah it would fucking huge, pardon my french.

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