Difference between revisions of "Talk:2462: NASA Award"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Ponytail gives a rock as a prize, but tells Hairy that from an angle it can look like a Nobel. She is using the same semantics when people look at Mars photos and recognize structures or figures in oddly shape rocks. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.131|162.158.158.131]] 09:30, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 
Ponytail gives a rock as a prize, but tells Hairy that from an angle it can look like a Nobel. She is using the same semantics when people look at Mars photos and recognize structures or figures in oddly shape rocks. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.131|162.158.158.131]] 09:30, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
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:I'm surprised there's no wikilink to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia yet, in the explanation (or straight to the #Mimetoliths section, even, though that's a slightly different aspect of the same coin as the comic intends). But the rewrite I'd want to do to the Explanation is far more extensive (shuffling, mostly, with only minor editorialising and 'correction') than the time I have right now, if I want to do it well, so I'll leave this until later or let someone else grasp the nettle and perhaps add Pareidolia/similar references themselves?  (Honestly, I keep getting YouTube 'recommendations' of stuff like "We've found a pipe* on Mars!" (*i.e. the tobacco kind) which is basically just someone doing the equivalent of saying that a particular cloud in the (Earthly) sky looks like an elephant. Sorta-maybe-for-a-few-seconds-before-it-doesn't-again.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.61|141.101.98.61]] 12:39, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Revision as of 12:39, 13 May 2021

Possibly a reference to this? (I'm sure there are other examples, though.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars) 172.70.34.100 04:25, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

More likely it's this recent nonsense: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a36356445/mushrooms-on-mars-nasa-photos-life-on-mars/ 162.158.187.229 05:42, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Ironically, while many of us are still holding out for visible space fauna, practically every test we've constructed to check for the biochemical signs of life has returned positive results. Even as far back as the Viking landers, we've been sending out probes & conducting tests, designed to detect trace compositions only known to form via biological processes, & over & over we find those traces right where one would expect. From otherwise inexplicably high methane production, to complex sugars forming around a distant star, it often appears that the universe may be teeming with life, & we simply haven't collected it somewhere so observable as a petri dish, yet. As near as I can tell, the only reason we haven't declared "extraterrestrial life confirmed" is because we keep raising the bar for proving it. At this rate, I feel like we could discover martian sunflowers & honeybees, & somehow there would still be some question of "Yeah, but are they really truly technically & inarguably alive, exactly? What is life, anyway?" ... So far, I'm not aware of many chemical tests performed to check for signs of life in space which didn't detect signs of life? ProphetZarquon (talk) 08:12, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Ponytail gives a rock as a prize, but tells Hairy that from an angle it can look like a Nobel. She is using the same semantics when people look at Mars photos and recognize structures or figures in oddly shape rocks. 162.158.158.131 09:30, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm surprised there's no wikilink to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia yet, in the explanation (or straight to the #Mimetoliths section, even, though that's a slightly different aspect of the same coin as the comic intends). But the rewrite I'd want to do to the Explanation is far more extensive (shuffling, mostly, with only minor editorialising and 'correction') than the time I have right now, if I want to do it well, so I'll leave this until later or let someone else grasp the nettle and perhaps add Pareidolia/similar references themselves? (Honestly, I keep getting YouTube 'recommendations' of stuff like "We've found a pipe* on Mars!" (*i.e. the tobacco kind) which is basically just someone doing the equivalent of saying that a particular cloud in the (Earthly) sky looks like an elephant. Sorta-maybe-for-a-few-seconds-before-it-doesn't-again.) 141.101.98.61 12:39, 13 May 2021 (UTC)