http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/mars-rover-curiosity-discovery_n_2167207.html

By: Mike Wall
Published: 11/20/2012 01:35 PM EST on SPACE.com

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently made a discovery "for the history books," but we'll have to wait a few weeks to learn what the new Red Planet find may be, media reports suggest.

The discovery was made by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, NPR reported today (Nov. 20). SAM is the rover's onboard chemistry lab, and it's capable of identifying organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.

SAM apparently spotted something interesting in a soil sample Curiosity's huge robotic arm delivered to the instrument recently.

"This data is gonna be one for the history books," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told NPR. "It's looking really good."

The rover team won't be ready to announce just what SAM found for several weeks, NPR reported, as scientists want to check and double-check the results. Indeed, Grotzinger confirmed to SPACE.com that the news will come out at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place Dec. 3-7 in San Francisco.

11/21/2012 10:33:58 AM

three breasted prostitute!

[/fingers crossed]

11/21/2012 10:42:16 AM

They always seem to be over the top. Not holding my breath.

11/21/2012 10:51:49 AM

CERN detects neutrinos that go faster than light!

11/21/2012 10:57:06 AM

Quote :

"This data is gonna be one for the history books"

Doesn't he mean, this datum?

11/21/2012 11:13:57 AM

Or these data.

11/21/2012 11:33:48 AM

Could it be?

11/21/2012 12:01:45 PM

They found my wife's wedding ring??

11/21/2012 1:01:51 PM

bullshit cliffhanger we could've lived without until december.

11/21/2012 1:11:35 PM

i bet Wraith knows what it is

11/21/2012 1:17:03 PM

...and we'll be back, right after this commercial!!!

11/21/2012 1:20:09 PM

My guess is its something the scientists consider significant but the general public wont give two shits about. Something along the lines of we found small traces of X that show its possible liquid water was once here or shows its possible life could have at one point lived here that sorta thing.

11/21/2012 2:05:29 PM

An even smaller ipad.

11/21/2012 3:18:18 PM

I could really do without the attention whoring cliffhanger but I'm actually really excited about this.

This is exactly what the Mayan calendar predicted. History has been pushing us toward an Eschaton that will evolve the human consciousness so much that we will barely recognize our past selves. Don't expect epic doomsday shit, but something more nuanced. It won't happen overnight, but 100 years from now people will be able to look back at December 2012 and say that some significant event began a propagation that forms their future consciousness and "worldview."


Get yourself ready, watch/read some Terence McKenna: http://www.hazarddp.com/?page_id=2

11/21/2012 3:52:08 PM

You misspelled "shat on".

11/21/2012 4:09:00 PM

Quote :

"This is exactly what the Mayan calendar predicted. "

11/21/2012 4:43:40 PM

I won't pretend to have all the answers, what the future holds is just speculation in our individual realities. But I am convinced that our potential is infinite, and we are accelerating toward acheiving that potential.

11/21/2012 5:21:02 PM

No Comment

11/21/2012 7:08:40 PM

My guess is they found some amino acids or something similar.

11/21/2012 8:52:36 PM

petrified Martian turd

11/21/2012 10:28:32 PM

Methane?

Surely Someone has leaked something...

11/21/2012 10:54:14 PM

I say they're gonna overhype and underdeliver. NASA, your press relations make me sad.

Microbes in meteorites, arsenic-based life, X on Mars?

11/22/2012 11:33:46 AM

Hopefully it's Helium, because the Earf is running out!

11/22/2012 5:15:25 PM

I vote its a village of girls that will blow you for a nickle and dudes that give you nickles. Rip greg giraldo

11/22/2012 6:11:38 PM

They found the mass relay.

11/25/2012 12:08:23 AM

Confirmation of clay on mars

11/25/2012 11:37:54 AM

Quote :

"My guess is its something the scientists consider significant but the general public wont give two shits about. Something along the lines of we found small traces of X that show its possible liquid water was once here or shows its possible life could have at one point lived here that sorta thing."

11/25/2012 12:08:55 PM

NASA starting to confirm my line of thought:
http://news.yahoo.com/2012-mayan-apocalypse-rumors-dark-side-nasa-warns-003208647.html

11/29/2012 9:49:32 AM

you needed NASA to confirm that the 2012 doomsday rumors are bullshit?

11/29/2012 10:16:47 AM

NPR lied, Mars dreams died http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/11/27/nasa_mars_discovery_misunderstanding_mission_leader_excited_about_entire.html

11/29/2012 10:22:49 AM

in other news, NASA is announcing that they discovered a cloaked spaceship on Mercury

11/29/2012 10:34:58 AM

11/29/2012 10:46:14 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=MtkK3eijBso#t=40s

12/3/2012 2:24:52 PM

so what was the news?

1/7/2013 12:49:59 PM

Breaking news: The media loves to over-hype things.

1/7/2013 1:30:58 PM

Probably turned out to be nothing.

1/7/2013 2:31:25 PM

It was as many predicted over-hyping by the scientist who said it. To tell you the truth I don't know what the announcement eventually was.

1/8/2013 2:46:32 PM

There was no major announcement, just a miscommunication. The NASA guy being interviewed said that the program as a whole was going to produce data for the history books...over several months/years. The NPR interviewer took this to mean that there was some massive news release about aliens and blew his load on the article in the OP.

1/8/2013 2:58:27 PM

lol NPR FAIL.

1/8/2013 5:38:53 PM