Aliens?? [NASA Discovery Announcement]

tenordas said
Perhaps one of the Mars rovers hit bacteria near the frozen polar cap? That would be an explosion in the scientific community and certainly worth keeping a lid on until the scheduled announcement.

It probably will end up being nothing of great consequence, but they've piqued my curiosity!

Cassini sampled the thin atmosphere on Rhea a few days ago, then yesterday did a close fly-by of Enceladus. Maybe we'll get some details on some findings there.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20101126.html

If it's the Mars rover, it very well could be bacteria, or some kind of single-celled fossilized remain. That would be, like you said, an explosion, and it would impact every part of the science community, not just biologists and astronomers.

Maybe a biologist or something of that sort can tell me this: if we find life on another planet, do we expect it to look anything like ours? Do we expect that any life must be carbon based, or start from cells as we know them? I've always wondered that...would we even know life when we saw it?

That's not rhetorical, I'm really interested what they're actually LOOKING for.

Thorin said
I agree completely, it's just that people's expectations and imaginations tend to run off the tracks a bit. Wasn't trying to downplay it, I wait with anticipation.

I see what you're saying. Some people would actually hear that bacteria had been found in the ice caps and think "that's disappointing, where are the Martians?"