Rocket scientist.

I had dinner, and a few drinks, with a rocket scientist last night. We got to talking about Mars. I’ve never understood Mars or any fascination with Mars. Even though this rocket scientist started his career designing space craft to Mars, and I’ve known him for more than twenty years, we’ve never talked about Mars. Until last night.

This is what he said:

It’s very likely that Mars is the origin of life. Not life as we know it, but single celled life soupish stuff. Life was going along just fine on Mars. Then an enormous asteroid bashed into Mars causing enormous devastation. (There’s evidence on Mars of the asteroid.)

The asteroid bash unleashed some of this pre-life soup and, because Mars atmosphere is thin, it entered into the solar system, flew around the sun for a couple billion years, and then landed, without ceremony, on earth. One thing led to another and here we are.

So we are in fact the Martians we fear. Poetic isn’t it.