by h.akkeri

Mars photo taken by Mars Rover

There’s water on planet Mars. The news has been announced by NASA last week in a solemn press conference. Despite its importance, the finding is nothing more than a final assertion of an almost certain knowledge. In fact, numerous signs and clues have been discovered all over the past decade and were all suggesting that there’s indeed water on Mars.

The solemnity with which NASA made its announcement is disdainful. Dozens of proofs were never enough. And here we are, beholding, waiting for the “major” discovery. And there they were, solemn and perky, as if announcing the discovery of electromagnetism or displaying the first alternating current experiment or the first steam engine.

Science was once driven by extravagant imagination and subversive dreams. The scientific realm we are enjoying nowadays is the compound fruit of the eccentric ventures of the 18th, 19th century scientists. Research had no limits. A reputable physicist may dedicate a large part of his time to improbable fields such as alchemy, astrology and magic. For the sake of knowledge, no trail was to be ignored. And the apogee was when he shifts paradigms and shakes the ground beneath the established order.

Science today is more about cumulative and conform research. Any incompliant step outside the box may cost a scientist his career and his reputation. Just dare talking about cold nuclear fusion or zero point energy harnessing and you’ll be waxed with ridicule for life. I’m wondering what the waxers would do if taken back in time to witness Jack Parsons in the middle of the desert trying to open the gates of the sky with magic. Or Isaac Newton doing alchemy and spending long hours trying to decode the Bible.

Quantum theory was one of those foolish ideas. Niels Bohr and his companions received a consistent volume of spits from the scientific establishment. Einstein himself rejected their ideas with ominous fury. Yet, despite all the hatred they had to bear, their concepts were finally proven and are now a definite scientific truth. A particle can have simultaneously two states, can exist in two simultaneous places and can have a magic jump from a space-time point to another. That’s big science.

Science nowadays is trudging under the heavy weight of the academic establishment. It has lost its power of rebel approximation and vicarious openness. Instead, it has embraced rigidity and strictness. Then, behold, there is no water on Mars until we have a definite irrevocable proof that is strong enough to protect us from the risk of caustic skepticism and ridicule from peer scientists.

In fact, the presence of water on Mars is not intrinsically useful. It’s a premise that suggests other more important quests, such as solving Fermi’s paradox “where are they?”. It is suggested by probability and mathematical equations that hundreds of thousands of civilizations, and therefore life and water, should exist in the Milky Way.

Water does exist in the solar system and elsewhere. It’s a heuristic and scientific fact. Solemnity should be saved for real breakthroughs instead of wasting it in the irrefutable and irrevocable and ridicule-proof demonstration of what’s already known.