I don’t even think Viggo Mortenson breaking his toe is the funniest part in the film. Do you guys know about that scene where Eomer mounts his horse and his sword just falls right out of his sheath? They just pretend it didn’t happen. It’s honestly so funny everytime I catch it. Aragon kicking the helmet and breaking his toe though does suck and screaming about it IS the fastest way to ruin a date. The funniest part of the whole sketch though isn’t that this would ruin a date, it’s the we didn’t even tell Elias what to do. We just played that scene and that was his natural reaction.
Is or was there life on Mars? That profound question is so complex that it will not be fully answered by the two NASA rovers now exploring it.
But because of the literal groundwork the rovers are performing, scientists are finally investigating, in-depth and in unprecedented detail, the planet’s evidence for life, known as its “biosignatures.” This search is remarkably complicated, and in the case of Mars, it is spanning decades.
As a geologist, I have had the extraordinary opportunity to work on both the Curiosity and Perseverance rover missions. Yet as much as scientists are learning from them, it will take another robotic mission to figure out if Mars has ever hosted life. That mission will bring Martian rocks back to Earth for analysis. Then – hopefully – we will have an answer.
A photograph of Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2017.NASA
From habitable to uninhabitable
While so much remains mysterious about Mars, there is one thing I am confident about. Amid the thousands of pictures both rovers are taking, I’m quite sure no alien bears or meerkats will show up in any of them. Most scientists doubt the surface of Mars, or its near-surface, could currently sustain even single-celled organisms, much less complex forms of life.
Instead, the rovers are acting as extraterrestrial detectives, hunting for clues that life may have existed eons ago. That includes evidence of long-gone liquid surface water, life-sustaining minerals and organic molecules. To find this evidence, Curiosity and Perseverance are treading very different paths on Mars, more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from each other.
These two rovers will help scientists answer some big questions: Did life ever exist on Mars? Could it exist today, perhaps deep under the surface? And would it be only microbial life, or is there any possibility it might be more complex?
The Mars of today is nothing like the Mars of several billion years ago. In its infancy, Mars was far more Earth-like, with a thicker atmosphere, rivers, lakes, maybe even oceans of water, and the essential elements needed for life. But this period was cut short when Mars lost its magnetic field and nearly all of its atmosphere – now only 1% as dense as the Earth’s.
The change from habitable to uninhabitable took time, perhaps hundreds of millions of years; if life ever existed on Mars, it likely died out a few billion years ago. Gradually, Mars became the cold and dry desert that it is today, with a landscape comparable to the dry valleys of Antarctica, without glaciers and plant or animal life. The average Martian temperature is minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62 degrees Celsius), and its meager atmosphere is nearly all carbon dioxide.
The Mars rover Perseverance has taken over 200,000 pictures, including this selfie from April, 2021.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Early exploration
Robotic exploration of the Martian surface began in the 1970s, when life-detection experiments on the Viking missions failed to find any conclusive evidence for life.
Sojourner, the first rover, landed in 1997 and demonstrated that a moving robot could perform experiments. In 2004, Spirit and Opportunity followed; both found evidence that liquid water once existed on the Martian surface.
The Curiosity rover landed in 2012 and began ascending Mount Sharp, the 18,000-foot-high mountain located inside Gale crater. There is a reason why NASA chose it as an exploration site: The mountain’s rock layers show a dramatic shift in climate, from one with abundant liquid water to the dry environment of today.
So far, Curiosity has found evidence in several locations of past liquid water, minerals that may provide chemical energy, and intriguingly, a variety of organic carbon molecules.
While organic carbon is not itself alive, it is a building block for all life as we know it. Does its presence mean that life once existed on Mars?
Not necessarily. Organic carbon can be abiotic – that is, unrelated to a living organism. For example, maybe the organic carbon came from a meteorite that crashed on Mars. And though the rovers carry wonderfully sophisticated instruments, they can’t definitively tell us if these organic molecules are related to past life on Mars.
But laboratories here on Earth likely can. By collecting rock and soil samples from the Martian surface, and then returning them to Earth for detailed analysis with our state-of-the-art instruments, scientists may finally have the answer to an age-old question.
An animation of the proposed Mars Sample Return mission.
Perseverance
Enter Perseverance, NASA’s newest flagship mission to Mars. For the past three years – it landed in February 2021 – Perseverance has been searching for signs of bygone microbial life in the rocks within Jezero crater, selected as the landing site because it once contained a large lake.
Perseverance is the first step of the Mars Sample Return mission, an international effort to collect Martian rock and soil for return to Earth.
The instrument suite onboard Perseverance will help the science team choose the rocks that seem to promise the most scientific return. This will be a careful process; after all, there would be only 30 seats on the ride back to Earth for these geological samples.
Budget woes
NASA’s original plan called for returning those samples to Earth by 2033. But work on the mission – now estimated to cost between US$8 billion to $11 billion – has slowed due to budget cuts and layoffs. The cuts are severe; a request for $949 million to fund the mission for fiscal 2024 was trimmed to $300 million, although efforts are underway to restore at least some of the funding.
The Mars Sample Return mission is critical to better understand the potential for life beyond Earth. The science and the technology that will enable it are both novel and expensive. But if NASA discovers life once existed on Mars – even if it’s by finding a microbe dead for a billion years – that will tell scientists that life is not a fluke one-time event that only happened on Earth, but a more common phenomenon that could occur on many planets.
That knowledge would revolutionize the way human beings see ourselves and our place in the universe. There is far more to this endeavor than just returning some rocks.
For today’s edition of “Deal of the Day,” here are some of the best deals we stumbled on while browsing the web this morning! Please note that Geeks are Sexy might get a small commission from qualifying purchases done through our posts. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
While most Klingon cuisine is not for the faint of heart, their signature coffee has become quite popular, especially on Deep Space 9. This Star Trek video documents the many appearances of and references to raktajino in DS9 (and Voyager).
In a candid interview with Scripps News, Jake Lloyd’s mother, Lisa Lloyd, shared the touching and difficult journey of her son, known to many as the young Anakin Skywalker in “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.” Opening up about Jake’s battle with mental health, Lisa provides a glimpse into the personal struggles of a child actor, alongside an optimistic update that offers hope.
Jake Lloyd, who captured hearts as the child prodigy destined to become Darth Vader, has faced a challenging journey with mental health, diagnosed with schizophrenia—a condition his mother clarifies was not caused by his involvement in Star Wars or the fanbase’s reaction. Lisa Lloyd’s inverview dispels the myths surrounding her son’s struggles, emphasizing a genetic predisposition and a series of escalating symptoms that began in high school, leading to a diagnosis that significantly impacted Jake’s life.
The story of Jake’s decline is heart-wrenching, marked by a misunderstanding of his condition, leading to a lack of proper medication, and culminating in a “psychotic break” in 2023 that necessitated police intervention. Yet, amidst these trials, Lisa Lloyd is now hopeful. She tells of Jake’s current situation with a sense of cautious optimism, highlighting his ability to socialize, enjoy movies, and particularly his newfound enjoyment of the latest Star Wars content, including the Ahsoka Disney+ TV show.
Jake Lloyd is currently 10 months through an 18 month inpatient hospitalization stay. His mother Lisa discusses his mental health struggles in a new interview with @Clayton_Sandell. We wish Jake and his family all the best with his recovery. The Force is with him always pic.twitter.com/PXQANe9ejJ
As the Star Wars community commemorates the 25th anniversary of “The Phantom Menace,” the perspective on the film and its actors has matured. Fans now look back with fondness at the prequels, appreciating the contributions of all involved, including Jake Lloyd.
Imagine opening your front door wide and inviting the world to listen in on your most private conversations. Unthinkable, right? Yet, in the digital realm, people inadvertently leave doors ajar, potentially allowing hackers, tech companies, service providers and security agencies to peek into their private communications.
Much depends on the applications you use and the encryption standards the apps uphold. End-to-end encryption is a digital safeguard for online interactions. It’s used by many of the more popular messaging apps. Understanding end-to-end encryption is crucial for maintaining privacy in people’s increasingly digital lives.
While end-to-end encryption effectively secures messages, it is not foolproof against all cyberthreats and requires users to actively manage their privacy settings. As a cybersecurity researcher, I believe that continuous advancements in encryption are necessary to safeguard private communications as the digital privacy landscape evolves.
How end-to-end encryption works
When you send a message via an app using end-to-end encryption, your app acts as a cryptographer and encodes your message with a cryptographic key. This process transforms your message into a cipher – a jumble of seemingly random characters that conceal the true essence of your message.
This ensures that the message remains a private exchange between you and your recipient, safeguarded against unauthorized access, whether from hackers, service providers or surveillance agencies. Should any eavesdroppers intercept it, they would see only gibberish and would not be able to decipher the message without the decryption key.
When the message reaches its destination, the recipient’s app uses the corresponding decryption key to unlock the message. This decryption key, securely stored on the recipient’s device, is the only key capable of deciphering the message, translating the encrypted text back into readable format.
When you send a message using end-to-end encryption, the app on your phone uses the recipient’s public key to encrypt the message. Only the recipient’s private key, stored on their phone, can decrypt the message.MarcT0K/Wikimedia, CC BY
This form of encryption is called public key, or asymmetric, cryptography. Each party who communicates using this form of encryption has two encryption keys, one public and one private. You share your public key with whoever wants to communicate securely with you, and they use it to encrypt their messages to you. But that key can’t be used to decrypt their messages. Only your private key, which you do not share with anyone, can do that.
In practice, you don’t have to think about sharing keys. Messaging apps that use end-to-end encryption handle that behind the scenes. You and the party you are communicating securely with just have to use the same app.
Who has end-to-end encryption
End-to-end encryption is used by major messaging apps and services to safeguard users’ privacy.
Apple’s iMessage integrates end-to-end encryption for messages exchanged between iMessage users, safeguarding them from external access. However, messages sent to or received from non-iMessage users such as SMS texts to or from Android phones do not benefit from this level of encryption.
Google has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption for Google Messages, the default messaging app on many Android devices. The company is aiming to modernize traditional SMS with more advanced features, including better privacy. However, this encryption is currently limited to one-on-one chats.
Facebook Messenger also offers end-to-end encryption, but it is not enabled by default. Users need to start a “Secret Conversation” to encrypt their messages end to end. End-to-end encrypted chats are currently available only in the Messenger app on iOS and Android, not on Facebook chat or messenger.com.
WhatsApp stands out for its robust privacy features, implementing end-to-end encryption by default for all forms of communication within the app.
Signal, often heralded by cybersecurity experts as the gold standard for secure communication, offers end-to-end encryption across all its messaging and calling features by default. Signal’s commitment to privacy is reinforced by its open-source protocol, which allows independent experts to verify its security.
Telegram offers a nuanced approach to privacy. While it provides strong encryption, its standard chats do not use end-to-end encryption. For that, users must initiate “Secret Chats.”
It’s essential to not only understand the privacy features offered by these platforms but also to manage their settings to ensure the highest level of security each app offers. With varying levels of protection across services, the responsibility often falls on the user to choose messaging apps wisely and to opt for those that provide end-to-end encryption by default.
Is end-to-end encryption effective?
The effectiveness of end-to-end encryption in safeguarding privacy is a subject of much debate. While it significantly enhances security, no system is entirely foolproof. Skilled hackers with sufficient resources, especially those backed by security agencies, can sometimes find ways around it.
Additionally, end-to-end encryption does not protect against threats posed by hacked devices or phishing attacks, which can compromise the security of communications.
The coming era of quantum computing poses a potential risk to end-to-end encryption, because quantum computers could theoretically break current encryption methods, highlighting the need for continuous advancements in encryption technology.
Nevertheless, for the average user, end-to-end encryption offers a robust defense against most forms of digital eavesdropping and cyberthreats. As you navigate the evolving landscape of digital privacy, the question remains: What steps should you take next to ensure the continued protection of your private conversations in an increasingly interconnected world?
Attempting to untangle the web of Tolkien’s Middle-earth rights! Hopefully this will help you see where The Tolkien Estate, Embracer Group, Middle-earth Enterprises, Warner Brothers, Amazon, New Line Cinema, and dozens of other businesses fit!
