Will China Win the Race to Mars?

China Poised to Bring Home Moon Samples

With the impending success of a Lunar sample-return mission, it's worth asking: Does China now lead in the space race? 

In particular, how much more difficult than a Lunar sample-return mission is a Mars sample-return mission? Not much I would guess. So what's to stop China from bringing home samples of Martian soil, possibly with microbial life included, before anyone else? Nothing except a geriatric US space agency that lacks a sharp focus on the conquest of space, and couple of American billionaires. True, Musk and Bezos are extremely rich, but can they compete with the Government of China in a race that depends on the availability of a large amounts of brilliant engineering talent and unrestrained expenditure. 

What's more, being overtaken in the space race by a Third World country that graduates ten times as many engineers as the US is somethings that intelligent Americans must expect, particularly at a time when white privilege, transgenderism, and shuttering the economy to protect an obesity-prone population habituated to the toxic products of the American fast-food and food-processing industries from the consequences of a novel corona (i.e., common cold type) virus have become leading national preoccupations. 

Yes, it looks like an end to the technological supremacy of the American Empire and a time for the Communists again to terrorize the world. 

Related: 

ZH: China's New Supercomputer "10 Billion Times Faster" Than Google's

Martian Mushrooms? If So, What Are They Feeding On?

A paper just published in the Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science Reviews, 1, 40–81, 2019, entitled Evidence of Life on Mars? begins with the words:

Presented here is a body of evidence and observations which do not prove but supports the hypothesis Mars was, and is, a living planet hosting prokaryotes, lichens, and fungi.

Among the data presented are the following photographs taken by NASA's Rover Opportunity.

Figure 8. Sol 1145-left v Sol 1148-right). Comparing Sol 1145-left vs Sol 1148-right. Growth of fifteen Martian specimens over three days. Specimens labeled 1-5 and marked with red circles have increased in size. Those specified by arrows--Sol 1148-right--demarcate the emergence of ten new specimens which were not visible in Sol 1145-left photographed three days earlier by NASA/JPL. Differences in photo quality are secondary to changes in camera-closeup-focus by NASA. The majority of experts in fungi, lichens, geomorphology, and mineralogy agreed these are likely living specimens, i.e. fungi, puffballs. An alternate explanation is a strong wind uncovered hematite which had been buried beneath sand and dirt.

The apparent growth and multiplication of objects reminiscent of mushrooms or puffball fungi is certainly remarkable, as are many other images presented in this paper, the full text of which is available here.

But if these are fungi, then a big puzzle remains: What do Martian fungi feed on?

Fungi are not autotrophic, meaning that they are unable to synthesize organic matter from inorganic substrates. They require a source of organic material to feed on: either dead material, if they saprophytes, or living material if they are parasites. But in either case, since dead organic material must once have been living, the existence of fungi on Mars would indicate the existence of autotrophic organisms, which are capable of synthesizing organic molecules photosynthetically or by other means from purely inorganic substrates. In other words, the presence of fungi on Mars would indicate the presence of an ecosystem of at least several different types of living organism.

The first botanist to set foot on Mars may be in for amazing discoveries.

The Phony "Scientific" American Magazine, Attacks the Phony Science Guy, in Defense of a Phony Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Scientific American has an article attacking Bill Nye, the phony science guy, because Nye is not sufficiently PC on climate change. It's a case of the phony attacking the phony in defense of a phony scientific consensus on climate change.

It would be pointless, here, to enter into a discussion about climate change, since in the matter of that most disputed of scientific fields, insofar as it is a scientific field at all, everyone one, even the least technically informed, indeed especially the least technically informed, is an expert.