We have 2010 to look forward to and, as per usual, there are various events predicted to happen this year, not to mention the next decade. Key amongst those predictions is one that I'm rather fond of, namely the discovery of life on Mars. As this Daily Mirror article points out, it's sounding like there are melted water lakes up there. Where there's water, there's a strong possibility of life. I wouldn't like to bet that the Martian lifeforms will turn out to be little green men though. Far more likely that it'll be something like microbes or (at best) a form of sludgey alien algae sitting in the icy water. It also got me thinking as to how the beloved British press would cover it, once the official announcement is made by NASA. So, I slipped into a parallel timestream where this has already happened, took a few shots and then came back and published them on this blog entry. Ain't I clever?
First up, The Independent were predictably dry in their coverage.
I scanned the shelves at the other titles. The Guardian took a predictably woolly and liberal perspective, hand-wringing over the lack of rights for the Mars aliens.
Meanwhile, The Daily Mail ran with a familiar theme for its readers.
The Sun went with a sly, cheeky headline, presumably in homage to the "Life On Mars" television series and un-PC fictional character, Gene Hunt.
Mysteriously, The Daily Express didn't cover the Mars story, until a couple of days later.
As for The Daily Star, they didn't appear to give a shit about the significance of life on other planets or the philosophical implications of such a notion, till a whole week later.
You can gather that this parallel Universe isn't much different from our own, apart from NASA being a little bit ahead in gathering intelligence data on our neighbouring planet.
This first blog post of 2010 was inspired by Anton Vowl's "Enemies of Reason" blog. If you've never read it, what's the matter with you? Go read it now if you've never heard of it, as it contained possibly the best blog article of 2009, as well as containing one of the funniest articles of last year.