Dodo Way

Mars lander discovers white material? Scientists hope for ice:

"Here's a closer look at the white material in the trench now called 'Dodo-Goldilocks' that was uncovered by the robotic arm aboard the Phoenix. The white material was first noticed on June 3 but more has been exposed as the robotic arm has dug deeper. Since the white material is only on one end of the trench, NASA scientists theorize that they could have hit the edge of a slab of ice." (Read more here.)

Where there is ice, there once was life? Are they hoping to find traces of life to simply find such traces? To what end is all this? One skeptical suggestion that seems implausible to me, but that piques my interest nevertheless: Where once there was life, there is oil.

The ostensibly humanist project of digging into martian terrain has never struck me as innocent. The very naming of the trench "dodo" suggests the death-drive of Western culture. Here today, dodo tomorrow, and crude the next. The phrase "traces of life" is suspiciously morbid.

As for the so-called curiosity of "Goldilocks," doesn't the moral of that tale instruct one to not meddle?