Rumor, Rumor (Oh it's Gotta be True!)

For the last day or so there have been rumors floating around the interwebs that the Mars Phoenix team has "consulted" with the White House prior to some announcement of some sort of new and intriguing data of some sort. It is very tempting to speculate. (It's even more tempting to script out a scenario of Shrub being utterly baffled by the idea of another planet: "Hunh. Well that's real inneresting. Any oil there?")

Here's what we know: The TEGA instrument may be capable of recognizing organic material, but it's not capable of detecting life. We've already determined that the soil chemistry is such that it could support some kinds of plants (asparagus was the example given repeatedly). The microscope is of sufficient power and resolution that it would be able to identify bacteria if they were present, but spokesmen are saying that bacteria have not been spotted. Water was positively identified in the TEGA earlier this week. That can be taken as exciting, but it's really just a final confirmation of something we knew pretty well from a number of other lnes of evidence. So what's the upcoming announcement? Aviation Week weighs in with a reasonable take. The article says the announcement will probably about the middle of the month, or possibly as late as early September if further confirmation and testing is required.

BTW, anybody recognize the source of the post title?