Bad Astronomy

MSNBC makes discovery of the millennium!

What would we do without headline writers?

Oh, yeah. Have accurate headlines.

I just stumbled on this beauty over at MSNBC.com:

Oddly enough, that headline is completely wrong. Scientists found evidence of ancient salt water oceans on Mars, by seeing chlorides (salts) in the mineralogical maps made by Mars Odyssey. Not life. Salt.

Life != salt.

In general, headlines are not written by the reporters, but by editors who, apparently, either don’t read the articles or don’t understand enough about the topic to make a coherent – or even remotely accurate – headline. That’s no surprise to me, of course, having seen it all before.

But I guess I should be happy; at least they got “Mars” right in the headline.