Greg Redfern, wtop.com

In what has to be a social media-scientific exploration first, Curiosity, our robotic laboratory on Mars, tweeted a message to Earthlings last Friday that contained some sage advice:

Everybody, chill. After careful analysis, there are no Martian organics in recent samples. Update Dec 3 go.nasa.gov/114tJs9

— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) November 29, 2012

So why was the rover telling everybody to “chill” in the first place? You can read the background about how the rumors about a major discovery made by the Mars rover started to spin out of control from a single NPR story here.

When I first heard the rumblings on the