We all know this one, don't we?

You try to start a conversation about something you enjoy, but no one will engage. You try to discuss something you've been hearing about on the news for months, but it's as though everyone around you is completely oblivious to even the most ground-breaking events that rock our world. Yet you persevere. Every now and then, sometimes just in a Wal-Mart or a museum, out traveling, you meet another of your kind, someone who understands the T-shirt you're wearing or knows that EU doesn't stand for European Union. And then, after a brief feeling of elation at discovering a surviving member of your species, it's back to same old, same old.

Either you're that guy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or you're a Star Wars fan. The difference is, if you're the latter, your situation gets progressively better over time, because the more time passes, the closer we get to things like Clone Wars, TFU, Celebration V, and, whenever they stop fighting over the script, Fanboys. Meanwhile, there's yet more to be happy about, because a near neighbor of ours has just recently revealed the answer to a long-standing question, once and for all: what we believe to be water ice has been found on Mars.
Water ice at the Martian poles is significant for two reasons. Both rely on the fact that life requires water. The first is that, if water ice can be found in large quantities in permafrost near the planet's surface, it implies that there was once running liquid water on Mars, indicative of an Earth-like climate. Such a climate could possibly have been conducive to life, and it is yet possible that there is undiscovered life on Mars, living or fossilized. Part of the new Pheonix lander's mission is to search for such life right now, and hopefully find it. What a day that would be. The second reason for water ice's importance is colonization. Lots of ice means lots of water that can be used by human settlers on Mars in the future. It will make our stay on Mars much easier and more feasible. So, thanks to the Pheonix lander, in addition to all the awesome Star Wars stuff on the way, you might just see some manned missions to the Red Planet in the future, or, if we're really lucky, news that we're not alone.