The latest tidbit to land in our inbox caused a genine stir here at HQ. One of our team hails from Amsterdam, see. We’ve always considered him a bit ‘off the planet’, and now our suspicions regarding his alien nature are being corroborated by new insider information from a team of astrobiology researchers in France.
The research unit, based at the Institut des Sciences Astronomiques in Toulouse, has put forward a study that identifies matter collected on Mars as particles of salted licorice. “We were as surprised as anyone with the finding,” said lead author of the study, Jacques Bisset.
The opinion-dividing treat, as commonly enjoyed by the Dutch, has never before been identified outside of Earth’s atmosphere. This has led the researchers to the conclusion that Dutch people may have come to Earth from Mars. “We’re still not completely clear on the timeline, but it’s a very compelling idea,” said Bisset.
Véronique Boucher, a prominent marine biologist formerly associated with the French institute, this morning tweeted that she’d “never assumed the Dutch were like the rest of us.” It was she who, in a controversial 2004 paper, speculated that the Dutch are amphibious rather than mammalian.
An alternative conclusion to the newly coined ‘Dutch Martian hypothesis’ is that the licorice particles were brought to Mars from Earth. According to Bisset, however, this is unlikely. “Nobody eats the stuff above sea level – at least not on this planet,” he quipped.
Our sassy team member weighed in with the retort, “We’re not the ones chowing down on frogs.”