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Still More Evidence of Life of Mars
dirtyhank writes: "According to this article a group of Hungarian scientists have found another potential evidence of life on Mars. Apparently some groups of dark spots spread every martian spring. They say this could be caused by photosynthetic organisms."
an high resolution view of defrosting dunes in the southern polar region of Mars used in this study is available on discovery.com here
... everything looks like a nail. "We cannot find anything else to explain it," said EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGST Tibor Gant. There are actually lots of seasonal changes on Mars that make colors and things - geologists and meteorologists have lots of explanations for them.
My understan7ding is that basic bacteria and other simple lifeforms transform certain chemicals into other chemicals using energy (usually sunlight). On Earth, the process is known to work because other organisms, usually higher in the food chain, degrade the new chemical back into the first kind of chemicals. It is also believed that the whole process was "jump-started" on Earth by incredibly high concentrations of primordial chemicals in the environment, high enough that the first unicellular lifeform would have time to both emerge then spawn other lifeforms to recycle the byproducts of its activity before the primordial chemicals would run out.
So, the question is, what's the theory with life on Mars ? obviously there has to be more than one lifeform, at least two, so that one degrades what the other produces. Strangely, I never see this issue appear in any life-on-Mars theory. Or do scientists assume a form of life that simply uses energy and consumes what it creates ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"I mean, yes, we considered deposition and stripping of lighter-colored dust in a seasonal cycle related to wind patterns, which is a common phenomenon on Mars. And of course we pondered simple soil darkening due to partial ice melting; I mean, that's obvious, right? And we'd have been silly not to consider UV-catalyzed changes in soil chemistry which would occur in the spring as the UV-opaque ice layer thins or disappears.
"But," he continued, "Who's going to give us research funding for any of those? Life is our only ticket aboard the ESA 2003 mission. So, in funding terms, we literally couldn't think of anything else."
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Actualy i would call this evolution at its worst. In 2 billion years, you'd expect them to -evolve' wouldn't you? Compare it to what happened on this planet in 2 billion years... my god, those martians must be lazy ;-)
Or, possibly, things went the other way from Mars to Earth . . .
Life on Mars would be an amazing find, but if we can show that it most likely came from the same source as Earth it won't say that much about the possibility of life on other solar systems. However, if we can show it evolved independently it would suggest that life will be *really* common wherever you get approximately the right planets in the right climatactic zones (and those climactic zones aren't as precise as some people think).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
So we commit planetary suicide becuase we are afraid to contaminate a few lichens?
This is lunacy of the highest order.
Now we should check it out to make sure there are no instellar cruisers or bases under that sand. Don't want to piss off the neighbors, especially if they are better armed.
Besides, they have likely seen Our tv shows. No skeletons in our closet. We park them on the lawn to scare the neighbors.
[smile]
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The Alien
and the Shepherd Boy
A Shepherd Boy tended his master's flock of Sheep near a dark forest not far from the village. Soon he found lifeforms in the pasture to be very dull. All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd's flute.
One day as he sat watching the Sheep and the quiet forest, and thinking what he would do should he see a Alien, he thought of a plan to amuse himself.
His master had told him to call for help should a Alien attack the sheep and the Villagers would come immediately and drive the Alien away. So now, though he had not seen a Wolf, he ran toward the village shouting at the top of his voice, "Alien! Alien!"
As expected, the Villagers who heard the boy's cry for help dropped their work and ran in great excitement to the pasture. But when they got there they found the Boy doubled over in laughter at the trick he had played on them.
A few days later the Shepherd Boy again shouted, "Alien! Alien!" Again the Villagers ran to help the boy only to be laughed at again.
Then one evening as the sun was setting behind the forest and the shadows were creeping out over the pasture, a Wolf really did jump out of the underbrush and leap upon the flock of Sheep.
In terror the Boy ran toward the village shouting "Alien! Alien! Alien!" But though the Villagers heard the boy's call, they did not stop working and run to help him as they had before. "He cannot fool us again," they said.
The Alien ate many of the Shepherd Boy's sheep and then escaped back into the dark forest.
The moral of the story is:
If you tell people there's life on Mars enough time they'll start giving you cash
-- SIGFPE
Based on what we know about life what you say is fairly true. However, it is what we don't know about how life is formed and in what forms it may take that will be clincher in discovering life other than our own. We know that for life to exist in a form that we know it, we need conditions that are similar to what we find on earth. However, there is no evidence to support a conclusive claim that life cannot exist in environments that are dissimilar from where we exist. Life may very well exist on mars, but it may be in a form we have yet to discover. Scientist are always looking for water as signs to point to the possibility for life elsewhere. Maybe there is another ideal chemical combination that may also harvest life.
Evolution is not unbounded. An organism can only evolve as much as its environment will allow. This is why there is less 'intelligence' in the water. Water is a relatively unvaried environment. A lack of varied environment leads to less variety in the organism. Look at fish. They're all pretty much the same. Basically. Look at Mammals. VERY different within the Kingdom. What Kingdom has been around longer? The fish. Why aren't they more 'advanced' than mammals? Less variance in environment. More variance means more opportunity for evolutionary advancement through mutations. From what I recall, Mars' environment isn't too varied.
The temperature varies, but it seldom, if ever, gets above the freezing point of water. (NASA says the high is 59 with a low of about -184) Let's not forget that the presence of liquid water is VERY important to life as we know it. Not too many organisms can survive in low water conditions. Note though that there is life everywhere on Earth, even in the ice of the arctic and antartic.
Stop the use of force!
If you think lichen spots are cool, check out the trees of Mars.
observed canali (that's Italian) on Mars. The word "canali" means either "channels" or "canals." There's an obvious difference: a canal is man-made, a channel need not be. There were no dark blotches. They were lines across Mars.
An American astronomer named Percival Lowell went well overboard with the canali, stating that they were, in fact canals and inventing an entire Martian ecology. He wasn't some rich guy with a telescope. Lowell predicted the existence of Pluto and founded the observatory where it was later discovered.
What Giovanni and, to a lesser extent, Lowell observed on Mars is real. They were seeing huge surface features (like Valles Marineris) and the planet's covering of natural channels.
Lowell popularized the observations by turning them into, basically, science fiction of the worst sort. That's a bad deal, indeed, but some of the canali were there.
The important lesson in this story--which is highly relevant given this story--is that Occam's Razor exists for a good reason. Go with the simpler explanation (that these are naturally carved channels) until something comes along that says something wierder is true (that aliens are out farming on Mars).
Simpler: seasonal changes over more complex: alien plant-life.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
Don't be so quick to judge -- in such a short article I wouldn't expect them to go into an indepth discussion, so we really can't know what they did and didn't take into consideration.
JPL has Mars Global Surveyor images online, and this particular can be found at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/du ne_defrost_6_2001/index.html . Also included is a *truly* high resolution image. JPL's image commentary says that the features are defrosting and not life.
Malin Space Science Systems, the guys behind the Mars Orbital Camera, evidentaly have this explanation for it:
/ du ne_defrost_6_2001/index.html
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images
"As winter gives way to spring in the martian southern hemisphere, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) is observing the retreat of the south polar frost cap as sunlight falls upon it for the first time in several months. One of the most aesthetically-pleasing aspects of the spring defrosting process is the pattern that is created on the martian sand dune fields.
Dunes are usually among the first surfaces to begin showing signs of change in late winter when temperatures are just beginning to creep above -125 C (-193 F; 148 K). The pattern of spots on the dunes in the above MOC picture was observed on June 8, 2001. The location of the dune field near 62S, 155W, is shown in the color context view, which was acquired at the same time.
Dark spots and streaks on defrosting sand dunes were first observed by MOC in the northern hemisphere in 1998. Similar dark-spotted dunes in the southern hemisphere were described at a NASA/Mars Global Surveyor Space Science Update media briefing in 1999. Despite the "sensation" one gets when looking at pictures of spotted, defrosting martian dunes (i.e., the sensation that these images show some form of life, like vegetation, growing on Mars) these features are a normal, common manifestation of the springtime defrosting process on Mars. The ices involved--because of the low temperatures at these locations--are probably both frozen water and carbon dioxide, though it is unclear as to whether one type of ice dominates over the other in controlling the appearance and coalescence of the dark spots. It is known from the first martian year of MOC operations that by summer all of the frost--and thus all of the spots--on the dunes will be gone."
Just because silicon has a similar valence shell to carbon does not make it a suitable basis for living organisms. Silicon oxides behave very differently from carbon oxides in fact IIRC Silicon Monoxide isn't even a stable compound. The fact DNA even exists is due to the chemical properties of carbon based compounds, similar structures are not possible using a silicon base. The postulate that silicon based organisms could even exist was formed in a period when organic chemistry was a fairly young science and some engineer somewhere got ahold of a periodic table and concluded that a similar valence shell means that two completely unalike elements might be the basis for some form of life. Indeed maybe somewhere some sentient clay feeds off the UV radiation of a blue giant star but we'd have so very little in common with such an organism we probably couldn't event recognize it as an organism. Learn to trust chemistry a little bit more when theorizing about the existance of extra terrestrial life. We're a not terribly unique planet around a not terribly unique star. Earth has probably a fairly broad spectrum of indiginous life forms compared to the rest of the universe.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
But we have seen this before in human history, for example, the Ming Dynasty of China and the voyages of the eunuch Zhen He (Cheng Ho). China at that time had broken free from Mongol rule, and centuries of progress in engineering, science, arts, and philosophy could justify a Chinese feeling that the Ming Dynasty was the greatest civilization the Earth had ever seen. For seven voyages Zheng He captained a stupendous fleet that explored the coasts all the way to East Africa, trading and exacting tribute. In theory Southeast Asia, the surrounding islands, and the coasts of the Indian Ocean lay at China's feet.
The problem was that China was the center of civilization. There was no immediate reason to conquer and displace inferiors. What could they offer China? China had no incentive to put skin in the game. And since China's explorations were financed and controlled by the government, once the program lost favor with the leadership, all such exploration could be swiftly terminated.
Today's space craft sent to other planets or other outer space bodies are our equivalent of the voyages of Zheng He. For a generation the idea of exploring space captured the imagination of a rising and relatively rich civilization. But now the civilization is facing other concerns, concerns closer to home. And the civilization believes that it is the greatest of all time with no competitor on the horizon. The greatest science, the greatest engineering, the greatest arts, the greatest philosophy all permeate the civilization, one which can earnestly ask if it has reached the end of history.
And the civilization has a better alternate space program than one that could actually be physically constructed. Through the magic of special effects in television, movies, and games all potential space programs and futures can be experienced by the masses, the ultimate space program of the mind.
The cycles of history teach us that such a period of self-satisfaction turns into degeneration and finally collapse. After the wise king follows the corrupt sons and grandsons who cannot hold the kingdom together let alone promote expansion. The failure of this generation to take its shot at further manned space exploration means it will be a while until the next window of opportunity opens.
I think my upstream provider might already be filtering .mars. I don't get any spam from them right now.
I'm probably also missing the messages that tell us why they keep shooting down our probes. Anyone have them archived?
Well on what concerns the moc picture. This is a very general view of the place but it shows one of the main features of the dark spots. These formations seem to love craters, specially in the equator. From the equator to the poles they tend to cover the craters, and sometimes one can see, mostly at latitudes above 45 degrees, craters that have a completely dark surface.
In a regional basis, these formations possess frequently a direction, probably dependent on winds. However, it seems the are also dependent on light or something else as there is a weirdness on their location. Northern craters and southern craters tend to have these spots located in opposite directions and seem to avoid the most intensive sunlight. Besides they "rotate" over the craters from equator to the poles. In the equator they are small and not so frequent, tending to be located over the edges of the craters. Going to the poles they start to cover a weider part of the crater. In a very very weird form. Like clocks...
It is difficult to explain this but I'll try. Imagine a nearly equatorial crater with very thin dark strips over the section where sunlight is less intensive. Now "move" that crater up to the pole. You will see that the dark patches start to cover more and more of the crater and most times over the direction of less intensive sunlight. Near the poles the crater becomes completely dark. Features inside the crater become smooth.
Now this happens over both hemispheres, North and South. But if ones compares south and north craters they look mostly symmetrical. However there are serious exceptions. Craters in a place called Acydalia Planitia seem likely to those seen on Shoutern Hemisphere. Apart of this widepsread "rule violation", other places seem to conform to this rule...
That's a classical view of the planet. However you forget to note that Mars was "wiped" out from a large piece of its surface. At least most of the surface water went somewhere into space. However, considering the analysis of surface in the Northern hemisphere and taking into consideration to "internal" seas in Arabia Terra, Mars had a large body of water. Today only pockets can be seen in certain regions.
Apart from this there are indications that today's atmosphere is far from being the original one. Isotopic analysis shows that a large part of todays gases came recently from under the surface. Not milliards but a few millions of years.
Meanwhile this planet shows clear traces of huge, gigantic cataclisms. Look at the Northern Hemisphere, Hellas and the miriad of craters. Besides look at the gigantic valleys caused by mega-floods which are much more recent than the impact traces of the early times. The planet seemed to have a very hot childhood. Besides, something serious happened in its early maturity. So big that today's upper layers are simply washouts of this tragedy.
So speaking about "natural" conditions is quite hard for a planet like Mars. Of course that this may suggest that Mars could hardly be a place for Life. But didn't we have the same thing on Earth? The Moon, the pre-Cambric frost, the Permian, the African mega-craters, the Cretacian... And recently we started to know that even our historical period may have had some big shakeups. After the findings on the Black Sea, where people discovered artifacts and constructions 150 meters deep, no one doubts that the Flood, Atlantis and other tales may have a very serious historical ground.
And, well, we are still here. So why Martians shouldn't?
Ok, what is an ecosystem for you? For Martians an ecosystem might be a highly freezing and dry land with lack of oxygen and very scarce on nutrients. Besides having deadly UV rays bathing its surface.
Now we know that many organisms are highly adaptive to frost. But Mars has also has a temperature regime ranging from -200 upt +32. Well, considering the low levels of pressure, +32 might be a boiling temperature for a Martian... In fact, for living beings, the problem is the ratio temperature/pressure that gives a chance for physico-chemical reactions to produce a controllable level of heat. If heat dissipates too fast or keeps too long, then even a Earthling would be doomed.
Besides we know that living beings can adapt to deep dry conditions by saving water to the maximum. However, in Mars, we know that there are huge water pockets underground even in low latitudes.
Oxygen? Well in most terms we and 90% of earthlings are true aliens. The true pioneers of our Earth HATE oxygen. And still survive...
Scarce nutrients? Well we know that Mars is VERY RICH on surface minerals. Iron for example. And it is there in the best forms for certain Earth bacteria to use it. And if there is one thing Mars looks better than Earth, then it is in this feature.
UV. Well, why Martians should live right on the surface? Some earthlings have their home kilometers underground...
On what concerns apparencies. On Earth there is a place called Antarctida Dry Valleys. For nearly ten years people thought they were completely sterile. And among them there were several members of Viking Project. However Professor Vishniac and other scientists have shown that this was a wrong view. Life is thriving in this deadly place and even has indigenous species.