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Water on Mars - Clues to Life?

Posted by timothy on from the red-juicy-planet dept.

PHPee writes: "Reports of water on Mars say that huge amounts of water gushed through the surface of the red planet fairly 'recently'. (Recently being as little as 10 million years ago) This is big news, because it may lead to finding some simple forms of life on the planet. For more info, check out: (story #1) and (story #2)."

7 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Alien bacteria by Mattygfunk · · Score: 4, Informative
    Wired is also covering the story.

    Apart from being fastinating and a sign that further evolved life forms may exist, are there any potential advantages for finding extraterestrial bacteria?

    1. Re:Alien bacteria by GSV+NegotiableEthics · · Score: 2, Informative
      The problem with proteins is that they're rather too complex to have formed by the kind of accident that the creationists (and panspermist steady-staters like Hoyle) like to deride. We do know of some self-replicating short chain and cyclic polypeptides that are candidates for precursors of modern life, for instance. If you're interested, there's a good FAQ on this here A bit heavy on anti-creationist polemic, but it still contains a readable introduction to modern abiogenesis theory.

      Dig your user name btw.. what Banks book is that from? Exession?

      As a GSV I get to choose my own name <grin>. It's inspired by Excession, as you guessed. The conversations between the Minds in that book are very reminiscent of internet/usenet/webforum culture.

  2. White Mars by polkiu · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nick Hoffman of LaTrobe Uni in Melb, Aus. has a "White Mars" model where the active fluid agent is CO2 rather than water. I was impressed by a lecture he gave to an academic audience. I suspect most people (including those who fund space research) would prefer a Mars with water (for existance of life, etc), but an equal (or better) model should get equal an equal chance. Hoffman's website is here.

  3. Re:This may be a daft question, but...... by bdeclerc · · Score: 4, Informative
    What are the Polar Ice caps on Mars made of if not water ?
    The South Polar Ice Cap on Mars is almost completely CO2 Ice, and during the Southern Martian summer disappears almost entirely. The North Polar Ice Cap has a large "hood" of CO2-Ice in winter, which disappears in summer, leaving a three times smaller ice cap made of water ice (three times smaller is still bloody big, many hundreds of kilometers across and probable several kilometers thick).
  4. Hi-resolution images of the fissure. by Mortenson · · Score: 5, Informative
    Here are a few images of the fissure courtesy of the Mars Global Surveyor:
    here here here and here

    No signs of life there, some say that these ones show life: "Banyan Trees", "Hot Spring??", "Leopard spots"

    Personally, at this resolution, they could be anything, but they are still fun to look at.

  5. Re:This may be a daft question, but...... by bdeclerc · · Score: 2, Informative
    Is there any theory around about how the aggregation of the Northern Ice cap occurred ?

    Actually, that's pretty much the hypothesis people are working with today (Mars used to be hotter and wetter).

    It's even pretty much a certainty, considering the huge volcanoes on Mars. While they were being created, they would have been spewing absolutely vast amounts of carbon dioxide and water vapour into the atmospher, and seeing as how the atmospheric pressure and temperatures on Mars are even now not too far away from allowing liquid water, it's difficult to imagine those volcanoes being created without also creating a thicker atmosphere.

    At the bottom of the deepest canyons on Mars, the atmospheric pressure is a few tens of hectopascals (about 1/30-1/50 of sea level earth) and temps can reach above 0 Celsius, enough so water doesn't flash-evaporate, but can remain liquid for a considerable time.

  6. Re:Supposing there's water on Mars by bdeclerc · · Score: 3, Informative
    C'mon, seriously, what are the odds of life on two adjacent pieces of rock?

    We don't know, over 4.5 billion years, the odds may be 99.99999% or 0.000001%, we just don't know.


    In the case of Earth&Mars, the odds are probably close to 100%, if only because it has been shown that bacteria could easily survive the trip from the one to the other, and we know of a mechanism (asteroid impact) capable of "soft-launching" rocks from one to the other.


    The life would be of the same origin of course. The odds of life emerging independently on both rocks are totally unknown, because for now we have a statistically useless sample of 1.