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Water on Mars - Clues to Life?
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)."
That's what all of the canals were for...
Duh.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Apart from being fastinating and a sign that further evolved life forms may exist, are there any potential advantages for finding extraterestrial bacteria?
Indeed this is great, but I wouldn't qualify it as *news*. I thought it was relatively well established that there was proof of water on Mars. Nothing new has happened since then, but hopefully we will go up and take samples sometime.
Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, is also thought to be one of the prime candidates for life in our solar system.
Truth be told, a goephysicist friend of mine told me why they look for life and water on Mars. It is to estimate the likelyhood of more life in the universe, and to determine the practicality of creating human colonies on other planets. If water and life are common, then the entire idea becomes far more practical. If water is abundant and available, then we can move out among the stars at a much faster rate than current science has estimated.
Wherever you go, there I am...
Isn't there ice on Mars? Where there's ice, there's usually something frozen (oft water...).
... oh I've said too much already...
Who's up for bottling the stuff and reselling it here on Earth?! Forget that $1/bottle outa the New York tap stuff, we're talkin' $5,000 per bottle, extremely limited supply, right off the space ship! Hasn't been touched since man kind migrated off of Mars when it blew out of an opposing orbit from Earth and
Once you sign the NDA, we'll talk... Drop an email to ac1@slashdot....
There's always much speculation about the origin of live. The three main theories as far as I know are:
1. Biblical: God created life
2. Alien: Life came from fragments of comets and meteors travelling
3. Self created: Life self created from the primal mess, which created the first aminoacids.
I was thinking, what is your opinion about us, humans being, start launching around organic materials into space. Can we be the creators sometimes? I think our satellites and probes (read, Voyager) are already travelling and carryin some organic residues around, no matter how clean we build those machines.
Sometimes I stop and I think, in millions of years our propes may crash in some remote plantets. The chances are near zero. But imagine that it crashes, some bacteries or virii survive and start propagating in an enviromentally friendly planet. If they evolve, if they generate intelligent life, will they still look for the origin of their lives, and perhaps contaminate around other planets?
Vibriting thoughs.
That we may find a form of life which simply cannot be classified by anything we have ever seen on earth. What do we do if this happens?
People expect to go on other planets and find the same lifeforms you see on earth, bacteria, and mammals, and so on, what if you find a lifeform thats unlike anything, like a gas or liquid based lifeform, or something just totally weird.
Scientists should at least be ready for it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The reason that this news is important is that the time span for geological activity for water movement on Mars has been reduced from around 2 Billion years a few years ago, down to 10 million years. If water was free flowing on the surface of Mars only 10 million years ago than the possibility of finding evidence of life on Mars increases immensely.
Just you're average nitpicker.
Well, that would have been Naoh's flood. Seems when the Bibles were passed around, there was a screwup and we got Mars's bible.
/our/ bible, they worshipped the wrong things and had the wrong commandments, and overall just really pissed their God off.
Of course since they were following
When they built the great Face, as instructed in page 23 in their bible, and completed orgy ceremony Part B, subsection 42, it began snowing
carbon dioxide and that was the end of them.
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.
We should have some major precautions in case we do find a bacterium or some other such life form when we do begin exploring mars more thoroughly. We can't have something that could destroy mankind taking root here or being used for ill purposes. IIRC, there was something about a location being set up for extraterrestrial life in a previous slashdot posting. Hopefully this spot is set up to be highly secure.
On another note, it definitely will be strong evidence for life being universal if we find living organisms on any other body outside of earth. It allows us to determine that there are other orbit zones and climates outside of our own to support life. That would increase the number of planets outside of our solar system that we would believe could support life and thus bolster the theory that we are not alone.
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
Dan "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" Quayle
(source)
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
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.
"so, what kind of event could have happened 10M years ago, leaving traces of unusual water floods on two planets?
Perhaps an alien expedition taking samples?"
Perhaps an alien expedition taking a leak?
I bet you get a lot of "Last gas for 100 light-years" signs in deep space. Then you've got to put up with the kids crying "Are we nearly there yet?!" every time you go past some insignificant little main-sequence star. Not to mention us men hate asking directions, so before you know it, you're in completely the wrong constellation.
Maran
we might actually one day hope to find intelligent life in this solar system?
finally!
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
That's fine and all, but what I really want to know is how these "simple forms of life" end up getting to Earth and acquiring jobs as managers and politicians...
The security was compremised when the location and its exsistance were revealed.
If you want something to be secure, then dont announce it. Dont even say it exsists, put the samples in some super secret underground base that no one knows about and send scientists into it, if an accident happens, nuke the underground base killing all the lifeforms
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This is big news, because it may lead to finding some simple forms of life on the planet
Like marketing executives?
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.
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.
According to Popper's falsifiability criterion, the claim that there is life on Mars is unscientific, because it can never be disproven. Thus, the only scientific claim we can make here is "There is no life on Mars" and hope that we are proven wrong.
Just some food for thought...
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I still find it cute that certain scientists believe in the possibility/likelihood of:
1. A bacterium surviving the impact of a meteor hitting Mars. The size of that meteor must have been considerable to survive through the Mars atmosphere.
2. Some piece of rock being thrown back into space, and at sufficient speed to overcome Mars' gravity and low enough to not melt because of friction against the air.
3. That piece actually having a surviving bacterium.
4. That piece actually hitting Earth.
5. Scientists actually finding that unlikely piece of Mars on Earth, in dirt.
6. Finding that that highly unlikely piece of Mars contains unknown form of life.
7. Finding a president who actually believes you are on the right track and is ready to pay for your continued research.
Out of these I find step 7 the most probable.
I think we all know why water gushed out on to the surface of Mars; one of the pipes supplying water to the subterranean civilisation must have burst. I think it is obvious from all the facts (ie. 1950s B movies, War of the Worlds, wild speculation) that there are people living under the surface of Mars where it is toasty warm.
Also, I can bend spoons with my mind.
Maybe you should re-evaluate your decision to blindly dismiss the value of scientific exploration. I'm not a geneticist, or a biologist, or any brand of scientist that can speak intelligently about the merits of space exploration or the study of life on earth or abroad. However, i am a scientist, and i recognize that scientific discoveries - many if not most of them - come from the most unexpected places.
I think space exploration and the quest for extra-terrestrial life is an invaluable quest for all the reasons we *don't* know about. You can't tell me (and even if you did i'd tell you that you're full of crap) that if someone finds even one tiny living single-cell organism on mars, that there is no possibility that the study of that one small organism could not be a catalyst of evolutionary discovery for all life as we know it. I'm not saying it will change the world. I'm saying it has the chance of adding to our understanding of the world and of ourselves. Every little bit of knowledge advances us one step closer to scientific goals we may not even know exist yet.
Space exploration and space research absurd? Humans have only been flying for about a century. How many discoveries in how many different fields have come from flight, and space research? Rocketry, physics, medical disoveries on so many levels, engineering and computing advances, biologic and genetic research in space or even modified gravity environments; I'm not sure anyone knows exactly how space research has impacted humanity in the last 50 years, because its influence is just too wide-spread. If someone somewhere develops a cure for some disease, or a bitchin new technology that will drive our cars, or even replace our cars 10, 50, or 100 years from now, i'm all for it. Space research is far from absurd. It's integrally linked to the standard of living you and I enjoy today, and will enjoy tomorrow.
As for protection, buddy, the only thing we need protection from is ourselves at this point. If we can't get to another developed species capable of space travel (assuming as i do that one exists "somewhere"), then we're probably ill equipped to defend ourselves if they can get to us - again, assuming they have nothing but hostile intentions. I chuckle at your expense, and at the same time sigh that close-minded individuals like yourself are all too common.
I think the Martians just got too enamoured with their SUVs and jetskis (on their former canals and lakes). The pollution caused massive global warming. The water and atmosphere evaporated into space, thus removing the planet's 'blanket.' Then everything froze. Now they're living underground driving battery powered golf carts...
Imagine a pile of all the parts required to build an airplane. If a hurricane hit this pile, it would be ludicrous to imagine that a functional airplane would be formed.
This would be as ludicrous as imagining that a fully functioning single-celled organism could be created by microwaving amino acids.
That is why NO EVOLUTIONIST BELIEVES THAT LIFE BEGAN IN THAT MANNER. If you want to attack their theories, learn the theories first. Start with The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Nobody ever claimed that a fetus wasn't alive; that's not the debate. The debate is over whether the fetus has all of the rights of a person. We have no problem killing bacteria, plants, insects and cows every day even though they are all 'living'. If we discover some form of life on Mars, one of the first things we will do is kill a few of them so we can study them.
Chemical reactions don't happen randomly so your entirely cut-and-pasted-from-a-creationist-website analysis falls flat on its face.
>>Wrong. There is furious debate over this, about the fundamental issue of whether or not human life begins at conception or not.
No, there isn't. My sperm is human life but it's not considered murder if I abandon them to die.
The issue is whether a handful of cells should be treated the same as me.
NASA has dug itself into a huge corner by playing up on layman's desire to find life "out there". The fact is nobody really expects to find life on Mars. Or anywhere else in the solar system. Telling people that they have new evidence for life lets them keep their funding, but does not approach the topic honestly.
Is finding life "out there" the ultimate goal of space exploration. No! Finding life would be a big deal but it cannot be the driving goal. This is for the same reason that going to the moon cannot be solely for collecting moon rocks. Answering the question would stop the program right in its tracks..now what?
Finding water on Mars is a big deal because it vastly eases human outposts. Air and rocket fuel can be synthesized more easily, not to mention the need for water itself.
>sperm = life (which I do not believe),
Sorry, but your misinformed opinion isn't the basis for moral rights or wrongs.
How can you live with yourself when you condone the slaughter of trillions of human beings? You monster!
We agree that random change was insufficient to create a single celled organism from amino acids & a lipid bilayer. In fact, all evolutionists agree with you. Since you misunderstood the evolutionist argument in this manner, I assumed that you were not familiar with it. Dawkins is the first person to suggest that natural selection must already be in place for something as complicated as a single celled organism to come into existence. I don't see how that point could possibly debunk him.
Of course you need a self-replicating system. That is why people searching for the origins of life tend to look for simple self-replicating systems. Not single celled organisms.
There are a number of candidate simple self-replicating systems. None of them are particularly impressive, but it's imaginable that they could have lead to RNA and protein chains. We may not have discovered the correct process. We may never. This does not make evolution false.
You might feel that Dawkins has been debunked. But you also seem to think that all of evolution has been debunked. Evolutionists certainly haven't abandoned Dawkins because of something Behe said. No one has ever brought up Behe in this sort of discussion with me after they had heard the counterpoint. A good starter is here. That review's mousetrap argument is pretty lame, but the rest is ok.
Behe's irreducible complexity argument has been asked and answered many times before Darwin's Black Box. Just because one scientist cannot imagine an evolutionary pathway does not mean that one did not exist.
Still, Dawkins' books aren't flawless. No one's ever complained to me about him, but in a simple reading of any of his books, a number of little details rubbed me the wrong way. None of those details, however, are essential to his conclusions. I only brought up his book because he has a good discussion of Fred Hoyle's argument (and yours).
Anyway, I would love to continue this conversation in email. I think it's a little out of place on slashdot, but I'll leave it up to you as to where we should continue.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
1 + 1 = 3
p.s. What about those sand people on Star Wars? They seem to be ok with breathing sand.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Really? But the biggest canal was neither formed by water nor carried significant water.
Since these scientist chappies are getting so good at finding water on a completely dry planet (and explaining away global floods on another planet which is covered in water to an average depth of 2.7km), perhaps they can figure out where that much lightning came from? It certainly explains all of those rocks you see strewn around in Mars lander images.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Well... not exactly. The CO2 is about 50x more common in proportion, but remember that there is also 100x less pressure (7-10 millbars versus roughly 1000 millibars) so the total amount of CO2 around on Mars is about 1/2. Low atmospheric pressure complicates things even more by boiling off most of the volatiles which would generally be considered useful for quite a big stretch along the putative road to life.
After an initial flurry of excitement, the original Miller-Urey experiments which produced some amino acids also highlighted a number of problems on the way along said road.
Agree. And let's do it properly, by building a Beanstalk now that it is technically feasible. Or is that the mistake the Babelians made? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The talkorigins crew repeatedly stuff up bigtime and would rather crawl up their own asses than admit either error or defeat. The possibility that Santa Claus exists does not equal the certainty, but that is how their logic generally runs when arguing in favour of one of ``their'' points (for examples of such begging-the-question, where does the hypothetical lipid layer in their non-self-reproducing HypUrCell come from, why does it form a layer rather than disperse, what powers the lipid-generating reaction, how does one get from a fat-bubble to the complex, filtering, active membrane in the prokayote below it, where did the primordial peptide come from, and do they also believe in sympathetic medicine - with which their HypUrCell comparison bears a more than passing resemblance?). Arguments against opposing points are generally pretty abusive. You get a lot of the tone (with the offensive language distilled off) from their article.
Try this essay for balance. If you enjoy sarcasm, this one is amusing as well.
I can't resist my own separate dig at this page, it's just asking for it:
If you covered the entire Earth with amino acids useful for generating Ghadiri's peptides - and never mind sources of raw materials and sinks for elimination, decay and other factors - a nice sticky layer a third of a millimeter deep, odds are even that you would get one after a thousand iterations of the whole planet. If we inject a sliver sliver (and no more) of reality into the scenario, and reduce the total area of entirely-composed-of-useful-amino-acid-only lakes on Earth at any one time to that of the Great Lakes (roughly a quarter million square kilometers vs 500 million square kilometers) we're up to two million planetary iterations per peptide. How fast do these processes iterate? What happens when we account for impurities? How about dispersion in a hypothetically (but not realistically) neutral medium like ocean water? How long does a peptide hold together? How many peptides do we need in order to be useful for the next stage? Note that I'm focussing on just one putative stage, not stacking them as the article accuses all opponents of doing.
The idea of making GSVs transparent was a good one, I thought. The idea of stations with rank upon rank of GSVs parked inside them was a bit breath-taking... the human mind doesn't accept scale very well, but the Port of Fremantle, just down the road from here, is about the right size to be a GSV docking cradle, and I can mentally replicate that to car-park quantities.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Not sure quite what to make of this, since the original links spoke of water gushing from cracks and flowing through channels on Mars' surface (unrelated, as you might expect, to Lowell's original canali).
That too. Many ancient records speak of either a global flood, or at least something much bigger than a local flood, something overwhelming. Science in general won't take these records too seriously lest they be seen to undermine naturalism/materialism or even (horrors!) support the dreaded cult of Creationism. At least, that's the only reasonable conclusion I've seen. A succinct way of putting it is, ``it's too scary to take seriously''.
Whatever happened to ``investigate, and let the facts fall where they may?''
As to the big canal, the only natural force which fits all of the characteristics (flat bottom, steep sides, subcanyons tending to intersect perpendicularly, no clear source or sink, pairs of parallelish canyons, sausage-strings of canyons blending to craters) is a lightning bolt. A nice big lightning bolt. A good time to be elsewhere... a good event to watch from a distance... maybe a few dozen planetary radii... maybe further...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Yah, and be sure follow the threads through to their termination. TO runs the gamut of dud debating techniques, there are constant examples of any class of mistake imaginable (the dialogue with Remine illustrated most of them) and they ``win'' most arguments by begging the question, as you are about to do. (-:
Oh, and by publishing before all of the outstanding answers are in, and calling their claims unanswerable.
Seriously, very few people have a real understanding of what a billion items, a cubic kilometer, or a nanometer actually is. A nanometer sounds really small, but how small? How do you visualise something invisibly small?
You can measure mark out a square kilometer on a flat patch of land and use that to imagine a cubic kilometer, but that doesn't really give you a feel for what a cubic kilometer really involves. Now scale to parsecs.
This is why a lot of quantitative arguments don't come to satisfactory conclusions. When you see 1:10E50 as a probability, at some level of awareness you're almost certainly reading it as 1:50, which doesn't seem that unreasonable.
You've just illustrated a point rather neatly. (-:
Why did you insist that the grounds of debate be materialism? Why reason with on hemisphere tied behind your back? Is it some kind of religious conviction?
I've never seen ``we're here'' explained without ``and then a miracle happened'' or more often ``and then a whole passel of miracles rode onto the scene, shot the inconvenient facts, and rescued the hypothesis''. I'd be delighted to see you make a worthwhile attempt. (-:
You see, your statement is both begging the question, and a tautology. Begging the question in that you assume your point is true and insist that I prove it, and a tautology because you've said, in essence ``here is a problem that has no materialistic solution. give me a materialistic solution.''
After that, maybe we can negotiate ethics... (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing