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Possible Evidence of Martian Bacteria
half-seas-over writes "NASA issued a very interesting press release today. It highlights a recent study that compared tiny magnetite crystals in the Allan Hill meteorite to similar magnetite crystals that are created here on Earth by bacteria (who use the magnetite as a compass). The study (abstract available here (PDF) from this site) uses fairly strict criteria to determine that 25% of the magnetite content of the meteorite was created by ancient (>3.9Gyr ago) martian bacteria... either that or there is some strange natural process that makes very pure, isolated magnetite crystals that we haven't imagined or seen on Earth which is present on Mars. We'll have to wait and see what happens next, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' -Carl Sagan."
in peace..
The presence of magnetite in the bacteria means they are compass users?
Anything that has iron in it's environment has the potential to form small magnetite crystals within it. I've got iron in my pipes, does this mean my pipes are compass users as well?
The evidence is pointing to Mars. But I have a reservation on that evidence because of a transport problem of getting a rock of any size
off of a planet via meteor impacts on the surface of the planet.
I would say that the probability of life on a sizeable comet or asteroid or planet are far greater than is the probability of launching
a rock to escape gravity from any of the planets in the solar system. Physics and estimate fairly accurately what a momentum of a bolide would have to be to launch a Mars rock of a large size and have it intercept Earth and survive what remains of it from the Earth's atmosphere.
Chuck
An important tool is to create intresting but ominous scientific claims which a only be verified by going to Mars.
There is still to problem with the "robots only" league, but I expect further onimous arguments in this direction.
But on the other hand, what's useful for science can't be wrong, right ? At least it's not such a brainless waste of money like the dotcom hype.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
There's already lots of possible evindence, wake me up when there's hard evidence.
Ok, lets say we can determine that there were some bacteria on Mars. Aside from exclaiming, "hey that's cool" what would be the big deal? How would this be different from say, discovering bacteria in some otherwise uninhabited place on earth?
Perhaps this might somehow affect our understanding of life on earth or our origins or something... but like, how?
I'm not dissing the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake, but I guess I'm asking this ignorant question-- are we expecting the discovery of bacterial life on mars to have any repercussions aside from the "hey cool" factor and maybe religious fundimentalists having to rework parts of the bible to jam martian bacteria into Genesis? Are there outstanding scientific theories or questions that this discovery might help answer? How might our world change if this ancient bacteria were confirmed to be really martian?
It's like War of the Worlds in reverse, or something...
This is juts a rehash of that nonsense about them claiming to have found "tiny fossilised bacteria" which also turned out to be dust, non-living, never living.
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"Martian bacteria leaks out of NASA lab"
"Mutated animals sighted near NASA lab"
"Strange disease spreads through continent"
"President Bush announces state of emergency"
"President Bush renounces state of emergency"
"USA replaces national anthem with strange beeps and Coca-Cola switches water to sulphure dioxode in its drinks"
Yet another step in the ET reality acclimatization program.
The next step will be to show real live Martian bacteria thus confirming life on other planets. After that we move on to bigger things.
Seems like their is a Major life on mars discovery every few months. Most of the time they are disproven within a couple of weeks. Take the wait and see approach and see if this "discovery" holds up to peer review.
Science press releases are usually half bs.. A good way to get research funding.
If the movies are correct, the martian bacteria will take over human subjects and create monsters out of them!
First, the martian origin of those SNC meteorites is not yet fully demonstrated. Yet, there are detritic layers on Mars that suggest there once were bodies of water. Provided the sulfide concentration was high enough, such bacteriae may have lived in those. If so, where would they have come from in the first place? Earth as a wild guess sounds likely, as many meteorites coming from our planet have spread in the solar system in those early ages. An isolated lifeform doesn't prove anything concening the martian origin of said lifeform.
Sprinkle some salt on your dinner and, no matter how careful you are, a little will always wound up on the table. -- JHVH, Day 7
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
in pieces...
That movie rocked!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
"When you eliminate the impossible, whatever you have left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." -- Sherlock Holmes ("The Beryl Coronet", Arthur Conan Doyle).
Dueling quotes on deductive reasoning at dawn! I shall see you on the morrow, sir!
-- Terry
is this classified as Martian Crystal meth or Martian Crack rocks?
How utterly boring. What happened to the 'superior intelligences' theory?
NASA, we demand smart aliens, with tentacles and bug eyes and all. Don't you scientists read comic books?
You're not doing your job. Bacteria? If these are the only aliens you can come up with then LOOK HARDER.
Harumph.
mutter mutter misappropriated tax dollars mutter
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
According to the press release, this rock is 4.5B years old. Since that is the approximate age of Mars itself, how could it possibly be life? Does this predate any signs of life found on earth so far?
Don't all these repeated claims of life on Mars say more about us and our obsessions than they do about Mars itself?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
or there is some strange natural process
It's merely a pedantic quibble, but life is a
strange natural process.
Unless, of course, you're a creationist (or, same thing, a proponent of "Intelligent Design" theories).
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
>booyakka
your not jack black!!
Why are they always looking for life on Mars? Quite simple. They're all self-centered chauvinists. Men are from Mars...
So mark me down as a troll but I thought that Mars had no magnetic field to speak of, this being one of the problems of visiting the place (a magnetic field helps to protect against radiation from the sun).
Mars has no volcanic activity to speak of, no core of molten iron to spin at a different speed to the rest of the planet and thus generate a magnetic field. Yet despite all these factors, the "bacteria" have somehow managed to lay down magnetite in reaction to the nonexistent Martian magnetic field.
It all happened a long time ago and maybe things were different on Mars then. I still want to hear a lot more before I accept this evidence.
Yes, it could be, but that's politics for you. People don't matter because you can always make more. If you really want to make some sort of difference, find some sort of cause to get involved in in your locality. How can we expect the government to do anything if we ourselves refuse to? Governmental apathy stems from individual apathy.
I went to a talk some time ago, about 6 months after the "discovery of life in a martian rock" found in Antarctica. It was a half hour talk, at the AIAA confernce in Reno in mid-January 2000.
To summarise his arguments: They found some interesting crystals in a rock. They'd never seen anything like it. They looked for other places these crystals occurred. They looked and looked (He was quite adamant on this point), and couldn't find them anywhere except in some bacteria. Therefore these crystals can only be made by bacteria. Therefore these crystals are evidence of life.
You'll have to excuse my scepticism that this in any way constitutes proof. I'm quite willing to believe that there is bacteria on mars, just not that this is proof of it.
homing pigeons can sense magnetic fields and on a smaller scale bees can too; either bees or maybe it's hornets use a magnet at the base of their hive and use the field to create the hive; on another smaller scale there are bacteria in streams that make gold exoskeletons from the minerals in the water ( I wonder if they induce electricity while flowing downstream through the mag field). When a species evolves enough they use magnets to position the heads on their hard drives and to orient data on coated aluminum platters.
Banks use magnetic strips to suck the life out of other organisms..
Last night, a bright light came through my window and woke me up. I was levitated out into a strange craft, where spindly bipeds with almond-shaped eyes probed my body cavities. But get this: they were all sniffling and coughing!
Find free books.
what is the point of modding down ac trolls? there is almost no difference between 0 and -1 comments. Nobody will see those if they don't want to.
But what the "editors" do is simply punish people for expressing their views, whatever they may be. Using moderation as punishment is abuse!! The editors need to be $RTBL'ed.
In the press release we read " new evidence confirming that 25 percent of the magnetic material in the meteorite was produced by ancient bacteria on Mars. ... This means that
one-quarter of the magnetite
crystals ... in Martian meteorite
ALH84001 require the intervention of biology to explain their
presence.
"
The words "confirm" and "require" are very strong, indeed.
However, in the abstract of the scientific report we read something quite different: " On Earth such ...
magnetites are known to
be produced by magnetotactic bacteria. We suggest that the observation ...
are [sic] both
consistent with, and in the absence of terrestrial inorganic analogs,
likely formed by biogenic processes."
So, the scientists suggest that something is consistent with a proposition, and the press-releasers convert that into confirmation of the proposition.
Sure, scientists' language often needs to be modified for public consumption, but here we have a case of changing the entire thrust of the story.
This sort of mistake would be unacceptable from a high-school science student, and that makes me wonder whether this exaggerating rewriting might have been deliberate. I remember a story of crying "wolf" ...
...and I don't ;-)
There was this Scientific American article many, many years ago about how bacteria use Earth's magnetic field to tell which way is up and which is down. I guess it has to do with size: when you're small enough, gravity is not a factor.
Of course, it's unreal to expect someone to remember something after decades...
'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' not carl.
In the past 100 years how many times have people built houses vs built computers? Obviously there are no computers because so many houses have been built. Slashdot vanishes in a cloud of irrelevant improbabilities...
The probability of an event happening does not affect whether the event actually happens.
For that matter, we are here. The obvious choices for the existence of life here are:
- Life here was created by random chemical/physical processes. Probability unknown.["Here" is this solar system, whether Mars or Earth]
- Life here is an extension of existing life in this galaxy. Probability unknown, but allows much longer time frame and once it happened once it can spread.
- Panspermia.
- Random cause: Bacteria or DNA from other solar systems seeded our biology.
- Directed cause: Life forms in other solar systems sent primitive life to other solar systems. Does not require intelligence, because a space-seeding plant is an increase in the probability of intersystem seeding.
- Gardening: Intelligent life seeded our solar system.
- Miracle: We just appeared here. Probability unknown. Several conflicting events recorded.
There are several possibilities for our own life forms. The possibilities of our origin give hints as to the chances of life existing elsewhere, but are not proof. We need more data.This data about life existing on Mars suggests several modifications in theory:
- Life was able to be created outside the conditions at Earth's orbit. If Mars was very different from old Earth when life formed on Mars, the probability of random life creation is increased due to a widening of the definition of a suitable environment.
- Life may have been created in two places within this single solar system. This suggests that the probability of random life creation is fairly large. It is possible that life is very unlikely and the coin just happened to land on edge twice here, but the suggestion is still toward a higher probability of life.
- If life was created on Mars and travelled to Earth, the probability of panspermia tends to be higher. Evidence of life which can survive space increases the probability that life can travel between solar systems (ignoring the possibility of close approaches by another solar system or rogue planets).
Some of these possibilities are mutually exclusive. If life on Earth was seeded by Mars then although the possibility of Panspermia is increased, an increase in the possibility of random life is then not suggested. We then still have only one example of the creation of life in this solar system, it merely happened on Mars instead of the previously assumed location of Earth.A non-Mars item affecting life probabilities: Recent evidence suggests that life existed on Earth only a short time after Earth cooled. Although the probability of life being randomly created on Earth is unknown, a shorter time of appearance is a hint at a larger probability. Only a hint, as with a single event it is possible that a nearly impossible event just randomly happened here. The same situation is present if life appeared on Mars shortly after it cooled. If life appeared independently in both places shortly after it cooled, that is two hints at a larger probability.
We don't have a bunch of evidence that life never existed on Mars. This is not an extraordinary claim.
Well yes ... NASA is a brainfull waste of money on overfitted data, but Nick Hoffman said that 30 years ago. Beats building pyramids or digging trenches .... doesn't it ?
Got Wisdom?
they were sniffing blow and smoking opium before they picked you up in their lowrider, man
i wont even get into the cavity-probing..
This is typical NASA (or any science) funding hype. "Possible evidence," give me a break. I wish they would put check boxes on what my tax dollars were allowed to fund. One nonsense program that definitely wouldn't get my money is A.I.
What a con job! These A.I. jerks then could do something more useful instead like get a job at Home Depot.
Is so subejctive that Carl Sagan is misquoted to promote the status quo far too often. Why is it "extraordinary" to expect that simply prokaryotic bacteria could evolve somewhere other than Earth? If anything, you'd need "extraordinary evidence" to convince me that the rest of the universe is lifeless.
How is it determined that one of these rocks is from Mars and not from somewhere else? If it is from Mars, how did it get here? It would seem to me that hard evidence of this would be required BEFORE coming to any conclusions as to whether this proves that there is life on mars or not.
-- Jim
In Scientist-speak, the word 'suggest' is synonymous with "is" or "state". But you don't publish like that. Publishing is done so that you do not appear 'too wrong' in the future.... go back and read some journal articles from the 50s :) Very important but very lax in thrust.
Problem is, you've been diluted by too much modern media where they state with '100% certainty' and when wrong say simply 'oops'.
On another note there has been a discussion on space.com about life on other planets and the scientists think that we are likely to find bacterial life on mars or on one of Jupiters moons. So this is just the theory that life in some form may exist on another planet.
The real question is not if life exists, but has life evolved elsewhere?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Yet another Goddammed source of H1B's discovered.
Table-ized A.I.
SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering captured the bulk of Dr. Hoover's presentation in an interview published in their December '96 magazine. This September 1998 article offers pictures of the fossils found, as does a July 1997 article. Another story announces a fossil find in another meteorite that fell on Murchison, Victoria, Australia.
Many people question the science, but it would seem people should question the scientific community which has held its hands over its eyes when faced with the prospect of life on other planets. The community is just now peeking between its fingers and beginning to accept that there might be life elsewhere. In the presentation I attended, Dr. Hoover noted that NASA set up rules in advance of the Viking missions - that any one of the several (4?) tests coming back positive would be indicative of life on the red planet, but once some of the tests came back positive, they decided that all of the tests had to be positive to confirm the existence of life on Mars. Such has been the distinctly non-scientific approach of the community when confronted with the distinct possibility of life on other planets.
More links:
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
Though certainly not a sure sign of intelligent life, scientists believe this discovery could serve to advance the theory that life did once exist on the red planet. However Romania, "The other red meat," still boasts the record for spreading this peculiar blight.
You asserted that the probability of life randomly arising somewhere in the universe is unknown. That's certainly true for our current scientific state, since we can't yet claim to know all the intimate details of every single function of cellular life.
However we do know enough to make some interesting calculations. For example, all proteins in all living things known today are made up exclusively of 19 chiral and one non-chiral amino acid. On average, roughly 8% of bacterial protein amino acids are glycine (the non-chiral one). So in a smallish protein of only 450 amino acids, there are (0.92)*(450) or 414 chiral amino acids.
There is no natural process outside living cells that generates amino acids of one chirality; everything generates nicely racemic (equally L and R) mixtures.
It is fairly simple to calculate just how likely it would be to get just one protein to form randomly (proteins form sequentially, and since they need more than one copy of each amino acid, this must be done by the probstat model of "with replacement") from an unlimited supply of amino acids. To make the case easy, and to heavily tilt the odds towards the formation of proteins, let's ignore the energy gradient in aqueous solutions (which tends towards dissociation of proteins, not their assembly). So to calculate the odds of getting all 414 amino acids that are chiral to all be the correct chirality is one in 2^414 (or one in over 10^124).
To give some concept of that number, consider the assumptions made by fans of the Drake equation for example, and be generous. They estimate 200 billion (2*10^11) stars in our galaxy, and 20% of those having planets, with 3 to 5 possibly life-bearing bodies per star that has planets. Let's just say 10^12 possible planets, an order of magnitude higher than the upper limit of those Drake numbers. Also consider that the universe at 20 billion years is less than 10^18 seconds old. Let's say the earth has 10^50 atoms in it (slightly higher than estimates). So if you have one protein formed per each atom on every habitable planet in the galaxy (10^50*10^12 == 10^62) every millisecond since the big bang (10^18*10^3 = 10^21) you'd have 10^83 proteins formed. So the odds of getting one properly chiral protein by having 1000 formed per second per atom on all habitable planets and moons in our galaxy since the big bang would be 124-83 = one in 10^41. The universe is 10^28 inches across...
Now consider the odds of getting just one protein to have a particular sequence, which is immensely harder than the above which just focussed on getting the chirality alone correct. Plain fact is, random chance alone just will never be anywhere near adequate to explain the origin of life.
Got Wisdom?
the article says >3.9Gyr old. everyone knows that G stands for Gazillion in the US system.
The following excerpt is from Gibson, E.K. Jr., McKay, D.S., et al. Life on Mars: evaluation of the evidence within Martian meteorites ALH84001, Nakhla, and Shergotty", Precambrian Research 106:15-34.
See also NASA's astrobiology news page and my earlier comment.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
There have been a lot of questions about how we know that SNC (or Martian) meteorites come from Mars. This used to be a bit of a "hot topic" in planetary science, but over the last few years an international consensus has arisen supporting the hypothesis that these meteorites come from Mars.
The clearest explanation I can find for this can be found at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/mineralogy/grady/mars.htm- the author, Monica Grady, is one fo the world's leading authorities in this field.
In short, the ratios of the three stable isotopes of oxygen (16, 17 and 18) are characteristic for any given planet. The SNC meteorites contain small quantities of atmospheric gases within isolated pockets. Since the oxygen isotopic composition of these gases have been shown to be different from that of the Earth, they cannot have come from here, leaving Mars as the a viable proposition for the meteorites' origin. This is supported by measurements of the isotopic composition of Mars' atmosphere by the viking landers.
I hope that answers some of your questions.
Regards,
-Karl
Dr Karl Mitchell
Planetary Science Research Group
Environmental Science Dept.
Lancaster University
UK