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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."
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"
The big deal is that it would be proof of "life" on Mars. For most people it would stop at the "hey that's cool" point, but the microbiologists out there will be stoked. It's different to finding bacteria in an otherwise uninhabited place on earth because we already know there's life on earth. AFAIK we've already found life in the most inhospitable parts of the planet anyway (Antarctic plankton and molds, desert insects etc).
The effect on understanding life on earth and origins etc depends a lot on your worldview. For people like me, no effect at all. Others might have to totally rethink their views.
In summary, there's no repercussions whether we do or don't find life on Mars. And as one of those "religious fundamendalists" (read Bible believing Christian in my case), there's absolutely no need at all to rewrite Genesis, whatever happens.
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.
To me, it's one of those biggish 'doorway' discoveries. If we find life on mars, and it's a bit different to life on earth, then we have a "whoa... life's a bit more than we thought it was". Right now we have one and only one way of looking at life - how it appears to us terrestrially... Find something that's substantially different (in function, structure, or location) and there's possible proof that things do work a certain way
Other than that, science/technology/etc is all just "hey, that's cool", until a use is found for it.
a grrl & her server
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
"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
Life on Earth probably came from Mars anyway (or visa-versa) via meteors, so if this discovery is for real, the types of life should be pretty similar. Finding life on mars dosn't prove anything about things working a certain way, we'd need an isolated system, like Europa or something to see a really unique evolution of life.
The rock is from Mars. Atmosphere isotope ratios are unambiguous in such cases. Every planet has it's own "signature" that, with the right equipment, is possible to detect. This was demonstrated ages ago by Monica Grady and others in the UK.
You're correct that it's easier to get a meteorite from a smaller body, and we do get loads of them (positively identified Martian meteorites number in the dozens rather than the thousans). However, Mars is massive and has had many massive impacts. The amount of material ejected from it's surface means that it would be amazing if none had reached the Earth.
Also, regarding life, it's unlikely that life would have evolved on any body that did not have liquid water. Liquid water has always been unstable on asteroids, whereas there have significant periods of Martian history (likely when the impact occurred) where liquid water was thought to be stable, possibly over hundreds of millions of years. In fact, there are even points on present day Mars where, for a limited period during the year, water can be stable on the surface. Of course, if you believe Fred Hoyle, life could be everywhere, but, based on an Earth model, life seems far more likely to have evolved on Earth and/or Mars.
The evidence for this being a result of biological activity is still highly ambiguous however, which is why we need to get samples back from Mars.
-Karl
Dr Karl Mitchell
Planetary Science Research Group
Environmental Science Department
Lancaster University
UK
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.
Yes, Mars/Earth cross seeding of life is an interesting possibility. One thing puzzles me though - if Earth and Mars may not be isolated, what makes you think Europa is?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I think that's a perfectly fair question - you really didn't need to post it as AC :)
The question (and the possible answer) are fundamental, vis, is life on Earth a great cosmic coincidence, or is it something which can happen anywhere in the universe given the right starting conditions?
Right now we don't know the answer - volumes of speculation exist to say both "yes" and "no", but in the end we do not know the answer. If we find indisputable evidence that life has evolved elsewhere, this is a big answer - the know that the universe may actually be bursting with life-filled planets (esp. since we'd have two such planets in one solar system, barring the primary transfer hypothesis of course). This isn't somebody's obscure interest in the origins of some spectral line in the atmosphere of a single star somewhere, this is a deeply fundamental question about the universe.
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?
Yes, people are starving. But more food is produced every year than is eaten. The US pays farmers not to grow crops, it pays them for their over production and then puts the crops in a warehouse, never to be seen again until it spoils and must be destroyed.
So obviously we have the means *right now* to end all hunger on the planet. We simply don't care (because most of the people who are starving are black and in countries with no political importance), can't (because those countries are openly hostile to us and either won't accept our help or steal what help we do send), or won't (does anyone know the last time we sent aid to Cuba? I know Castro offered to provide medical care to the people of Appalachia, which has some of the poorest people in the country.).
Remember when the Russia sub sank? We offered to help and they wouldn't take it because of pride. A similar situation occured a few years before that where we needed help but we wouldn't take the Russians up on their offer because, well, duh, they're the Ruskies.
That having been said, I don't think a human mission to mars is the way to go. I've always been in favor of colonizing permanent space stations, then the moon, then from there to Mars.
Better to send a robotic mission to Mars when searching for life, to eliminate any chance of possible contamination, no matter how small that chance is.
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?
Why are they always looking for life on Mars? Quite simple. They're all self-centered chauvinists. Men are from Mars...
How hard do you want?
They've found a crystal with no known pathway for its creation apart from a directed one.
The three conclusion options are
1) On earth it's directed by microbes, on mars it's directed by God.
2) On earth it's only directed by microbes, on mars the laws of physics permit it to happen without direction
3) On earth it's directed by microbes, on mars it's directed by microbes.
Get out your Ockham's razer - which of the two are you more inclined to pare away?
YAWIAR.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
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.
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" ...
'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.
Got Wisdom?
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'.
Yes, they are discovering bacterial and other forms of life (extremophiles) in weird places on the Earth. For example, algae living within rocks in sub-zero temperatures in the Antarctic, that can reside in a frozen state for years, even centuries, until freak warm/wet spells allow it to breed. There are even microorganisms that flourish within nuclear reactors. So yes, I (and most scientists I know) see no reason not to think that life couldn't have survived on Mars. In fact, most of the biologists that I know think that if life ever did exist on Mars, then it would have undoubtedly adapted to survive almost anything that nature could throw at it, and therefore that if there was life, there still is.
However, nearly everyone I know working in this field seems to think that some sort of fluid, preferably water, would be necessary.
One thing that the new discoveries (suboceanics life, microorganisms in frozen climates, etc.) have demonstrated, however, is that sunlight is less directly important than previously though, which is good news for those hoping to find life on Mars.
Of course, this doesn't eliminate the possibility that life might evolve completely unlike that on Earth. However, the only tested models for life are those on Earth, and I'm not a biochemist (just a physicist who studies volcanoes and water on Mars) so I can't really say much about alternative models without being extremely speculative. Just from a structural point of view however, I expect that some sort of fluid is necessary, just so a lifeform can have moving parts (and movement is involved in cell splitting), and I don't think there is any evidence for materials in a fluid state on asteroids (unlike Mars - loads of ice and loads of fluvial features). They may be able to transport life in cryostasis, but I doubt that life could flourish or even be sustained for long in an active state without fluids.
All the best,
-Karl
Evolutionary Biology has essentially ignored the possability that there may be interplanetary contributions
Well, speaking as an evolutionary biologist I don't think that's entirely fair.
Lots of people in the evolution community have an interest in astronomy and are no strangers to Hoyle's Panspermia notion, the idea of a primary seeding of Earthly life from Martian life, and associated concepts.
What has been missing, obviously, is any kind of evidence to suggest that there is an interplanetary contribution to Earthly evolution (sans pretty clearly established ones like impact effects). If anyone can provide solid evidence of such a link then evolutionary scientists would be all over it like a dirty shirt, believe you me. :) Any paper solidly demonstrating such a thing would be an instant Nature or Science publication.
It has been a long time since I read this, however, bacteria in aqueous environments need to orient to sources of food, energy, and other needs. I believe that the hypothesis was tested and verified to the researchers' satisfaction by manipulating the magnetic environment around experimental laboratory populations of bacteria.
Evolutionarily, the two ready means for living systems to map their environment are radiation sources such as light and heat, and magnetism. If bacteria simply relied on chance to locate such sources of necessary materials, they may be at a competitive disadvantage to bacteria who are able to "map" sources of necessities. The strange part of the idea is not the tiny, bacterial compasses; it's the idea that bacteria can store information at some level. It raises some very interesting questions about memory.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
The big deal would be that life existed, or perhaps exists beyond the earth. This has very important implications for how common life could be beyond the solar system. It raises the issue of whether life is actually native to the earth or if a massive asteroidal strike blew chunks of Mars into space seeding the earth - we could ALL be Martians. It is also a massive problem for Christian and Muslim religious fundamentalists, since they hold a strongly defended belief in the specialness of life, of intelligence, and of the earth as the center of God's interest. Finding life in some remote spot on earth is not a challenge to convention and established thought, since we already know that it exists here where ever the conditions of chemical and energy availability permit. Then of course there are political and potential health issues if we were to retrieve living material from Mars.
Would Martian bacteria be dangerous to terrestrial systems? What about carrying earth bacteria in the other direction? Will we breaking the Galactic Federation's laws regarding the transfer of biologically active material? Will Florida, Texas, California and other entities establish agricultural inspection stations at NASA launch and reception facilities? It can be a VERY big deal.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
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.
What nonsense, really. Why would a bacteria care about magnetic North? Do they have little maps or something? We could make a fortune selling them nanotechology GPS receivers. Unless they use their little compasses to find magnetic South, which something we as humans rarely hear about. A blatant case of boreacentrism.
Bacteria really aren't affected by gravity. So some use magnetism for orientation. Maybe you should read the article.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
ok can we fix the economy instead? or our education system? i just think all of this is leading to absolutely nowhere in the near future and the money could be better spent doing something useful.
What about the gobs of useless money we spend on our oversized military? What about how we pay farmers to not farm their crops?
If we were only concerned about immediate serious problems, we would not have: Communications sattlites, AMERICA (hey, Columbus's voyage was gratuitus), computers, etc, etc, etc.
If all we are concerned about is education and the starving children of Namibia, we will go nowhere. Humanity will stagnate.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Those particle paths in cloud chambers are hard evidence. All scientists seem to think so. I don't think the flat tire comparison is valid at all. When we see the particle paths, we see the particles exact effects! It's just like we saw the particle.
BTW,
Scenario 1 is _hard evidence_ that there's someone who's letting down tyres in the neighbourhood, scenario 2 is _not_. Are you really sure your 20 year old Lada doesn't have fucked valves?
Well, you are only seeing the effects of Scenario 1 also. Light interacting with the person and your car gets focused strikes your eye in a way to form an image of someone fucking with your car. How do you know it isn't just a big phased array optic screen right there put up by aliens for some reason?
My point is that those paths can only be subatomic particles. Do you have a different theory?
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Alas, his father and Slick Willy didn't last too long. It seems that presidents don't survive long without spacesuits.
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
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
in as much as what i have been taught as a catholic, the "threat to religion" aspect of finding life beyond earth is baloney. please keep in mind that fundamentalists make a small part of the religious community. and often they give the mainstream a bad name.
Have no concerns about that. The Catholic Church is an old and adaptable organization that has long since taken steps to avoid the extremes of fundamentalists. My point is that the religious fundamentalist mentality - which is not limited to Christianity - will tend to have problems with any discovery that appears to move humanity and the earth even farther from the centrality and uniqueness they hold to be our real place in the universe.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Your making many unjustified assumptions in your
calcuations:
1. That life on Earth started out using its
current molecular basis of amino acids.
2. That life on Earth started out using the
full complement of 19 amino acids
3. That life on Earth has not evolved from a
much simpler molecular basis.
4. That the terran molecular basis for life is
is only possible form.