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Life on Mars? Why Not?
Guillaume Filion writes "IEEE spectrum has an interesting article about a new probe sent to Mars searching for life: 'Recent missions to Mars have focused on the search for water, past or present, as a surrogate for life itself. But now a British-led team is working to renew the search for life directly, fueled by doubts about the equipment that prompted NASA to declare Mars a dead world some 26 years ago.'"
I hope they find life and rush it back to Earth!
Just think of all the death it could bring!
Go now! Make SARS look weak!
especially something that'll actually propel the probe to mars. Something liquid, perhaps.
There may be things that reproduce and show signs of life on Mars, but we'll spend a lot of time trying to cram the stuff on Mars into the categories we have on Earth.
Hint: Chances are, no matter what we do, we're never gonna see a green spectral line or test for clorophyll.
Instead, we need to examine soil for the most basic types of life we know of... creatures or cells similar to viruses, bacteria, and amoeba.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
When an engineer claims to be fuelled by something other than caffeine, I'm immediately suspicious.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Oh, what's that? The probe sanitizer was on leave before packaging and launch? Ah, well, maybe it'll grow up to be like it's parents...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Why do we assume that life on other worlds would have the same requirements as life on earth?
We were either created for this world or evolved into what we are by it. Doesn't it make sense that life on other worlds would be fit for theirs in the same way?
Why is water so damn important? Couldn't life be based upon a different liquid than water? A different solid than carbon?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
If life had existed in the presumable oceans on Mars back in the day, then it is possible that there is life in the water vapor in the atmosphere (just as there is life in our atmosphere). Of course, I'm not sure that there is much (any?) water in the atmosphere on Mars. Furthermore, Mars didn't overheat, and there is not as much water in the polar ice caps as we had expected. To me this indicated that most of the water must have gone down below the surface; it could have easily brought microbial life down with it, as Earth has much microbial life beneath the earth.
...were known to be flawed, before the rockets were ever launched. Many of the tests that would have been conclusive (such as those produced by Dr Carl Sagan) were abandoned, due to budget constraints, political concerns (finding life would have made it much harder for Congress to keep slashing NASA's budget) and the greater need to impress the mass media than the scientific community.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
-Laz
First off, the article is worth the read. They are going to do a pile of cool things, and with the PAW robotic arm, they'll be very adaptive based on what they discover. Tres' cool.
But I must object to the following:
Clearly, if the British lander does find life on Mars, a scientific symposium will have to be convened to sort out who may have discovered it first: NASA or ESA.
Must we? Could we for once view science as the continuous stretch of micro-advances that it really is? Whether it's flight, or the TV, or beer the credit for doing it "first" seems to overwelm the real credit that I will lavish on the Brits at the end of the mission, and that is: the credit for doing it well.
Honestly, NASA will probably never learn that - it's impossible to learn such a negative. For instance, it's impossible to 'learn' that there is no God - you cannot scientifically disprove God's existence.
On that same token, it's impossible for NASA to 'learn' that there is no life outside of Earth until it has visited all of the other planets throughout the Universe.
So, no, NASA will never learn that there is no life outside our planet - but in their quest, they will probably learn many other things (perhaps even useful ones).
Umm, I believe we have already proven that life exists in the void of space. IIRC, wasn't MIR 'infected' (yes, it was a bad case, from what I heard) with a type of mold that wasn't terrestrial to our planet?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
WHY NOT?!!!!
Because it would shake our religious and moral philosphies to their very core! Because, everything we believe in would be proven wrong!! What's wrong with you? Lord, man, I'm shaking just thinking about it.
Oh, I thought you said wifes in bars.
never mind
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It's all part of NASA's work on alternative fuel sources - they believe that by running rocket engines on 'doubts' they can seriously cut down on the emissions caused by shuttle and satellite launches. The last major hurdle to overcome is how to make the navigation system certain that it has arrived in the correct place.
The organisation has a history of almost-but-not-quite developing revolutionary new fuel sources, last year NASA stopped developing their faster-than-light 'bad news' powered rockets as they were unwelcome everywhere they went.
Beep beep.
I read a book by Stuart Kauffman (hope I spelt that right). He said he was asked by NASA to help design probes to send to Mars to look for life. He told them not to bother, and his reasoning was:
All life takes in energy and matter from the environment, extracts energy, and produces waste. This process causes chemical imbalences in the atmosphere. Therefore to test for the presence of life, you only need to determine whether the atmosphere is in chemical equilibrium. Mars' atmosphere is, and has been for many millions of years.
Apparently this line of reasoning upset NASA, because they wanted to go to Mars, so they made their probes without his help, and when they arrived on Mars, found no traces of current life.
If they send more probes, they could very well find evidence of past life, but there is nothing going on there at the moment.
However I remember reading a story a while ago on Slashdot about how the atmosphere of Venus is operating far from chemical equilibrium, and that there may be some primitive life in the 400 degree acid in the atmosphere. Maybe someone should pay more attention to Venus...
- Water is highly polar, and therefore has the ability to dissolve ions. Without ions, complex chemistry could not take place.
- Water is liquid at a "reasonable" temperature, meaning water in liquid form is not hot enough to destroy most complex molecules.
- The density of ice is slightly less than that of water, so ice floats on top of water. This is vital, because it allows bodies of water to form a frozen cover which protects against further freezing. This is not common among substances.
- Water blocks ultraviolet light, which would otherwise destroy fragile molecules and organisms.
- Water has a very high specific heat, making it ideal for carrying out chemical reactions -- exothermic reactions can dump their heat into the water, and endothermic reactions can draw their heat from the water. This allows energetic reactions to occur without raising the temperature too high.
Basically, water is a very unusual substance with many favorable properties, and it's likely that life will take advantage of water, if it is present.That's not to say that life cannot exist without water, but it certainly makes life much more plausible.
As for non-carbon-based lifeforms, people have been pondering that for decades. Carbon is interesting because it can bond with itself pretty much ad infinitum, forming complicated structures. It also combines readily with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulfur, the halogens, and a host of other elements. Complex life based on some non-carbon element would have to have the ability to form long chains of atoms, branching structures, and structured which curl up into specific shapes (i.e. proteins and enzymes). A carbon-silicon combo might work.
How about a BBC article
The fungi that did the damage, Novikova said, included members of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Cladesporium - all very common on Earth.
Davak