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Ice Detected Underneath Mars' North Pole
TheSync writes "A Reuters/Yahoo story says University of Arizona and Russian scientists have detected water ice uniformly distributed in the soil of Mars' north polar regions. The amount of hydrogen detected indicates ice of 80% to 90% of soil volume. Data was used from the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey." It's worth noting that their study only detected large amounts of hydrogen; so much hydrogen that ice is figured to be the only form it could be in, although I kind of like the idea of Mars' pole covering a huge pocket of hydrogen gas.
What part of "permanent" did you miss? Yes, they grow seasonally as the temperature drops enough for CO2 to freeze out. But in summertime water ice is the only candidate (barring something really exotic).
Come, this has been pretty much known since the first spectroscope was pointed at Mars, and known with confidence since the Mariner and Viking missions.
Not that it hurts to cross check to rule out oddball theories, but why act like this was a surprise? Perhaps the concept is new to Arizonans, but you'd think the Russians would be familiar with permafrost.
-- Alastair
> "The proof would be in the fact that this provides a link
> to the growth of multi-celled organisms that were able
> to adapt to conditions without any outside forces at work
> (i.e. man-made laboratories). This would proove, beyond
> a shadow of a doubt, that life on earth could have
> stemmed from the same methods."
Unfortunately, at least if you live in Kansas, creationists don't share your "without any outside force" premise. No evidence from the natural world matters to those who believe in the supernatural.
...although I kind of like the idea of Mars' pole covering a huge pocket of hydrogen gas.
You need three things for combustion. Fuel, got that. Ignition source, sure. Oxygen, don't got that. Maybe you could process it with the CO2 in the atmosphere to make hydrocarbons, oxygen, or even alcohol, (for the astronauts of course) but that would require energy to produce and there wouldn't be enough oxygen to fully combust any of those products. Hydrogen alone isn't good for much. Maybe if you sent a factory over used solar power to generate stuff (which was part of somebody's plan to get to Mars...) it could be useful, but just hydrogen has limited usefulness. I doubt it would be worth shipping back to earth to fuel the hydrogen economy either unless we're looking for hydrogen prices like $100 per cubic meter, cubic foot, mole, or whatever. Yeah, that'll work...
Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Doesn't matter; the fact that life was sustainable on two planets opens up the possibility to doubters that there could be life on more. The counter-anthropic principle states that we aren't special in the universe anyway, so if we find evidence to back it up, then there you go.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Yes. Ice is oxygen and hydrogen, but it's at the lowest energy possible. You can't get any useful energy out of ice, or water for that matter. If water were a viable energy source, we'd have a lot less problems with energy here on earth.
If they set up some huge processing plant to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity from solar panels, it would still take a long time to get enough fuel to come back. A fairly long time.
And as far as permanent settlements go, I don't think we'll be ready to have a permanent settlement the first time we go there. We just don't know enough about the conditions there to plan for that. Granted a 3 day mission is too short, I'm sure it'll be somewhere in between.
I would beg to differ. The largest creationist organisation in the world, namely Answers In Genesis, is based out of Acacia Ridge in Australia. This would not tend to agree with your 'united states' theory. Yet another (noticeable) victim to the idea that the world revolves around america. Actually, it revolves around the sun!
In order to be immortal you must be organize
That we are struggling to "catalogue all our ecosystems here" on earth doesn't mean anything in relation to looking for life on Mars. The main reasons why we can't do it is because of the abundance of life on earth, and that a lot of it is changing.
Also, I always wondered how the Mars landers could be bacteria and virus free from Earth? Probably nobody bothers "surely it wouldn't take hold on Mars, just ignore the theory that says life jumped planets".
Martian scientists have just found definite proof of solid ice on the poles of earth, now bringing up the possibility of life. A scientists was quoted as saying "This is exciting news, if earth has solid ice, then it is possible that ice burrowing intellegent lifeforms such as ourself. We always new earth had liquid water but everyone knows it is impossible to life in melted ice, or even in a gas atmosphere."
Because it makes it easier for people to get along and not kill each other so much if they aren't always bickering over "my god can kick your god's ass!" type stuff.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You choose to believe creationism until proven wrong. The only problem with that is it is, and will always be, impossible to prove creationism wrong. I could say I choose to believe Japanese speaking kangaroo's with badass superpowers live in black holes and I will continue to believe this until proven wrong. It's a pretty safe statement considering it's impossible to prove wrong. I am not saying creationism *is* wrong or you and others should not believe it, but I think the statement "until proven wrong" is illogical. I am not an athiest like many evolutionists, and I am also not monotheistic like most creationists. I like to think of the universe and "god" in monistic terms, that is existence as a whole is "god", not some guy on a cloud. From this point of view, IMHO, evolution is a form of creation, and in my simple mind, makes the evolution and creation debate kind of silly. To come back on track though, belief in something that cannot be proven wrong because it hasn't been proven wrong yet is not a method of choosing beliefs I would recommend to you or anyone unfortunate enough to read what I have to say.
Beware blue cats moving at
On the other hand, a uniform distribution throughout the Martian soil may be enough to supply humans with water (for humans, terraforming etc.) as well as enough hygrogen for fuel. Mars's relative closeness and its smaller mass could make it a critical resource for long term exploration as well as a refuling point for exploring the outer planets.
Excuse me, but that is only one possible interpretatio of "for in his days the earth divided". It could be that they were recording a massive earthquake that caused a large fissure in the ground. It could have been some sort of sinkhole. Pointing at the Bible and saying 'This verse constitutes evidence of X' is just an opinion, not a fact, especially considering how many translations and re-writes the Bible has been through....
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Finding evidence life on Mars which shared no genetic similarities with life on Earth would be a major find. However, if it is similar to what we find here, one could make the case that organisms were carried to Mars from Earth, by solar winds, or perhaps even our own unmanned probes.
When one considers the very fragile conditions which life requires to evolve (can't be too close or far to the star; must have a stable orbit and a fast enough rotation on its axis, which must nearly perpendicular to the orbital path; must have massive "shepherd" planets in further-out orbits to protect it from constant bombardment; must have a relatively stable surface; must have an atmosphere relatively free of certain toxins; must have just the right cocktail of "primordial ooze" to form into life in sufficient quantities), and even after all those conditions are meet, whatever the hell happened to form the first living cell on Earth has to happen. We still have yet to figure out what that was, or how unlikely it was to have occurred, but seeing as there are lots of star systems out there which are far older than ours, and we haven't heard from anybody already, it seems extremely unlikely that there's another inhabited star within a hundred thousand light-years of us (which rules out pretty much our entire galaxy.) I could be wrong, in fact I hope I'm wrong, but I think that we are probably, for all practical purposes, alone.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
but seeing as there are lots of star systems out there which are far older than ours, and we haven't heard from anybody already, it seems extremely unlikely that there's another inhabited star within a hundred thousand light-years of us (which rules out pretty much our entire galaxy.) I could be wrong, in fact I hope I'm wrong, but I think that we are probably, for all practical purposes, alone.
"Rare" is relative. Maybe computer-building life only arises on one out of every 50 galaxies. However, from the Universe's perspective, that is a lot of smart life, for there are billions of galaxies.
Such complex life being far apart may be part of the anthropic principle itself: if it was too close together, then some hateful species may have already eliminated us.
As far as Mars, finding life there does not tell us much IMO because we probably cannot tell if it arose independently, or was seeded by Earth or visa versa on a meteor journey or blowing high atmosphere dust.
Table-ized A.I.
The idea that there might not be any other life out there isn't sticking your head in the sand, it's a valid theory, just working from a different philosophy. Since there's no evidence that life has formed from scratch more than once, it's not impossible that it was a incredible, once-in-a-thousand-universe chance. If we knew exactly how it happened the first time, then you could figure out how likely something like that would be, but we have basically no information about any of this, on so many different levels. We have a reasonable bet that what happens once happens again, but if you're not willing to jump on that in every situation, you want some evidence.
The thing that would really matter with life on Mars is if you could prove that it started entirely independent from earth. If you just find something that gets to a common getentic root with earth bacteria 2 billion years ago, then you proved cross-pollenation between planets, which is cool, but if you find somthing else, that would be enough for me to feel pretty confident of us finding a green guy within a few dozen light years. I just don't feel confident making assumtions based on a statistical sample of one.
The idea that there might not be any other life out there isn't sticking your head in the sand, it's a valid theory, just working from a different philosophy. Since there's no evidence that life has formed from scratch more than once, it's not impossible that it was a incredible, once-in-a-thousand-universe chance.
There is a general flaw in your argument, in that we have only had any kind of technology on two objects in space: Our Moon and Mars. Granted, we have had probes pass by other planets, but still, they are still within our solar system, which only constitutes a microscopic fraction of the size of the universe. Now, I would say it is a very selfish argument to say that we have not, on the two extra-terrestrial objects we have been on, found life, that it does not exist anywhere in the Universe. The Universe is vast, spanning billions of lightyears. Can you truly say that The Moon and Mars are an accurate cross-section of the universe, and that if life doesn't exist there, it doesn't exist anywhere? Also, there's no proof that all life evolves as ours has. Though it may sound rather "Star Trekky" of me, I cannot imagine that all life in the Universe is biological in nature. Finally, if I may quote Calvin and Hobbes: "The surest sign that there is other life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." -Calvin and Hobbes.
-Dae
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
Um, we've landed stuff on Venus and an asteroid called Eros
Jeff
stty erase ^H
A discover of a developed life form on another planet, however insignificant, would give undisputable proof of the ability of life to develop and adapt to the circumstances it finds.
As someone who grew up in a fundy Christian household, I can tell you it will have zero impact on most of those people.
Going from their Bible, literally, you'll see nowhere that says Earth was the only planet created, or imbued with life. In fact, I remember (in my youth) having conversations with people, and debating the possibility of what would have happened on other planets; if life had been created there, had they passed their Garden of Eden test, etc.
In fact, it made for a great little argument against UFOs -- imagine some other planet out there, that never fell from their garden of eden. They're still cool with God, chatting him up like Adam and Eve used to, and he says, "No, stay away from Earth. They're evil. We're working on fixing them up, give us a couple thousand years." "Oh, sure God, no prob."
You could go to Mars and come back with a green-furred 12-legged creature with purple antenna and it wouldn't shake the belief system of most of the fundies out there.
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Water Water Everywhere But Not A Drop To Drink.
Anyone besides me getting sick of these "There's water on Mars!" Oh wait "There's no water on Mars!" stories?
This is AWESOME!!!
:D
So now we don't have to carry hydrogen to Mars in order to make methane to power the rockets! This lowers the weight of the Mars Direct mission considerably, meaning more missions or more capabilities per mission (or more people). How cool will this be?
Now all we have to do is get those doofs at NASA off their asses and onto greater things.
Happy day.
Couple of things to clear up.
First of all, I have taken entire courses on Philosophy of science where we discussed the differences between science and pseudoscience. Creationism IS internally consistent as well, that was my point. The problem is that within the creationist paradigm, there are too many ill-explained phenomena, and it is not predictively useful.
Second of all, I think we need to clarify what we are refering to. Evolution itself isn't even debateable. It is an observation about the natural world. (A fact, if you will). Natural selection, a mechanism to describe why evolution occurs. It is very internally consistent, simple, and predictively useful, so we call it a theory. It cannot be proven or for that matter disproven, which is why we do not give it the title of "law" like the law of gravity.
Evolution however, which is the fact that gene frequencies change over time within a population, is an observation. It is not a theory or a law, just a fact.
Jeremy
Since there's no evidence that life has formed from scratch more than once, it's not impossible that it was a incredible, once-in-a-thousand-universe chance.
It's not impossible, but it violates Occam's Razor.
There are two possibilities:
1) the Earth is very ordinary
2) the Earth is the only thing of its kind in the universe.
No matter what exclusion criteria are used, option 1 has the better odds, because option 2 has the lowest possible odds. So, without any further data, we should assume option 1 to be true, as a working hypothesis.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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