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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?
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
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
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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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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