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Ammonia Could Indicate Life On Mars
Young Master writes "Just seen this story on good old Auntie Beeb, apparently traces of ammonia have been found in the Martian atmosphere. Ammonia doesn't last long on Mars, so it must be constantly replenished - it could be active volcanoes (none yet found), or it could indicate life..." Along with the detection of methane, Mars is starting to look a lot less dead than had been supposed.
the lack of a magnetosphere and a thin atmosphere would allow more solar radiation to hit the surface. That breaks the hydrogen off of those molecules. Their presense means that they must have been made more recently than the length of time it takes to break them up.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Good hypothesis,
But do we have any proof of -current- volcanism on mars?
Granted Olympus Mons is the remains of the biggest volcano EVER, but it's extinct, and there is barely any seismic activity on Mars...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I believe that the odor associated with flatulence is mostly associated with sulfur-containing compounds rather than methane. IIRC, methane by itself is odorless.
I'm not so sure that magma pockets are a more likely source of ammonia.
I thought many astronomers felt that Mars' core had cooled, since it did not have a dynamo driven magnetic field.
Well, actually #3 isn't a safe assumption. The gravity wells of the two planets are very different, it is MUCH harder for an earth rock to land on mars. That said, the probability is not zero. It's just much less likely than finding Martian rocks here.
Moo.
From your link:
The magnetic field of Mars is 1/800 as strong as Earth's and was first recorded in 1997 by the Mars Surveyor probe.
That's barely a magnetosphere. It is there, but it's not exactly substantial...
Moo.
Not only that, but there is the theory of panspermia. Basically, spores and microbes are constantly entering the upper atmosphere and from there entering space and have been at a slow but contant rate for millions if not billions of years. if protected in a body of dust or resistant to ultraviolet light such as many spores are it's possible for them to remain viable after a trip through space. As they head out in random directions from Earth, it stands to reson that eventually some of them would have been captured by Mar's gravity and entered their atmosphere and made it back to the surface where they could begin to prosper. Some people put forth that life could have originally been birthed on Mars and made it to Earth is such a manner.
OK, but if there is volcanic outgassing, we'd be seeing other trace gasses along with ammonia, I expect. Are those present too?
I'm not absolutely sure about the chemical composition; but should there be increased dust that can be identified as coming from the interior, along with other elements like sulphur? I know sulphur may also be present in the case of life, but there must be some compounds which exclude one or the other possibilities.
If ammonia is alone, then it would confirm the life hypothesis, I expect.
On a side note, if there IS life over there, it may be the biggest news and the greatest gift to mankind ever: It might serve to finally get nations and peoples to realize that provincialization is stupid, and we're all in this together.
Good lord, I've never prayed God and asked him to grant me a wish, but in this case, I do.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
There is no place on this planet that we have not found bacterial life,
Not so, according to this.
Christians generally don't have a problem with life on mars, or anywhere else for that matter. Belief in the work of the Christ, and theories about exactly how and when things came into being are pretty independent of eachother.
Please don't confuse the term "Luddite Maniac" with "Christian".
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
If I can kill all the bacteria in water by simply boiling it for a few minutes at ~100 celcius
That won't kill all the spores, which is why autoclaves operate at higher temperatures for much longer periods. And Oceanic vent-dwelling bacteria would find it posively chilly.
The latest Slashdot meme.
I have no doubt that you can find some sort of carbon-based cellular life in any environment that has at least some form of water, from the bottom of an ocean trench to the pressurized interior of gysers (sometimes over 300 C), and yes, even in clouds.
What I don't accept is that clouds themselves are a product of bacterial colonies other than as a by-product from releaseing water vapor from inside their cellular structures. Water clouds would form even if the Earth were sterile of life.
You can also find organic shapes from lava flows, like from Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Lava can even form pillowing structures and rounded shapes, and that is just a simple non-organic chemical process, just like you have suggested. Look at some pictures of Io (the moon of Jupiter) to see some other "organic" structures that are clearly from chemical processes. While living things may be on Mars, I seriously doubt any living thing could survive the extreamly hostile conditions on Io, both from extreame heat/cold conditions, the "atmospheric" conditions there, the fact that it sits in the middle of Jupiter's Van Allen Belt (radiation like you wouldn't believe) and other life threating issues. Europa has just enough "heat" getting pumped into it that it can melt water, which is why Europa is considered an even higher candidate right now for Extra-terrestial life in our solar system.
I think some clouds are occasionally found on Mars (getting this back on topic), and that by itself is certainly not proof of life on Mars. Ammonia, methane, and free oxygen are all much larger signs of life because all of these compounds (yes, O2 is a compound) are easily lost to space or consumed very quickly through chemical processes for it to have been sitting there for the past 4 1/2 billion years that is estimated our Solar System has for its age since it left the primordial stellar nursery. All of these compounds are found in abundance in the atmosphere on the Earth, in part because living things are also found in abundance. If you don't think ammonia is that common, you havn't walked past a manure pile lately.
I don't know about that. It's not like orbits are a set of shelves where you knock something off and it falls down. A piece of rock on Mars starts off with Mars' orbital velocity. If it gets ejected in some random direction it is as likely to increase its orbital velocity (larger orbit) as to decrease it. In fact, since meteorite strikes tend to be on the leading side of the planet (the bug-on-the-windshield effect), this may favor increased orbital velocity of the ejected material.
There is also nothing in the Bible that says life in itself is unique to this world. The only thing it says is that man has dominance over the other creatures of the Earth. That doesn't give us an unlimited license to abuse or torture lower lifeforms, but I think it justifies our selective killing and domestication as needed for food, safety, work or companionship (by way of Christian/Jewish dogma. Other religions may disagree with this, but I'm sticking with the Christian belief system at hand).
I think if we found advanced intelligent life on other planets, that would lead to a bunch of interesting religious questions. Do they have dominance over us, or do we have dominance over the non-intelligent life on their planet? Would we be permitted to interfere with said planet's development? Do they have souls? Finding non-intelligent life, like bacteria or simple organisms, would be much less controversial. After all, if God has the power to create life on Earth, he certainly has the power to do so elsewhere.
I believe the Pope was quoted as saying if there was life on other planets, those lifeforms would also be the children of God. I don't know if Pope John Paul II made any formal declarations whether it'd be in conflict with Bible teachings, or if life on other planets was possible/impossible by religious dogma, but I have a feeling he'd side on the possible side. Didn't he recently say creationism and evolution aren't in complete conflict (despite what a small group of highly vocal people claim)?
Are there actually people on Slashdot with enough postings to have mod points who haven't read War of the Worlds?
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"There are no known ways for ammonia to be present in the Martian atmosphere that do not involve life," a US Space Agency (Nasa) scientist told BBC News Online.
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That's just bunk. Ammonia is a very common compound in the outer solar system. Ammonia can get formed like crazy without life being present; it's a very simple chemical to create abiotically.
A decent sized comet impact could deposit enough ammonia in the soil to account for the amounts being detected just from simple outgassing.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
There's still that pesky issue of "what *active* volcanoes are there on mars"? By all standards we've observed so far, it's a geologically dead planet. We've seen no active plate boundaries, no visible earthquakes or vulcanism, and - perhaps even more concerning - the planet has no sizable magnetic field.
I don't buy the life explanation either, though. Whenever there is chemistry going on in a planet that we don't yet understand, there's this natural tendancy to yell "it must be life!". There are many reactions which can produce ammonia gas. For example, there's the decomposition of ammonium salts by alkaline hydroxides or lime, the decomposition of magnesium hydroxide with water, etc. I'm not sure if any of these processes are applicable anywhere on mars, but "life" is not the only way to make ammonia.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
Earth doesn't have a molten either because their are hundreds of billions of tons of pressure on it making the core to dense to flow, lava however comes from the mantle. Sounds like someone learned their geology from The Core.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley