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.

Comments

Underground lava seems more likely.

[garcia]

So far the PFS has observed a depletion of carbon dioxide and an enrichment of water vapour over some of the large extinct volcanoes on Mars.
Ammonia is not a stable molecule in the Martian atmosphere. If it was not replenished in some way, it would only last a few hours before it vanished.

An underground lava theory seems much more plausible than microbes hoarding nitrogen. Underground lava beneath the extinct volcanoes could be releasing the ammonia into the atomosphere and thus explains how it is replenishing so quickly. Without other specific evidence of microbial life I really think we should just not get our hopes up, at least not yet.

Re:Underground lava seems more likely.

[cephyn]

I think this explanation, based on evidence, is equally as likely as the non-bio explanation, the lava tube one. However, Mars is thought to be relatively geologically dead, so an active lava tube this close to the surface (close enough to vent ammonia) would seem unlikely to have avoided detection by now. So a deeper, more sedentary lava bulge, warming the rock and allowing anaerobic microbes to survive of the heat seems to me to be an equally likely proposition. EITHER discovery would be fantastic.

Re:Underground lava seems more likely.

[BasilBrush]

No one would have believed, in the early years of the twenty first century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their affairs they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

Re:Underground lava seems more likely.

[cephyn]

Is earth vulcanism a good model for mars? I don't know. Different rock composition might make for radically different magma gasses. Are volcanos on Io similar to terran? I don't know...but I bet they're rather different. And of course, vulcanism on Triton is RADICALLY different than terran....so who knows what gasses a Martian volcano would release.

Re:Underground lava seems more likely.

[Short Circuit]

So, if you consider the apparent age of the rest of the planet (no magnetic field, little atmosphere, etc.), why is it likely these deposits haven't been depleted?

Re:Underground lava seems more likely.

[dnahelix]

"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!". "

Tendancy? We've only seen chemistry on other planets (& moons) a handful of times, and I don't remember anyony yelling 'it must be life!' This is one of the grossest over-generalizations I've read all day.

I don't know where the ammonia is coming from on Mars. If there even is any; from the article: "Ammonia may have been found in Mars' atmosphere" But to just not buy an explanation, because you think it is just too implausible or because it turned out not to be false in another instance is just stupid.

Re:Underground lava seems more likely.

[shaitand]

'"Occam's Razor compatable" explanations.'

I'll abstain on the current issue but please stop this Occam's Razor nonsense.

It's a horrible thing to spread around, it's a completely invalid method that results in the "shaving" of solutions which may or may not be the correct ones in favor of ones which are no more likely to be correct.

The idea that a simpler answer is more correct merely because it's simpler is false. I could give you hundreds of examples where the simplest answer is NOT the correct one. In fact I could give you MORE examples where the simple answer was incorrect than the other way around.

Although useful at times, Occam's Razor overall does more harm than good and would be best forgotten.

Life was inevitable

[apikoros]

I am not at all suprised at this. I always regarded life on Mars as being inevitable for the following reasons:

1. There is no place on this planet that we have not found bacterial life,
2. we know that meteorites can travel between the two planets as we have found rocks of Martian origin in Antarctica.
3. if all rocks of earth origin contain bacteria and rocks from Mars can reach earth I would *expect* that life had travelled from earth to Mars via the same mechanism in reverse.

That the meteorites found in Antarctica contained fossil bacteria only makes the case stronger.

Re:Life was inevitable

[ShieldWolf]

A few deflating points:

1. There are places on earth where there is no bacterial life: try the upper atmosphere and farthest reaches of antarctica at the moment (both places as cold as Mars).

2. A human being has trouble surviving a re-entry inside a spaceship covered with heat-resistant tiles, do you really think a bacterium sitting on a rock that is heated up to a few thousand degrees has a chance in hell of surviving the trip?

3. Not all rocks of Earth origin contain bacteria, again those in the middle of antartica do not.

4. The rocks found in antartica DID NOT have fossilized bacteria. What they did have were crytalized structures that scientists figured could plausibly have been created by life. As for the famous picture: those structures are MUCH smaller than bacteria and scientists were careful not to say they were fossils.

The approach you should take is common-sense:

If I can kill all the bacteria in water by simply boiling it for a few minutes at ~100 celcius, do you honestly think it could survive on a rock that has is flung off the earth at escape velocity through the atmosphere, across the freezing vacuum of space and then plumetting through the martian atmosphere and then crashing to the ground?

Re:Life was inevitable

[cephyn]

1) There has been life found in the upper atmosphere and in the farthest reaches of antarctica.

2) some microbes live IN rocks, some very deep, so the outer layers of rock could protect an atmospheric entry. Especially since rock-loving microbes aren't bothered by extreme temperatures, the center of the rock could still be cool enough not to cook them.

3)Not all rocks, but way more than you'd expect.

4)No argument.

Yes, I believe it could since microbes were discovered on the moon landers after they'd been sitting on the moon for a few years. Also, earth rocks blown off that later re-enter and land have microbes that could survive. There's no event in your scenario that some microbes couldn't survive.

Re:Life was inevitable

[Teancum]

How absolutely sure are you that bacterial life is not in the upper atmosphere?

I've heard of bacterial capture as high as 50,000 feet. Do you mean higher than that? Like the 100 km altitude that Space Ship One went to?

And the same about Antarctica. How absolutely sure are you that you can't find some sort of bacterial remains or transport of some kind that can litterally be found in the middle of Antarctica? That is even ignoring the Antarctic research stations where I'm sure you can find bacteria in abundance. I've seen bacterial growth on alpine glaciers high on mountain tops, that live in conditions that are very similar to Antarctica. Antarctica is a big place, and to totally rule out anything living there is just too absolute.

Also, if you think boiling something for a few minutes in water at 100 C is going to kill bacteria, you really don't understand food science at all. What that normally does when you cook is kill bacteria and other organisms that are harmful to people. An autoclave does a much better job, but that is not normally something you would stick a chicken sandwich into.

One reason why it is suspected that bacteria could survive in space is because of Apollo-12, where the Surveyor probe, launched several years earlier, was "accidentally" contaminated before it was launched. Parts of this space probe were returned back to Earth in sealed bags, and it was detected that several bacterial cells survived not only the spaceflight to the moon, but "lived" on the moon for several years before coming back to the laboratories on the Earth. Nobody is claiming that they thrived and multiplied into huge numbers on the Moon, but they were able to survive and when put into a much more hospitable environment (like a petri dish full of agar in an Earth-based lab) they did thrive and begin to reproduce again.

Also, micrometeorites that are the size of a pin-head or even somewhat larger have been known to survive reentry without burning up from re-entry. It is not that difficult to bring things to the Earth that could survive, and certainly something the size of a bacterium could enter the Earth's atmosphere without heating up to several thousands of degrees C.

The only reason reentry is so difficult for spaceflight is because it is a cheap and easy way to reduce speed without having to fire rockets to reduce velocity for a safe landing. This has no relationship to small grains of sand that are orbiting the sun. Even a large rock will only get heated so much coming into the Earth's atmosphere, simply because the entry won't last that long. A very hard landing, but relatively quick transit time through the atmosphere. How many G's of force do you think a bacteria could take? I bet it is quite a bit more than a person could take, by about 1000x.

Not a flamebait, but...

[rfernand79]

I don't intend to go on a flamebait, but this kind of news seem to support Bush's "Go to Mars" space program. Yes, there are some of us who think it's great to explore Mars, but not at the expense of other resources. I keep hearing this comments on how government research funding has been redirected towards Mars... this is the flaw. I believe no resources should have been redirected, but instead, new resources created for a new project. Anyway, something to ponder...

Re:Not a flamebait, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"New resources" created? You mean like a "Mars Tax" added to the federal income tax or something?

Unless new taxes are inacted to go to mars, then all Mars mission resources will have to be "redireced" from other places (Or no mission at all).

Re:Not a flamebait, but...

[kyknos.org]

These news are from ESA, Europaen space agency and European craft. If it is there to support "Go to Mars" space program, then we are talking about European Aurora programme. Or hopefully international mission.

Re:Not a flamebait, but...

[drinkypoo]

Well, here's some "Flamebait" (aka anything a half-cocked moderator disagrees with) for you: Bush doesn't have a Go to Mars space program. He has a pretend to go to mars campaign program.

I agree that new resources should be created for a new project, but Bush has been too busy trying to ban gay marriage (the senate shot the latest attempt down, thank goodness.)

Life vs. the Volcano

[doconnor]

Of the few planet like bodies we've observed we know of two with active volcanoes (Earth and Io) and one with life. However, we haven't really looked hard for life and there are several places where we are planning to look, including Mars and Europa.

While it would be far more exciting to find life then lava, I'm not sure the data backs the assumption that volcanoes are far more common then life.

We know there are only 2 planets/moons with volcanoes, making them a little rare. We know there is 1 planets/moons with life and serveral unknown. Our very palimerary evidence suggests volcanoes are twice as common as life.

We have evidence that life appeared on Earth as soon (by geological time scales) as it was possible to sustain it. There is debate on whether the life experiments on Viking come out positive or negative. Now we have methane and ammonia in the atmosphere.

Perhaps it is our arrogance that insists that we are so special, life of other planets is unlikely.

Re:Life vs. the Volcano

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that it's suddenly perfectly acceptable to be unable to write English, and pedants like me who care about correctness get downmodded? Is it really that cool to be ignorant?

No, its just that uncool to correct spelling and grammar when the vast majority simply overlook it. Most users are more concerned with content rather than structure here, being that Slashdot is a BLOG, not an English class. Of the two comments, yours and the parents, it is obvious that his added to the conversation, and yours simply detracts from it.

PLEASE someone mod this spelling/grammar nazi down (then me too).

Re:Life vs. the Volcano

[plaa]

We know there is 1 planets/moons with life and serveral unknown. Our very palimerary evidence suggests volcanoes are twice as common as life.

You can't use the Earth as a data point for existance of life alone, because Earth has no option of being dead: if the Earth was dead, we would not be here wondering about it.

Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA

[RobinH]

I've heard that we no longer have to murder babies to harvest the stem cells -- something about taking it from umbilical cords. That's a good first step.

You also need to realize that it was scientists who came up with this procedure, not religious nuts. What have religions done for us other than caused death? Not to say scientists are off the hook on that one (given the rapid advances in military technology), but I'd say science is about even on the moral scale. Religion has a major deficit.

Life expectancy is up around 80 years. Quality of life is also much better. Productivity is through the roof. Our understanding of the universe has increased substantially. Science did that, while religions were trying to hold us back.

Has religion succeeded in saving our souls? Give me proof that it has saved even one. Scratch that... start by proving that a soul exists.

Judging from the smell...

[qtone42]

...of my technical advisor's litterbox, that life could consist or stealthy, rust-colorerd felines.

--QTone, not French

Re:Mars is alive?

[Ill_Omen]

The article also says that they know of no active volcanoes. Therefore, there are no currently "known" ways of producing ammonia. Of course, they haven't discovered Life yet either.

Re:Of course

[orkysoft]

I didn't see the episodes when they first aired. [...] why did Fox have to cancel[?]

You answered your own question already.

Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA

[RobinH]

Tomorrow night, I am staying at our church overnight with homeless families as part of IHN (Interfaith Hospitaility Network). Every six weeks or so, the families stay at our church and we bring them food, play with the kids and talk with the parents. Church members regularly bring in clothes and toys for the families to have, and donate furniture when families finally secure their own housing.

How's that working for ya? Has the tiny violin army fixed the homeless problem? I think I'll put more "faith" in improved construction methods and a better understanding of economics any day.

It's too bad that anyone who wants your help, also has to submit to being converted to your religion.

Re: "It's life!"

[grandbonheur]

We humans always project our own traits (ie, life) onto the unknown. It's a hell of a hobble on the frontier sciences.

Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA

[neurojab]

>"Science" has rarely met with any significant resistence from "religion" in the Western world.

I agree with much of your post, but that's a very silly statement. What about stem cell research? What about the John Scopes Monkey trial, which some (in the south) still insist isn't over? The Big Bang (somehow opposed to creation)?

It's really not hard to find examples of religion opposing science, especially when you talk about religious groups that take the bible literally.

Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA

[Just Some Guy]

You must buy either all or none of the christian package.

That's fine. I believe that the Bible is the word of God. Having read quite a bit of it, I don't recall seeing:

"Yay, be it known that the manner of Creation was Spontaneous Generation. The manner of Creation was not that of Darwinian Evolution, neither that of Random Genetic Mutation."

Show me where Jesus said that the world was created in seven 24-hour periods and I'll reconsider. However, I'm fairly certain that you won't find it.

Occam's Razor

[British Pedant]

Occam's Razor is fine, it just tends to get misapplied. It doesn't suggest that the simpler solution is likelier to be correct. Rather, where there are competing explanations with no means of distinguishing between them, you may as well use the simplest one -- not because it's any likelier to be true, but because it's easier to work with and, in the absence of any distinguishing factor, it makes no difference which explanation you use.

The common phrasing of the razor, "Do not multiply entities needlessly", itself implies this by the word 'needlessly.' You are fully entitled to multiply entities if you need to, as you often will.

If evidence allows you to distinguish between explanations -- as with your suggested examples of where the simpler solution is false -- then Occam's Razor would not require you to keep an explanation that is demonstratably false. After all, if an explanation is wrong, then it is not a valid answer at all.

Occam's Razor only applies where there is no other way of determing which explanation to adopt. Where there are better ways, such as experiments, we use those.