New Clue for Life on Mars?

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 20, 2004 @05:47AM from the but-i-wouldn't-wanna-live-there dept.

thhamm writes "Recent analyses of ESA's Mars Express data reveal that concentrations of water vapour and methane in the atmosphere of Mars significantly overlap. This result, from data obtained by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS), gives a boost to understanding of geological and atmospheric processes on Mars, and provides important new hints to evaluate the hypothesis of present life on the Red Planet."

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Water!! by allden · 2004-09-20 05:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why the assumption that life can't evolve without water??
1. Re:Water!! by stratjakt · 2004-09-20 05:58 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Noone assumed life can't evolve without water.
  
  It's just that life as we know it evolved with water.
  
  The only type of life we could hope to positively detect and identify would be life as we know it.
  
  It's possible there's life made out of magical moonbeams and fairy farts but unless you've engineered a gizmometer to test for it, it's hopeless.
  
  --
  I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
2. Re:Water!! by mmontour · 2004-09-20 06:33 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  In any case these worms are proof that you don't have to have water to support life
  
  Yes, these worms that live at the bottom of the freaking *OCEAN* provide ample proof that life can exist without water.
Easiest way to settle the question definitively: by physicsphairy · 2004-09-20 05:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Put life on mars.

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When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Re:Fantastic! by CodeWanker · 2004-09-20 06:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

I read the article. It seems to me that they would get the same results from comet impacts slowly melting/evaporating in the equatorial regions, too.

I really hope life is there, but nothing short of shipping a bunch of naked apes with petri dishes, nutrients, and microscopes will resolve it.

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"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
Re: Fantastic! by Black+Parrot · 2004-09-20 06:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

> Is life on Mars possible? Sure. Probable? Not really.

Could you show us those probability calculations?

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:A little O/T.. seeding life? by jfengel · 2004-09-20 06:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

I'd just as soon leave it alone. We don't encounter new planets every day, and I'd really hate to have future generations say, "If only they'd left it alone rather than screwed it up." History is full of well-meaning scientists who didn't understand what they were doing and therefore lost valuable information. How many artifacts have been cut open or broken before we had X-rays and CAT scans?

Humanity will be around for a long, long time. There will be plenty of opportunities to seed Mars with whatever we want, but only one chance to see the untouched Mars and perform experiments we haven't yet conceived.
Re:Fantastic! by Smidge204 · 2004-09-20 07:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

People used to believe the reason for lunar eclipses was a dragon was swallowing the moon. They'd shoot cannons at the "dragon" to scare it off, and sure enough the moon came back into view. Guess that, in the lack of any better data or means of observation, the conclusion was rather scientific...

The same goes for the "men" living on Mars idea. You have very limited data, poor observation techniques, and a starved imagination. Result? Wild hypotheses. As data quality improves we can get a better understanding of what's going on, fantasies be damned!
=Smidge=
Re:Fantastic! by Trurl's+Machine · 2004-09-20 07:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

Is life on earth possible? Sure. Probable? Not really. That nasty oxidizing atmosphere must kill most of it.

Quite contrary. If I were an alien watching Solar system plantes, I would guess Earth has huge biosphere just by detecting so high concentration of pure oxygene in atmosphere. Oxygene is highly reactive and without biosphere, it would quickly return to CO2 and other oxides - that's how it is on planets with no lifeforms. "If there is Oxygene, something must produce it" - that would be my guess (of course, as an alien I'd say something like "Ghrrbrghrgzzz wzgzhzzzz wzstktsch").