Slashdot Mirror
New Clue for Life on Mars?
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."
It's really awesome, and really amazing, that as we study Mars more, the evidence suggests more and more that life is possible. In other words, the body of evidence isn't ruling life out even as we gather more evidence. It's STILL premature to assume this is life-generated, but its another awesome piece of support for the increased possibility of life.
Moo.
They used the phrases "tens of centimeters" and "tens of degrees celsius". I really hate these terms, especially in what should be a scientific article. This could mean anywhere from 20-100 (or more) which is a pretty broad range. Would it be so difficult to say 20-50 (or whatever the measurements are) which would give a much more accurate picture?
It just seems that there are some spots that might be a little warmer than others, or so goes the hypothesis as I understand it, from geothermal sources. It seems like a little bit of a stretch to link it directly with life on Mars. Perhaps this gives some ideas where to look for life on Mars, but the article itself doesn't seem to make much in the way for claims about Martian life.
Am I reading this wrong?
If I am not, does every discovery about Mars need to really be linked to life for it to be fascinating? Or does the press feel that's the need these days?
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
This is actually a fairly common viewpoint. And its a common way of limiting your viewpoint based on previous experience. Life must be carbon based, requires oxygen and water to survive. (I think there may be silicon life on earth near deep ocean vents, but I can't remember). Most people do this in there every day lives. Make assumptions based on the experiences they have lived through. Remeber the Earth was flat because it looked that way. The Sun orbits the Earth because it looks that way.
I do wonder if and when it is decided that mars could support life but no life exists, wouldn't it make a damn cool experiment to start planting life there? Could start with some sort of simple plant life (algae?) that would help prime the atmosphere for higher life forms. They may need to be genetically altered to survive in the environment.
;)
And if Mars does turn out to have some sort of life, could we do it on the next candidate that matches the requirements? Europa maybe? That in fact may be an even better candidate because there is less chance of indigenous life making it to earth (by hitching a ride on a rock after a meteor impact). That is, until they develop space flight.
The only bad thing would be that I wouldn't be around to see the end results of the experiment.
I didn't RTFA so please mod me down if this was already addressed.
I thought that the probe was just able to discern hydrogen. Since water and methane are both hydrogen rich, couldn't it be mistaking one for the other?
Blaze a trail to the New World
I don't know. I'm stil not sold. I wanna see some physical evidence. Bones, fossils, physical junk that can be hauled back to DC, put on display at the Smithsonian Museum, and drooled on by elementary school students.
Hypothesizing over gases and trace h20 evidence, and similar will not get me interested. Just like I told the church, faith won't get me there alone, I wanna see something.
On the other hand, I think it's more likely that a planet would develop life in close proximity to another planet with life, rather than have them equally distributed through the universe.
I'm assuming that cross-insemination through meteorite impacts, etc... is possible.
In the textbook fo biochemestiry by Lehinger, he asked this question about silcon based life and then answer the question in negative. The reason he gave was that the bonding between silicon and oxygen is very strong and difficult to break.
Yeah. If we see the sig of *both* methane and
oxygen then its pretty much a nobrainer there's
life.
Methane on it's own, given mars' current atmosphere
composition is just a teaser. Annnoying, real sexy, but geologic processes could be responsible.
I hope we see lots more surprises. Heck. we are just
starting to play with this place. Its one big planet even though it looks small and I for one pray that no
nasty stupid monkey hobnail boots it before we get
to do serious science...
Do a google search on the Horseshoe Crab, which isn't actually a crab, but a 350 million year old ancestor of spiders. It's blood is actually based on copper rather than iron (hemocyanin) and contains a enzyme called limulus amoebocyte lysate (LAL) which is used to test all pharmaceutical products for bacteria. No-one yet has been able to create this enzyme synthetically, which means that these critters have to be harvested for their blood (around $15000 per vial).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
If there is indeed life on Mars, and a future sample retrieval mission obtains a sample, AND the replicating mechanism of that sample is NOT RNA/DNA (but perhaps, a more primitive form of it), would that be enough to convince significant numbers of creationists of evolution? The body of evidence keeps growing -- there's gotta be a point somewhere when the argument is as straight-forward as round Earth -vs- flat Earth.
(Of course, one might say we're already at that point, but we also don't have Ph.D. scientists from Berkeley and the like advocating a flat earth...)
...and hence we will never be able to do anything useful with the place.
Yey Bro. It sure is an interesting chemical. SO interesting in fact that if you go look in a serious university library you'll find a shelf + of books just called "water".
We don't understand why. Both O and H are pretty common, but H2O is darned weird. So darned weird
I'd guess we'll *still* be writing books about it
1000 years from now.
I like the stuff myself (from a distance). My Cretan
friend here Manolis loves it and insists on risking his life on a yacht. Personally I'm too damn scared. You can never drown on a nice
sandy clay or chalky soil can you..
The debate about life using NH3 or HF is long dead. Hydrogen and Oxygen are about as common as anything you can imagine. So is Carbon . Even the
astrophysicts (who disparingly refer to anything heavier than helium as metals much to this chemists disgust (we love these guys though...))
don't fantasize about worlds where life uses Boron
and Fluorine (excuse me, where would they come from Mr. Sci Fi author?).
H2O is excellent stuff. Sometimes though even careful researchers forget that it can even dissolve glass - Oh yes, the big polywater fiasco.
God. I'm showing my age aren't I...
To look at a rock in space and say, " I doubt there is life there" is to ignore the fact that we have yet to find a place where life can't exist (maybe the sun...). In essence, if there is energy, then there exists the potential for something to exploit that energy. And more often the not, something does.
The question should be "What is living on this rock, and why can't I find it?"
Thanks for a great question - allow me to jump into the fray.
<DISCLAIMER>Okay, first of all, let me offer a caveat: I'm a creationist, but I don't believe that evolution is impossible: I just don't believe that God chose to use evolution to create man. More specifically, the Bible says God created Man - it doesn't say HOW, but since it says He created us "in His image", I don't believe that leaves much room for "in the image of a monkey". </DISCLAIMER>
Given that disclaimer, as a Christian, I have no problem believing in life on Mars. Why should I, as an intelligent, thinking, yet finite creature, believe that I can understand how an infinitely powerful God decided to create things? Why should the concept of life on Mars offend my sensibilities? Rather, it would increase my sense of awe at the variety of God's creation and abilities. See, I'm a logical Christian - I believe that the very definition of "god" implies infinite ability - and I don't believe it's my place to artificially limit His ability simply because it's too difficult to comprehend. Instead, I have to continually adjust MY thinking about God to suit the evidence around me.
The church in the years since the Enlightenment has constantly had the same struggle - how to reconcile the Bible with new scientific data. But that didn't end up destroying the Church - instead it gave greater awareness of the awesome, majestic creation around us. The Bible states that the universe itself sings God's praises, and that no man has any excuse for not believing in God, because God has presented Himself to us via everything we see around us.
Now, before the evolutionists and atheists out there jump on me for a perceived inconsistency in my logic, let me go a step further. I do NOT believe, given this framework, that just because God CAN use scientific processes to create, that He always DOES so. The Bible is very clear about the process whereby man was created - and it was very different than the process by which animals and other life were created. It clearly specifies that God "breathed life into Adam". This description makes it clear that there was a separate, unique step of creative endowment with "life" - meaning a spirit, not just "life" as purely reproductive ability. So, no, I don't see man as having evolved. That does NOT, however, discount the possibility that evolution is possible and even responsible for the fossil record.
Let me make one other useful point. I don't believe that evolution is overall God's tool of choice for creation. There are huge gaps in the fossile record between monkey and man, and huge gaps between many other species. From a strict scientific-process viewpoint, evolution is still a hypothesis: it has never been proven as the means by which all the current diversity of life exists. In fact, there are many very convincing reasons to believe that the fossil record and many other observable facts all illustrate that evolution is NOT a possible explanation for what we see around us. If you disagree, just do a Google search for the data. There are plenty of SCIENTISTS that believe in creation.
At this point, most Baptists and other fundamentalists reading this are probably seething with righteous indignation. Still, I'm a fundamentalist in this manner: I believe that the Bible is the complete, wholly accurate, inerrant, and literal word of God, at least in its original form (the original documents in the original languages, not any of our English translations). I've had this discussion with many fundamentalist friends - and they can no more convince me that I'm
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Drake's equation gives an estimation of how many intelligent technological civilizations with the capacity to communicate on interstellar level. However, you could change the equation to give an estimation on "life" in general in the universe.