Slashdot Mirror
The Indirect Case For Life On Mars
Deinhard writes "Space.com is reporting that '[a] pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.' It is all based on methane signatures and not direct observation. Now plans for using the Genesis Device on Mars are out ... unless this is just a particle of preanimate matter caught in the matrix."
Here is the scientist's proof:
http://xmlx.ca/images/37/o_martian.jpg
KHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN!!!
If ancient life can be discovered under Antarctic ice, nothing is unpossible.
Given our accessibility and coverage on earth, we didn't know about this ancient life until recently.
And now we only have few rovers on Mars...
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
...Santa may be real because he leaves me presents...
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Microsoft releases the new Microsoft Genesis:
1. Terraforms any planet within 2 minutes.
2. Can only be used on Micrsoft Authorized, Genuine Planets and Asteroids (MAGPAs)
3. Any matter may be used, however the Matter Standard may be extended in the future.
Microsoft has critiziced GNU Terraform system, calling it 'anarchist'. Richard Stallman has responded, reminding about how Microsoft once lamented about how 'if people knew how planets were terraformed when the Earth became inhabitable, people would be in dystopian alien governments today.'
Meanwhile in an unrelated incident, a person has sued MMOINC for not letting him use a used copy of Marsland MMO.
The WiMax Foundation has come out saying that WiMax could blanket 99% of Mars. Microsoft has responded to GNU Terraform by making Microsoft Genesis free-of-charge.
IIRC, Mars is geologically (or "areologically," if you prefer) dead -- obviously it had significant volcanic activity a long time ago, as evidenced by Olympus Mons, but none that we've ever detected going on now or in the recent past. So fluctuating methane levels, while they don't demand a biological explanation, certainly seem to point that way.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Creature that secrete methane gas and spend their lives hidden in caves, never coming out for observation.
Well, of course, th-HEY! This isn't the "EULA Confusion w/ Used Copies of WoW?" thread!
So that's where the Taliban is! We've been looking in the wrong place the whole time... ....
Years ago we were told that the best place to find life on Mars would be under rocks where there could be lichen-like lifeforms. It would shield them from the harmful UV and solar radiation effects. But so far JPL hasn't used the Instrument Deployment Device (the remote "arm") to turn over a rock and examine what's under it with the microscopic imager. They've looked all over the exposed surface of rocks and even dug small trenches in the soil and examined that. Perhaps they don't want to break it, but still I would like for them to at least try to look under a rock or two. There might be something interesting there!
One of my college roommates also produced a lot of methane. Based on his ability to consume large amounts of alcohol, I'm pretty sure he was inorganic.
The proper way to avoid flatulence (colloq: farting) is through a controlled diet, avoiding beans, cabbage etc. Drilling is apt to get them nowhere.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"Because know any sort of possibility of life on other planets is a hot button, we'll pull this theory out so that we can beg for funding."
It's all about getting more funding, and justifying what they have.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Dan Quayle, 8/11/89
I rest my case.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
... Now plans for using the Genesis Device on Mars are out ...
Since the "Prime Directive" is centuries in our future we are free to f' over anything we find there as we terraform.
Cor.
Don't assume for a moment that we won't colonize and terraform Mars. It may take 100 years and start with little research outposts like those on Antarctica, but soon enough it'll all be plowed up and paved over and we'll bring all the plagues of earth, litter included.
I suppose there will be an environmentalist coalition of some sort and some fine parks will be set aside, i.e. Olympus Mons, but when competing national iterests pit India and China against any other comers, it'll be a race to colonize it and damn the environment and anyone who pipes up to protect it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And we probably sent it there on the Viking Probes!
(or it's from the remains of a long dead civilization that had a war with the fifth planet of the solar system. The fifth planet was turned to rubble and the aftermath of the war destroyed Mars. So the survivors fled to Earth and feasted on dinosaur meat until they hunted them to extinction...)
OCO is Loco
This would contaminate the planet with human life, and as a result, if we find life, it'll be difficult to determine if it was as a result of our visit or not.
Nah! There are countless obelisks here but nobody claims there's intelligent life in Ireland. No...wait...I phrased that wrong...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
According to http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7014 the scientists have not only detected methane, but also formaldehyde, which was measured at levels of 130 parts per billion. From the article:
He thinks that the gas is being produced by the oxidation of methane and estimates that 2.5 million tonnes of methane per year are needed to produce it. "I believe that until it is demonstrated that non-biological processes can produce this, possibly the only way to produce so much methane is life," he says. "My conclusion is there must be life in the soil of Mars."
Bruce
last I heard, Methane was frequently produced on Uranus.
Exactly. Which is more likely to find life on mars - sending a stack of insturments to one spot on Mars (with the benefits of reduced latency and perhaps better local navigational ability - the two benefits that humans provide), or sending 50 stacks of insturments (with the option of having different insturments in each group, and the further benefit that you can stagger launches and thus send higher-tech insturments on each successive trip) each to different parts of the planet?
Heck, there's even proposals for robotic missions to "hop" across wide ranges of Mars via multiple takeoff/landing cycles, taking samples and examining the soil in each location. Such a mission would be many times more expensive if it had to carry humans, life support, food, etc, but is feasable for a robot-only mission.
Really, the only thing humans get you is slightly better local mobility and much reduced latency, and neither of those are particularly critical issues. The "baggage" that comes with people - tons of food, water, air, shielding, housing, etc - can't really justify the mobility and latency benefits.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
In the long run no, I think it would be rather silly to allow a few bacteria to deny us an entire world.
In the short run absolutely yes. Investigating a possible completely alternate abiogenic event? From a scientific standpoint that would be *more* than worth holding off the colonization for a century or two. The value of that information for understanding the distribution of life in the universe is incalculable.
On the other hand if it's just Earth gunk transported to Mars, away with it.
I think it's the significant temporal VARIATION of methane content in the atmosphere of Mars that is peaking interest in this theory, not just the presence ot methane.
Evidence of methane and its coverage with water can be expained in at least one trivial way. Note Mars atmospheric composition:
C02: 95%
H2O: 0.03%
Now huge ultraviolet radiation breaks down H2O and CO2 to loose hydrogen/oxygen/carbon atoms (this process along with mars weak gravity is co-responsible for mars losing its once dense atmosphere). Additionally there is huge evidence of Electrical Discharge On The Martian Surface
Try simple high school science project: Load a container with water and CO2, add electrodes to create some discharge ('lightning') and you'll have your own PanGea in a bottle.
After some time all sorts of 'organic' chemicals will be present in the bottle along with most common methane (but also alcohols, higher carbohydrates and more complex molecules). I would think decent scientist would at least mention such possibility in reocurring articles on 'OH-OH methane is evidence of life on mars'
Actually, the deal with the methane is this:
Its lifetime in the atmosphere is ~ 350 (earth) years. Thus, for the amount of methane detected, either there was recent (years ago, not Ma or even Ka) volcanic activity, or there is life currently producing the methane. Either of these two speculations is valid.
Your other suggestions are valid also, but require something to help them release their trapped methane. Ices/clathrates need to be melted, which means they need energy input. Hydrocarbon deposits would require life to have existed in the past, and would require something to release just the methane form rather than a bunch of other stuff. i.e., we would see other (than just methane) evidence for a degassing hydrocarbon resevoir.
The volcanism argument is very difficult to sustain because we don't see evidence for it NOW (however, as my advisor is always looking for opportunities to point out, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."). I like the volcanism argument because I like volcanism, but the most recent flow fields are 10 Ma, and seem to have been the last gasp of a dying planet. Unless they released a LOT of methane into the atmosphere, the current methane is not from those flows.
The life argument has some major problems, but it's at least worth investigating. There needs to be some sort of energy to maintain these putative methanogens, and that's one of the issues right now (we don't know where to look for life because we don't see any* evidence for subsurface energy).
We can't directly look for concentrations of methane because the in situ measurements would provide something like 1 PPM, and averaged through the atmosphere would be undetectably low compared with the amount of the methane in the (presumed well-mixed) atmosphere (ppb).
* There are small east-west trending fissures (canyons) that may be the best places to search for life-sustaining energy because they collect daytime sunlight but don't effeciently reemit it at night, thus increasing their temperatures relative to the surroundings and possibly conducting heat to the subsurface and possibly collecting enough heat to sustain life. . . I'll let you know in a week or so if this pans out. . .
And as such, methane hydrates or underground hydrocarbon deposits would vary over time as well. In fact, I can't think of an inorganic methane scenario which *wouldn't* be affected by, say, temperature.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
...what if we brought life to mars?
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
> Actually, the deal with the methane is this:
3 32 .pdf
e m/ mars_volcano_011113.html
Its lifetime in the atmosphere
> is ~ 350 (earth) years.
300-600. On Titan, it's about 10 million earth years - a ~20,000fold difference. However Mars has methane at 10.5 parts per *billion*, while Titan has 2-5% methane; methane on Titan is over *3 million* times more concentrated. Consequently, Mars is actually producing a rather small amount of inorganic methane compared to Titan. Titan has the advantage of being in deep-freeze, of course, but it's still an example of how huge quantities of methane can remain subsurface and be released steadily on a geologically inactive (presumedly) world.
> Thus, for the amount of methane detected, either there was recent (years ago,
> not Ma or even Ka) volcanic activity
Incorrect. There are many ways methane can be released inorganically; they're just not known by your average slashdotter. There's methane hydrates, which only need variations in temperature to outgas (which we know happen on Mars, and have happened to an extreme extent over its history). There are dozens of subsurface reactions apart from vulcanism that can produce methane - for example, it is an *expected* product of low temperature fluid-rock interaction; all it takes is enough low-level residual heat to melt ice:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/2
However, even concerning vulcanism itself, the jury is still quite out. There is evidence of recent vulcanism on Mars, as you hinted to:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsyst
Contrary to how you tried to make it sound, 10 MY is very recent geologically. I see no reason to suspect that, if volcanoes have been erupting that recently, that it's suddenly going to peter out at the exact time (geologically speaking) that humans start observing the planet.
> Hydrocarbon deposits would require life to have existed in the past,
Not true. Hydrocarbons form in all sorts of circumstances; you can get short chains from UV interaction with methane alone. You can even have hydrocarbons formed from such basic reactions as the subduction of calcium carbonate and water in with Iron(II) oxide. Hydrocarbons are all over the place; for example, the Saturnian system is littered with organic "goo" (not just on Titan, but all over the place, from Phoebe to the rings).
People here just seem way too ready to grasp onto anything that could remotely be a product of life - even if it's something that forms inogranically all across our solar system, and is constantly outgassed from dead worlds.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
You said: "IIRC, Mars is geologically (or "areologically," if you prefer) dead -- obviously it had significant volcanic activity a long time ago, as evidenced by Olympus Mons, but none that we've ever detected going on now or in the recent past."
The idea that Mars is geologically dead is based on old data. After the Mars Global Surveyor mission, alot of new information came about. One of the estimates was that Mars had volcanic activity about 20 million years ago. Considering a 4.5 billion year existance, 20 million years is hardly dead. This data was from crater counting. Older structures will have many craters and younger structures will have few craters. Obviously this has a fairly large margin of error (but a 2 billion year old structure still won't be confused with a 20 million year old structure). New studies from the Mars Express mission have said that vulcanism may have occured as early as 4 million years ago. This tends to support the idea that volcanos on Mars are dormant, not dead.
As far as having a magnetic field or having plate tectonics, yes Mars is dead. Mars may have had plate tectonics (which in general is due to convection of the mantle) in one localized region in its early history, but there is no evidence of it now.
Recent studies of gullies, volcanism, and the planet's precession tend to indicate that Mars may be alot more active than we think.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
For some years now, the principle investigator for the 1976 Viking Lander Labeled Release Experiment has claimed that his experiment did find evidence of life on Mars. The problem is that the results from the other Viking experiments was inconsistent with this, so NASA decided that the LRE detected a non-biological chemical reaction.
Is this new data about methane consistent with the Viking LRE data?