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Water Flowed Recently on Mars
elfguygmail.com writes "According to to Space.com 'Small gullies on Mars were carved by water recently and would be prime locations to look for life, NASA scientists said today.' "
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Is this another instance of "recently" meaning "within the last 1,000,000 years?" ...recently is since the last episode of Family Guy.
Stop making that big FACE!
Water Flowed Recently on Mars, NASA Scientists Say
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 24 August 2005
07:57 pm ET
Small gullies on Mars were carved by water recently and would be prime locations to look for life, NASA scientists said today.
There have been many studies of Martian gullies that concluded water was involved. But most of the features are ancient, or if they seemed modern then there were questions about how the water could stay liquid long enough to do the carving.
Scientists know there is a lot of water ice on Mars, locked up at the poles and beneath the surface elsewhere.
Water is a key ingredient for life as we know it, and other scientists have speculated that life on Mars, if there is any, could lurk just beneath the surface where ice melts in pockets.
A closer look
The new study suggests water may still bubble to the surface of Mars now and then, flow for a short stretch, then boil away in the thin, cold air.
The conclusion is based on computer modeling of the atmosphere and how water would behave.
"The gullies may be sites of near-surface water on present-day Mars and should be considered as prime astrobiological target sites for future exploration," said Jennifer Heldmann, the lead researcher from NASA's Ames Research Center. "The gully sites may also be of prime importance for human exploration of Mars because they may represent locations of relatively near surface liquid water, which can be accessed by crews drilling on the red planet."
Any potential long-term human presence on Mars would require a water source, both for drinking and to be broken down into hydrogen as fuel for return flights.
The claim that water carved the gullies is based on the shape and size of features spotted by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor.
Short gullies
"If liquid water pops out onto Mars' surface, it can create short gullies about 550-yards (500-meters) long," Heldmann said in a statement. "We find that the short length of the gully features implies they did form under conditions similar to those on present-day Mars, with simultaneous freezing and rapid evaporation of nearly pure liquid water."
Some of the gullies taper off into very small debris fields or leave no debris at all. That implies the water rapidly froze or evaporated.
Given the low air pressure on Mars, water would boil in a flash, the researchers say, so it is doubtful that ice accumulates in the gullies.
The findings will be presented next month at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Cambridge, England.
I don't think you understand.. if we get non-terrestrial life and it's genetic code, the results will be the biggest discovery of the last 100 yrs (leaving out quantum physics and atomic energy).. for instance.. we get to see if it also has a "handedness" in the formation of its molecules. check this:
3 408.html
" The crucial biomolecules of life - such as amino acids, RNA and DNA - are chiral. In order for these polymeric molecules to replicate themselves, their individual components have to be of one kind, either right- or left-handed.
"It is generally agreed that you need homochirality - either all left-handed or all right-handed - for life to get off the ground," Bonner said. "Therefore, a preponderance of one handedness must have evolved in prebiotic times."
The scientists, however, cannot explain how this happened because they have never succeeded in creating chiral molecules of only one kind in laboratory experiments that simulated prebiotic conditions.
Since chiral molecules are necessary to breed new chiral molecules, how did the first ones come about? "
from http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/93/930210Arc
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Of course they have - The whole core is ice!! Now, hot looking mutants is the find I'm looking for!
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
No. The smallest one was the empty story on april's fools day. Maybe that one was the only truly funny story that day.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
In other words, Scientists hope to find clues to abiogenesis from completely alien life.
Unfortunately, there's a good chance that "life on Mars" is just "life on Earth that migrated to Mars". Many years ago, I remember listening to a scientist who was absolutely certain that we'd find microscopic life on Mars. His reasoning was that with all the ejecta shot into space from Asteroids and other natural phenomena, there *must* be some Earth life that managed to make it to Mars.
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Should NASA do science for the sake of advancing knowledge or to make good television? How many truely beneficial, pure science missions must we sacrifice so the public can get a warm fuzzy feeling by watching people see how far they can knock a golf ball on another planet?
I'm no expert but wouldn't even a simple amoeba be an important discovery? Assuming it could be proved that it did not come from Earth in some way, at the very least it would prove that life can and does exist elsewhere.
While a manned mission would be nice, I doubt that the public is ready to accept the risk and cost of such a trip, especially given the recent Shuttle problems. I hear people grumble about the amount of money being "wasted" on space as it is. That says to me that unless scientists can give people a strong reason to explore space (e.g. positive discovery of life on Mars), it's unlikely that there will be much support for a manned mission to Mars.
I entirely understand, we pay NASA Billions of dollars a year and they give us a broken space shuttle and a couple Mars Rovers?
I'd say it would be the biggest discovery in recorded history. I'm not trying to belittle the significance of Atomic or Quantum physics, but lets step back and look at this.
If extra-terrestrial life were discovered, on Mars, or elsewhere, and there was solid proof for it, it would change the entire world. Many religious beliefs would be decimated, many scientific theories would be challenged or completely re-written, we would know that we are not alone in the universe, that we are an even more insignificant part of it that we already think we are, and importantly it would give a huge boost to those who want to see space exploration in our future.
It would have a profound effect upon every human on this planet... what could be bigger than answering one of our greatest questions about existance of life in our known universe?
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
I was a little disappointed to find no mention in TFA about what they meant by "recently". 1 year? 5? 10? 100? 1000? 10K?
Many will be thinking, water == life!. Let's say this improves the possibility, but if most water on Mars is (and especially, was) mostly locked up as ice and/or only very ephemerally available, then I'd say it's much less likely that the "long shot" of evolution that led to our existence on Earth could have taken place similarly on Mars. Our planet spent millions of years two-thirds covered in water and under a dense methane-ammonia atmosphere. In contrast, it seems Mars had far less soup under far less atmosphere at (average) somewhat lower temperatures. I guess the only thing Mars might have had more of, sans an atmosphere of effective sunscreens, is ionizing (and hence mutagenic) radiation.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
Water straight from the untouched springs of Mars! Fabulous!
Explore your creative side
Part of me is tired of this whole "search for life on Mars" saga. What type of life are they talking about? An Amoeba? Oh boy, goodie goodie...Yay!
Hey, don't knock it. If it wasn't for the humble Thermus Aquaticus and other extremophiles, we wouldn't have half the knowledge of DNA that we do and PCR-based techniques would be impossible. We won't know the uses for Martian bacteria, let alone something as large as whole cells are until we know what mechanisms they employ to survive.
Of course, trying to explain this to your average Monster-Truck Joe is difficult. "Hey look! There's green bug-eyed monsters, but they're real small and squishy!" may be one way...
I dont see the point of a mission to mars, you would need to live indoors, ship/generate oxygen, ship/generate food, ship/generate water, ship/generate power, etc etc
All that is true, but you forget the fact that the necessity for those technologies would spur research and development in those areas. That could mean vastly improved efficiency in how we live on Earth. The problem is motivating people to strive for that goal which also requires moving them past short-sighted views on how we need to "learn how to live on earth first."
6. And then we'll have those people that don't really care what the topic is, but like to show how long they've been around /. by making pointless generalizations about what everyone else will say. They won't actually add anyting to the discussion, or make any relevant points or provide any insights, but they will feel good about themselves because, umm, they posted something.
7. After that, another group will come in, pointing out the pointlessness of the above group's post, in posts that are, if possible, even more pointless and off topic. But then, just before the end of their posts, this last group will throw in some almost-related-to-the-topic bit, like "maybe it was glaciers!", so that they can preted that their post was in fact on-topic.
Or, perhaps, it is the other way around.
I think it is more likely that life on Earth originated on Mars that the other way around. Mars cooled faster, and it's easier for ejecta to get from Mars to Earth. Either way, life that has evolved separately for such a long time would be very important scientifically.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
No, humans (nor any terrestrial multicelled organism) cannot live in the current Mars climate. The atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide at very low pressures. Were you to step outside, your time of useful consciousness would be measured in seconds (and no, holding your breath won't work - you wouldn't be able to hold an almost 15 psi differential in your lungs).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
FTFA: "The new study suggests water may still bubble to the surface of Mars now and then, flow for a short stretch, then boil away in the thin, cold air.
So, based on that alone, no the climate would not sustains humans. On parts of Mars, the day-time temps can reach ~20C, but the night-time is still too cold for life. Also, the atmosphere is only ~0.1% oxygen, compared to ~21% on Earth, and ~95% carbon dioxide compared to Earth's So bottom line is... glass domes!
Which part of you, the stupid part or the apathetic part? (I realize this comment may get moderators panties in a bunch, but it had to be said)
I'm not flaming, rather frustrated. I mean if we already *know* (or have a strong feeling) there is water/ ice on Mars, then lets get the plans going for a Manned space mission in-the-works. They need to excite the public, not continue the ho-hum exploration for the elusive "Martian Single-Cell Alien." The public wants Buck Rogers or Star Trek, not another Mars rover. Bleh!
Then why don't you go watch MTV or E! or other drivel that can just barely keep you interested for the entirety of your 2 minute attention span. Yeah, let's not have another Mars rover, one of the most fantastic scientific achievements in space exploration in recent history. I am not even going to go into WHY that was such an amazing feat, it would be lost on you.
Your attitude is part of the problem with this country. I am starting to believe that old myth that some people only use 10% of their brains.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
These gullies are likely to harbor life only if there is life under the majority of the martian surface. If it exists just around the poles and under the remnants of old seabeds then NASA would be wasting their time to look for life here. Since NASA cannot know where life is on Mars, if at all, it would do better looking in more likely places like those mentioned above.
There is also the possibility that life on Earth is just life that migrated from Mars.
Perhaps at one time the very beginnings of life were on Mars but due to its conditions the life couldn't sustain itself. However, with all the ejecta shot into space from impacts the life found a very comfy and hospitable home here on this blue planet.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Truly colonization is a worthy goal. Our desecration of the Earth will necessitate seeking resources elsewhere in our solar system! Of course, burning fossil fuels to send vehicles into space is counterproductive, so insted I propose a space elevator constructed entirely of carbon nanotubes!
...but ultimately the triumph of the human siprit will, as always, provide us with our every need, fending off the previously-believed impending doom of our culture, and eventually allow us to explore and conquer the vast reaches of space!
However, that sort of thing costs money, and we have people starving in our own streets! We need to take care of our imediate needs first.
And yes, it's true that we have things like microwave ovens, teflon, and the 4-day work week today because of the tireless efforts of NASA...
What was the article about again?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Parent isn't overrated, but rather a feeling shared by quite a few people
TFA isn't about "shared feelings", it's about interplanetary life and biological science. I read at 3, and don't particularly like to have to sift through comments of people who just don't like the topic. Who's forcing them to read it???
If extra-terrestrial life were discovered, on Mars, or elsewhere, and there was solid proof for it, it would change the entire world. Many religious beliefs would be decimated, many scientific theories would be challenged or completely re-written, we would know that we are not alone in the universe, that we are an even more insignificant part of it that we already think we are, and importantly it would give a huge boost to those who want to see space exploration in our future.
It won't happen. Say, the Earth being the center of the universe was equally central to the early catholic beliefs. When this was convincingly disproven, after first trying to silence its proponents, the catholic church turned a blind eye and moved on. They did the same when Pope John Paull II admitted that evolution was likley correct: "the bible creation sotry just becomes one more mystery of the divine".
The conclusion is based on computer modeling of the atmosphere and how water would behave
In other words "Nothing for you to see here, move along".
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
In related news, scientists have discovered that Slashdot.org did have a period of time where stories were run without duplicates.....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Why caves? Two reasons:
- Here on Earth, there's some pretty "alien" forms of
life in caves that exists in very different and harsh conditions.
- On Mars, an ecosystem in a cave would be sheltered from the harsh solar radiation that bakes/sterilizes the surface since there's no protective ozone later.
Even though Mars is smaller than Earth, the land area is about the same as Earth, so it will take a long time to explore Mars fully.I agree that continuing to explore the surface won't lead to much, but there's probably lots of interesting stuff in caves.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
It wouldnt be the most important discovery in 100 years, more like the greatest discovery in all of human existance. We would know that we are not alone in space, that is one of the most fundemental questions that science and (unfortunately) relgion have attempted to answer.
Despite what i think it's all incredibly subjective anyhow.
IIRC, water boiling isn't a matter of temperature, but rather atmospheric pressure. The less pressure, the lower the temperature for water to boil. That's why water boils more quickly at higher altitudes than at lower altitudes here on Earth. Ever notice most baking goods include alternate baking directions for baking a cake in high altitude?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
We are going to Mars to find a bunch of left handed homos?
Hot Mars Lesbian pOrn would be good; it could help pay for the spacefreight on the Mars Bottled Water. (Hey, is that any less dumb than importing it from France?)
Water doesn't boil in cold air, but it's boiling point is dependent on air pressure. If you're at high altitude you have to boil eggs longer, since the boiling temperature is lower, for example.
The Martian atmosphere is much thinner than earth's, even at the highest peaks. I think the air pressure at Mt Everest is about 20% of sealevel, while on Mars it is 0.1%.
I don't have the numbers here, but I assume the physical foundation for this story is that at that pressure, the boiling temperature is below the freezing temperature, so water really can't exist stably in fluid state.
"Many religious beliefs would be decimated"
name one.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We may have thin air on the top of mountains, but the atmospheric pressure on Mars is 1/150th that of sea level on Earth (as measured by Mariner 4). The triple point of water (when water can equally exist as steam, liquid water or ice) is ~.006 atm (~1/150th of 1 atm) and .0098C. Any temperature on Mars above .01C, therefore, will result in water boiling.
Most humans are either too ignorant (not stupid) or too arrogant, and think that the only way an organism can 'live' anywhere must be by our own standards as seen on Earth.
We cannot possibly begin to understand or speculate 'that' which we cannot comprehend. Humans only know what we know, and what we have already encountered, and have absolutely no grasp whatsoever on the unknown.
Columbus said the world was round, while everyone else laughed because it was an unknown that nobody had ever been able to comprehend... until he proved it.
Sound barrier could never be broken - it was impossible. But with a few leaps in technology, trial and error, it was achieved.
Faster than light speeds will eventually become possible, and practical... we just lack the knowledge at this point in time.
And Life DOES exist elsewhere - NOT AS WE KNOW IT. We just have never seen it, and so we only look for planets with water, or signs of.... looking for life as we know it here on earth.
That being said, just because a planet does or does not have, or has ever had water on it bares no relevance on whether or not life exists or has ever existed there.
Unfortunately, there's a good chance that "life on Mars" is just "life on Earth that migrated to Mars".
Well, that's one of the exciting things the data will tell us! If the genetic code is the same, then we know life didn't evolve seprately - by one means or another it migrated from one place or the other.
If Martian genetics is built off of molecules other than U/TAGC, then we know for sure that it evolved seperately in both places (and that there are multiple building blocks that work, which would be an interesting discovery in its own right).
If the chemicals are the same but the code is different, then that probably means independent evolution, but if there's some similarity scientists can argue about it for centuries! Won't that be entertaining?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Boiling point is directly related to pressure. As pressure drops, so does the boiling point. That's why you have to be careful of cooking at higher altitudes. In general terms, the lack of air pressure makes things happen at lower temperatures, so things take longer to cook, because even though water is boiling, it's not as hot.
Or, to think of it another way, the state of matter is a function of how much it gets pushed together. H20 is liquid until it has enough energy for the molecules moving around in it to push against the molecules of atmosphere and escape from the mass. When it loses that energy, it gets forced back together. Less air pressure means less stuff pushing in means less energy is needed to escape. It's not an entirely perfect mental picture, but it'll get you close.
Never confuse volume with power.
I dont know. I find it frustrating that the article provides just about no details. However, I did a quick Google search, and came up with this:
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/june2000/
And:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ mars_ice_signs_010614.html
The first page is dated in the year 2000! I wonder if this is really news after all! The second page is dated 2001. It states basically the same thing as the article the submitter linked to, however it says how long ago "recent" is--10,000,000 years!!
You're referring to chirality (often called "handedness"). There are several kinds of chirality - for example, there is the question of why we only use a protein folded in a certain pattern instead of its mirror image, as well as the more fundamental question of why the amino acids that compose the protein are themselves a certain chiral form.
The "radiation" theory is interesting, but I find a much simpler theory quite sufficient: two dimensional boundary interfaces. Picture that, say, you have some organic molecule forming on top of a grain of quartz sand underwater. There are different forces acting on one side of the assembly site than the other. The side that forms next to the water will not be likely to form in the same shape as the side that forms near the quartz.
Boundary interfaces abound in the universe - almost every joint between grains in almost every rock, from the surfaces of those rocks, from organic deposits, to liquids and gasses. If a certain substrate acts as a catalyst for forming a given molecule, and the molecule is rarely formed otherwise, it's only natural to expect that chiral form to come into play. Once the more dominant form is incorporated into a lifeform, it is "locked in" - more of that form will be created to help the lifecycle, while the other form won't be renewed.
Are there any deer in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.
Dude, if we find any form of life which developed/survived anywhere but Earth do you have any idea of how big of an absolute revelation/breakthrough that would be?
Because if you find even just that elusive "Martian Single-Cell Alien" the likelihod there could, in fact, be Buck Rogers out there somewhere goes way up. It would demonstrate that the Earth wasn't uniquely blessed with the ability to evolve any form of life.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No, the beliefs would just evolve to accomodate (or deny) the new discoveries like they always do.
You see, once there's a sudden change in the culture and the current belief system becomes unfit to propogate around the population, new amendments are inserted more-or-less randomly into the belief structure and whichever mutations are most fit to attract the greatest number of believers will become the basis for future generations of the religion.
This ability to adapt is really the cornerstone for modern day religion. It also provides us with a wide diversity and complexity of belief systems, yet which all have striking similarities.
Won't that be entertaining?
Note that the discussion never centers on the potential earth-destroying dangers. What if we find Martian life, and the first sound we hear from it is "Juffo-Wup fills in my fibers, and I grow turgid"?
We hunams are too curious for our own good!
Are there any deer in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.
Many religious beliefs would be decimated
Reduced by one tenth? Probably so.
Few things: The atmospheric pressure on mars is only ~10 millibars, whereas earth's atmospheric pressure is ~1000 millibars. That drops water's boiling point to around ~70 celcius. That alone isn't enough to cause the water to boil, I think the parent probably meant "evaporated" or just didn't have all the facts. Water would evaporate more quickly than on earth due to the low pressure, and sublimation. Enough energy from the sun reaches Mars to do that easily.
Mars definitely does have an atmosphere, check this out.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Wrong snide comment. It should be:
Many religious beliefs would be decimated
That's hardly a significant achievement. There aren't any that haven't been decimated.
Fuck it
here's a good chance that "life on Mars" is just "life on Earth that migrated to Mars"
From the standpoint of the suns gravitational field, the reverse is far more likely.
If God can create one world, and all life on it, why not others? Just because Scripture is silent about life elsewhere in the universe doesn't mean it doesn't exist, only that it has nothing to do with His plan for Earth.
Blind militant atheism is as bad as blind militant fundamentalism. Open your eyes.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
It wouldn't decimate the beliefs of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. It was He who put the life there to get us go into space, using his noodly appendage.
Who the hell do you think you are?
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
I think you could find a common vector and theme if we found life on Mars.
What life could survive a meteorite? Spores maybe or a protein -- a virus is unlikely as that isn't necessarily alive -- it requires higher organisms to replicate. My own theory is that viruses are protein signals that aren't correctly "turned off". That's another topic, however.
Life could have originated on Mars and spread to Earth.
Earth life could have spread to Mars (note, that the Moon is considered part of a massive ejecta from Earth).
Life could have evolved Independently on both Planets.
Life could have come drifting in from outside the Galaxy and not originated on either planet (even if life evolved on Earth, it doesn't rule out some primitive, primordial precursor).
There could be no life on Mars.
But I'm weary too. I'm worried that we have ignored doing GREAT THINGS for too long. Our Earth may be sick along with our culture. We have to solve some BIG, fundamental issues rather than try to be king of the hill in a zero sum game.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
This is something I don't get about all this search for life on Mars. What makes us think that life on mars is similar to what we percieve life as on earth? Life there may be of different type; maybe unlike on earth, they may not have a physical body boundary. They may not need water or oxygen to survive.
Just because they were not able to find water on a planet doesn't mean that life doesn't exist. Don't we know of creature on our very own earth where they survice at absolute depths on volcanoes/oceans where they don't get sunlight or water or other harsh environment?
What I'm alluding to is that if there's life on mars, we need to be open to suggestions that life doesn't alwways need oxygen/water & 28 degree celcius temp. This is what gets me about hollywood as well. They always show aliens having somewhat human bodies with 2 eyes & nose, mouth etc.
because Mars has a lower escape velocity than the Earth. So its easier to throw rock from the surface of Mars to Earth than visa versa.
Ian
You're wrong. The very first chapter of the Quran starts with the words:
"Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds"
Several places in the Quran, it is said that God repeats creation. And there are several indications that this world was not the first.
--- Tao
Or as I like to say: Any religion that encourages abstinance for it's members won't be one for long.
Who else finds it ironic that any religion would not believe in natural selection when presented with such obviously-correct logic?
It would be much more than important. It would be the biggest discovery in the history of humanity.
Why?
Because if we know there are even a few cells living off of Earth that there is just such a vast expanse to the Universe that this would mean life was everywhere.
While it seems completely logical life would be everywhere, without the proof of it somewhere else, we just don't know.
With how many galaxies there are out there, and knowing life is so common that a planet right next to us also has it, it changes everything.
The Drake Equation getting an increase in the propensity of life elsewhere from it being next door would be profound. You can actually plug into that equation this event. Every extra planet we would find in our solar system increases the number of likely civilized societies able to communicate in our galaxy by 1000.
So if Mars has life, it is very likely a few moons of Jupiter would, and maybe Titan in some fashion. This would mean there may be thousands of civilazations in our own galaxy able to communicate.
There's a theory making the rounds that the Catholic Church didn't really care one way or the other about heliocentrism, and the Church officials presiding over the trial were actually sympathetic to Galileo. That Galileo's enemies were actually rival scientists committed to the heliocentric theory and co-opting the Church's authority to silence a dissenting voice.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Nazi Germany. Soviet Russia. In fact, the socialist implementations derived from Marxist theory were (are) explicitly atheist, and perpetrated horrible crimes against millions of dissenters (still do, in places like China and Cuba).
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The boiling point of any liquid is a function of both pressure and temperature, a point which you yourself seemed to make later in your post. Check out this article on phase transitions for more technical discussion. (For yet more info, follow the link in the article pertaining to critical points.)
It's entirely possible for three material phases (solid, liquid, gas) to exist simultaneously for a given substance if you have the right combination of temperature and pressure; this is called the triple point.
Many religious beliefs would be decimated
Discovery of amoebas on other planets wouldn't necessarily have a big impact on world religions. On the other hand, discovery of intelligent beings on other planets would have a HUGE impact on earth religions, especially if those beings had their own religions or ideas about religion that we could compare and contrast with ours.
For example, let's say that the aliens also had a religion based around Jesus. That would lend a lot of credibility to Christianity. Or suppose they were very advanced aliens with far superior knowledge of the universe and science, and they told us that all of our religions were superstitious rubbish. I think that would affect a lot of people's beliefs as well.
Now, I'm not the GP, but unfounded aggressive anti-religious statements annoy me as an agnostic: I'd like to perceive atheism as being a rational alternative to religion, and broad, sweeping statements like that aren't helping. Furthermore, seeing as I agree with the GP, you seem to by extension assert that I am under the control of organised religion. Being, as I've mentioned, an agnostic, I find this idea counterintuitive and would like to hear the reasoning behind it.
First of all, you do realise that ad hominem arguments are rather obvious fallacies? The AC hadn't even brought his personal beliefs - which, after all, were irrelevant to the discussion - into the matter. You really shouldn't try to attack people for their beliefs before you even give them a chance to state them.
As for the actual question: The Bible doesn't concern itself with the physical space that lies beyond the Earth, for reasons that should be obvious to both believers and non-believers. The book was written before its intended audience had any idea that such a space existed in as concrete a form as we now know it does.
From a secular viewpoint, this means that the people who wrote it couldn't discuss concepts that were conceived after their deaths.
From a Judeo-Christian viewpoint, it means that the existence of planets beyond our own would be a silly thing for a god to talk about to the human race. While I'm not very well versed in theology, I think it's safe to say that the Judeo-Christian god tends not to concern himself with scientific discoveries past, present or future, but rather with moral codes and prophecies of the future of humanity(in both the physical and the metaphysical spheres).
As far as I know, the idea that Christianity and extraterrestrial life are incompatible is a myth. (Christianity, of course, would hold that God, being all-seeing and all-powerful, is also the god that ultimately was the creator of whatever other planets and creatures that may exist - but this is not logically incompatible with the rest of the set of beliefs.) It may not have been so at one time - I daresay that Christianity at the time of Copernicus was generally hostile to all kinds of astronomy - but I've yet to find a single Christian who thinks that extraterrestrial life would invalidate his or her beliefs, and the Christianity of the present, like it or not, is defined by the beliefs of those who currently consider themselves Christians.
As for your closing paragraph: while a case can be made for the Marxist view of organised religion, you are approaching it far too naïvely. Saying that it was created for one thing only is simplifying the issue. Even from a thoroughly anti-religious point of view, you'll have to agree that religion throughout history has - to take a stunningly arbitrary example - provided comfort to believers who otherwise would have felt trapped in a world they had no chance of understanding, therefore causing them to cling to it. You can't simplify religion - or even superstition, which religion is indistinguishable from from a materialist viewpoint - down to a conspiracy theory.
(You can try, of course, but then you'll be playing "make believe" without even asserting that you have felt a supernatural influence - which is logically provably silly.)
Not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but that's almost certainly wrong. According to this article:
So if the boiling point of water is 69 degrees Celsius at 260 millibars, it's most assuredly far lower at 10 millibars. Assuming that the surface pressure on Mars is 10 millibars (which is 1 kPa), you can calculate the boiling point there. There's a handy boiling point calculator to assist with this; for 1 kPa of atmospheric pressure, you get just above -11 degrees Celsius as the boiling point of water. (This temperature is well within the typical temperature swing for the planet Mars. You can find the temperature and atmospheric pressure ranges at this site; the temperature ranges from -140 C to 20 C, with the average at -63 C. Pressure varies from 6.8 mbar to 10.8 mbar.)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saings religious movement has been saying that God created life on Earth AND life on other worlds for 200 years now.
You are not seriously this ignorant. "The public wants Buck Rogers or Star Trek, not another Mars rover. Bleh!" Make science like TV and you get crappy science. By the way, NASA already has plans to go to Mars, whether or not it is the best use of science resources. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4181187
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/mars-quotes-012 8.html
We'll see if anything come of this grand plan. It will take years before we can seriously try it though. It is 30 days of travel to reach Mars and the windows to get there and to return to Earth in a reasonable time frame tend not to line up so the trip would have to take longer than 2 months.
That all depends on how you interpret the Hebrew shemim, which is clearly plural, implying that there is more than one heaven. The presence of the definite article is inconsequential in whether or not there were more than one of them, and in determining whether there are other earths created in the heavens.
Of course since such semantics is rather irrelevant since the heavens are interpreted in Genesis as being made out of water (why the sky is blue) and one must come to the conclusion that the writer of Genesis accepted the general scientific theories of his day (views also held by the Babylonians and the Egyptians, and which can be seen in other creation myths such as the Enuma Elish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enuma_Elish), and that God didn't bother to correct him in all his details.
What does that mean for belief? Some have interpreted this to mean that the Bible isn't inspired in any way, and others have interpreted this to mean that God wasn't interested in giving a science lesson but a theological lesson. Then you get the fundamentalist wackos who refuse to see the evidence for what the Bible is really describing.
Given that so many can see incorrect scientific ideas in Genesis, and still believe in God, and even in the Bible, (just not its inerrancy) I would say that evidence of life on another would not affect the faith of most people. Those who don't believe already are convinced, and no evidence will change their mind, and the same goes for those who believe.
Actually, it's not implied at all that jesus would have to be crucified for each planet if life did exist. The bible also never states that god didn't create life somewhere else, along with other planets. Furthermore, it also doesn't state, or even attempt to imply that evolution is impossible(think of the 7 days as each being a billion years long(or whatever the actual scaling factor would be).
As to the argument that us finding life on other planets would prove the bible wrong, and that God did not create us, is about as true as us not finding life proving that atheists are wrong. Just because some members of a religion believe something is implied, doesn't mean it actually is. The only rules for christianity come straight from the bible. The more you interpret literally(and liberally), the more likely you are to be wrong. The best policy is to read the bible, and where it sounds metaphorical, it probably is. Where it sounds literal, it probaly is. Keep an open mind however, and realize that the bible was inspired from god, not directly written by him.
Blind militant anything is bad.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I could go on and on listing atheist rulers and the attrocities they committed in the 20th century but I would hope you get the point by now.
I'm sick and tired of this blind hatred and bigotry towards religion on slashdot as well as the ignorance of our common history. This anti-religious zealotry and often quoted sterotypes is just as bad as racism and racial stereotypes. You fear what you do not understand.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Number of religions I do not believe in = N
Number of religions you do not believe in = N-1
Given the known large value of N, what's the difference in the long run?
http://michaelsmith.id.au