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Test Equipment Finds Life In Mars-like Conditions
DIY News writes "In a test of equipment that might one day be used to search for biological activity on Mars, researchers discovered life tucked deep inside a frozen Norwegian volcano, a test region said to have geology similar to that of Mars. The test instruments discovered a rare and complex microbial community living in blue ice vents inside a frozen volcano, which is the kind of evidence scientists have been searching for on the Red Planet."
Now the question is not whether Mars can support life, it is whether or not Mars could have supported its abiogenesis and subsequent evolution.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
because if you build a fancy machine and dont test it before you actualy get there, What happens when it doesnt work, you dont know if thats actualy a real reliable reading. It doesnt make any sence to send untested equipment millions of miles to search for something when you dont even know if it can find it at all.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
Here.
Do these lifeforms work with oxygen and/or carbohydrates and/or water? Whenever a discussion about possible extraterrestial life pops up, I always have to ask if the researchers have considered lifeforms that don't work like the ones we're used to.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The photo shows one of these Martian-like creatures at work in their natural habitat. Apparently they look just like coke dealers here on earth filling up baggies for distribution. Except they are all red with purple hands.
I wonder, is there a possibility of not identifying Mars' living things as form of life, just because it is very different from ours? How do one check, whether the thing is alive or not?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
There is life. Anywhere there is no water (Atacama Desert, Chile - no measurable rain in 100 years) there is no life. That's been borne out by every observation of Earth. Although increasingly hostile conditions make for less and simplier life (ie extremophiles), there is still life. Now the question is, 'Does that apply to other planets too?' I imagine that at some point, a planet or moon would need to have a large body of liquid water to facilitate the initial creation of life.
While this is amazing proof of life on Earth, unfortunately it is not proof of life on Mars.
These Earth-borne creatures are red because of the propensity of life on Earth to use iron as a key component in blood. I would expect that Martian creatures would have copper coursing through their veins.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
We are looking for a precise thing we call life. This quest is very specific and could lead to wrong considerations.
The point is that we know too little about life, Universe and everything to do something resembling a real search for life.
I recall Cristoforo Colombo that knew too little about India to understand that it was not India at all!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
What would it mean if we discovered microbial life on another planet? Honestly. What would it mean. One, it would mean that the posibilty of life is not that uncommon. Life prevails under the harshest of circumstances here on Earth. Why not elsewhere?
Two, if it does exist elsewhere, then what's so special about our planet?
Three, what's stopping it from evolving beyond the microbial stage? It opens the floodgates on "what is possible" in this universe.
I for one, welcome.... nm. I'm interested to know if mankind as a whole is ready to comprehend the fact that life is not indigenous to Earth...
There is simply too much glass..
high school buiology is oversimplified and to large extent obsolete. imagine a simple electronic thingie which can respond to stimuli (my computer can do that), but is it alive? imagine a robotic factory programmed to replicate itself - is it alive just because it replicates itself and not cars or whatever? i think not. defining life is not that easy consciousness may be? but i am one of those that are sure that animals have "souls" and are consciouss as well as plants and may be even bacteria... but... we cannot mesure level of consciousness
Deliriant isti Americani.
Cellular life we know of on Earth is based on complex molecules. Basically carbon is the only atom that can form these complex molecules (with an outside chance that silicon could do similar).
Studying the radiation from other parts of the universe, it seems that stars out there are made of the same basic elements as the ones we are familiar with here. So it follows that if there is complex life out there, it is probably carbon based. So we have a fairly clear idea of what carbon-based cellular living organism looks like.
Once you get a chunk of some substance under the microscope, it shouldn't be too difficult to make a determination about whether it was or is living.
Besides, don't you think it would be a lot more efficient to travel through space looking for giant giveaways of intelligient life, like, say, planets that look like ours, satellites and space stations orbiting planets, or OTHER spaceships flying around? Wouldn't we be making much faster progress if we just ASSUMED there is life in the rest of the universe and GET OVER our need to examine every last speck of Mars?
No. Because we currently have no means to examine any planet outside of our own solar system closely enough to determine if such things are present. It's hard enough to determine at this distance if there even are any earth-like planets out there. And any telescope capable of seeing that clearly at that distance is more than a few years off. (Read: not in our lifetime)
If we are going to find any life with the tools we have, it will be in our own solar system.
Researchers are now investigating wether there is intelligent life in Norway. "The odds are against it," says a swedish scientist.
'Test Equipment Finds Life in Mars-like Conditions '
Yes, but its life that has evolved over millions of years on the Earth. Living creatures are extremely adaptable. Given time, you could expect some life form or the other to make it thru' in the worst of climates.
So it does not follow that you can extrapolate this to a conclusion that life of a similar sort could have existed in Mars. The toughie is finding out if life can start anywhere, and in what initial conditions. Natural selection will take care of the surviving.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
Long term colonisation of Mars would require locally grown food, and preferably not at the expense of shipping in from Earth all the resources they need to grow. Is this a step towards finding hardy life forms that can be mutated to grow in Mars, or in a hybrid Mars-Earth condition? (ie. giving plants some support but not having to create Earth conditions). Hence making the possibility of long term missions to Mars more achievable...
Honestly, what scientist, from a scientific perspective, thinks we are the only planet with biological life on it?
If by a 'scientific perspective' you mean 'based on evidence' then no scientist thinks there is life on other planets, as life has not been proven to exist on other planets, no matter how likely it seems. If by 'scientific perspective' you mean 'based on confidence that evolution would probably have happened elsewhere' probably many scientists think life exists elsewhere. Until there is actual life discovered, it could hardly be considered a scientific fact. (Mind you, it's not a topic I follow alot, if life has been proven _not theorized_ to exist outside our planet, by all means let me know). The idea that life exists on other planets is so far in the same category as the idea that life does not exist on other planets, ie: it's an opinion.
Why is it the majority of the population believes in the existance of God, a being with no scientific basis...
Because people have experiences that they beleive are communication with God. You may or may not agree that their experiences are actually communication with God, but people are sure that they have them. Same with other 'experiences' like alien abdictions etc. Not scientific at all, but science is (rightly or wrongly) much less important to most people than their own experiences. I think it is good also to realise that evidence != science, that is, there are other forms of evidence that are convincing to people, for example, in court, eyewitness accounts are evidence, and do not necessarily require scientific evidence to be accepted as true. Science ought not to be a religion where things are accepted as facts just because it seems likely to someone, most people or even everybody. To be credible as science, it must be based on scientific evidence only. Of course, unproven ideas are the fuel of science, otherwise science would never reveal new information. The idea that life is out there is the fuel or motivation to investigate and discover. If the evidence is discovered, the ideas will become science, not before.
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Because it is by no means a foregone conclusion that there is life elsewhere. Probable? Possibly, but we don't have much data to back it up. So far we know of only carbon based lifeforms, and we know of no planets outside the solar system even remotely likely to be able to sustain lifeforms like us. We don't have any data (as opposed to theories) that indicates that other types of lifeforms are even possible.
We don't even know if planets likely to harbour life will ever be found outside the solar system, or if our system is an aberration.
You say it's an overblown sense of how special we are, but that's not only it: IF there is only one planet with intelligent life in the universe, then if you are discussing the issue of whether or not there is life in the universe you will be on that planet.
In other words, the likelihood is 100% that in the case only one planet harbours intelligent life, and intelligent being will find itself on that planet.
So talking about the probabilities is meaningless: If the odds of life starting are high, then yes, the probability that we are alone is low. But we don't know that - we have never observed the evolution of life from precursors to life in any meaningful sense, and still do not understand the process very well.
And we certainly don't know if the conditions in which life arose on earth has ever existed anywhere else, nor if there are other conditions which are favorable enough for life to develop.
That is why finding life on Mars would be important - it would increase our number of data points from one to two, and possibly give us significantly better data on the range of conditions that life can survive in as well as the forms of life that exists.
Hey, I know you! You're the guy who planned the introduction of new species to Australia, right? Hence making the continent more easily colonized in the long term by Europeans.
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Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
Make sure you read the whole title. It's quite misleading otherwise.
If they do find life on Mars it'll be fun to watch the kooks try to explain that Mars is only 6000 years old. And there were dinosaur babies on a Martian ark. And a tree with apples that two Martians ate from. etc etc
Trolling is a art,
The simple fact is that to any reasonably educated scientist who understands roughly how the Earth fits into the universe, there is nothing unique or special about our position. As such, if life has evolved on Earth, it would be expected a priori to evolve anywhere else where suitable conditions existed. It will be very difficult to prove the falsifying hypothesis - that there is no life on Mars - but, given the existence of life on Earth, that is the hypothesis that needs to be proved. Anybody who lets their religion get in the way of their understanding of the universe deserves to be tied to a chair and lectured by Richard Dawkins for a few hours (now, sadly, Jay Gould is dead.) Unfortunately, like the animals in Animal Farm, I increasingly find myself looking from fundamentalist Muslim to fundamentalist Christian and being less and less sure of the difference.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Earth's atmosphere is in disequilibrium, because lifeforms constantly replenish certain chemicals - methane, for instance.
The atmosphere of Mars, what there is of it, is in equilibrium. So, if there ever was life on Mars, it's dead now.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
"Good God, some Earth microbes were found in a frozen volcano in Norway -- and everyone throws a fit? Let me guess -- that ice is water right? And oxygen all over the place, plus that huge air pressure ..."
... uphill, both ways ..."
"Back when we were evolving
"Trust me, those microbes are living in a God**** utopia over there on Earth, those punks wouldn't last five minutes -- back on Meridiani Planum."
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