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Possibility of Life On Mars Looking More Remote
Riding with Robots writes "The never-say-die robotic geologist Opportunity continues its extended explorations in Victoria Crater on Mars. The latest findings from the mission suggest that while plenty of water did exist in this location, it was so salty that life would have a very hard time gaining a foothold. 'Not all water is fit to drink,' said Andrew Knoll, a member of the rover science team. 'At first, we focused on acidity, because the environment would have been very acidic. Now, we also appreciate the high salinity of the water when it left behind the minerals Opportunity found. This tightens the noose on the possibility of life.'"
I suppose it hasn't occurred to them that the rover might be in a Martian equivalent of the Dead Sea? There are plenty of inhospitable places on Earth, too.
I don't think it's a question of 'is' there life on Mars. It's more like 'was' there life at any point in it's history.
Too salty? Is there such a thing? Here on Earth we've found life everywhere where there's energy and liquid water: even apparently-unliveable places like the nuclear waste tanks at Hanford or the superheated water of deep-ocean vents. Excessively salty water might kill off life not adapted to it, but there's no fundamental reason why life can't form in extreme saltwater.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
When oceans and seas dry up they get saltier and saltier. Unless you know the total volume of water you don't know the concentrations of salts to make a determination of whether or not it can support life.
Of course, given that we probably couldn't completely 100.00000000000% sterilize what we sent there, the next question is:
Is there life on Mars now? (that we've been there)
Sooner or later, we're gonna find our own bacteria on Mars if we keep sending stuff there.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
It is mostly CO2, which makes this ideal for micro-aerophiles, or even an anaerobic lifeforms. In addition, we have plenty of low life at each pole. The dead sea is anything but. I will agree that the likelihood of carbon based life being there is DAMN slim, but slim is not the same as none. No chance would be the sun, or even the Venus surface (though it would be possible in the upper atmosphere).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Am I the only who has, for tears, 'known' that there is no life on Mars?
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
- Carl Sagan
Every time I read an article like this, I'm amazed at how the term "life" is used. They don't mean life, they mean "life, as we know it on earth" (and often even more restrictive than that). Looking at the extremophiles right here on earth should be enough to see that life can adapt to many "unsuitable" environments. Are these people really that myopic?
If I'm not mistaken, the lethality of salty environments (for "life as we know it") is related to osmatic pressure at a cellular level. Too many assumptions there to rule out realistic adaptations (and "adaptation" assumes that the lifeform originated in a different situation) to such an environment.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law