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Seeking Signs of Ancient Martian Life
StonyandCher writes in about a collaboration between NASA and a leading Australian exploration and mining scientist, Dr. Brent McInnes, to search for signs of ancient life on Mars. The plan is to develop and miniaturize the "Alphachron" — an exploration technology currently employed by the Australian minerals industry to determine the age of minerals. If the Alphachron can be miniaturized, it could fly with the next rover mission set for launch in 2010. "The highest priority is to understand when liquid water was present on Mars. 'The same minerals that can be found in [Western Australia]... can also be found on Mars,' McInnes said. Accordingly, by using the Alphachron to date minerals on Mars and thus tell when liquid water may have been present, it can be inferred when life may have been sustainable near the surface of the planet."
It's important because it would be our first chance to essentially witness the demise of a once habitable planet, its along the same lines as the immense amount of energy spent on trying to figure out how, where, and why the dinosaurs died.
Its all very interesting, even if for day-today life, its really quite insignificant. Especially considering the same effects that have happened to Mars, could very plausibly happen to Earth aswell even if its not for many more millenium (Millenia?)
And building bases on Mars wont really destroy all the information instantaniously, only dismiss some methods of gathering information.
I think the point is to see if anything has developed on Mars before we go there and contaminate the environment, thereby making it impossible to determine if what is found came with us to Mars or was pre-existing.
Czech out the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Ann in those books makes a very good argument on that basis.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
WHHHHHHHHAT?! C'mon dude.
So you're not the least bit interested if they share the same characteristics as us, such as: DNA, amino acids, organelles, etc, etc?
There are a million and one things I'd prefer to see from life on Mars before I ever knew the location of water (if it exists). I know what water looks like, but extra-terrestrial life, I have no idea.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
If we find an instance of life anywhere that is not on earth then it is highly significant.
It will help us to understand a little better the variables in the Drake equation.
When the solar system was cooling, both Venus and the Earth were probably in similar states. There is the possibility that oceans too formed on Venus, many billions of years ago. Of course now it's hell incarnate, but it may have been able to birth life eons ago.
Finding life is important for at least three reasons. First, the philosophical--if there's life on Mars we're no longer alone. It's an age old question that will finally have an answer. Life on Mars won't be intelligent life, but our estimate of the probability that there's other intelligent life out there somewhere will greatly increase.
Next, Mars has similarities to Earth. If it once supported life but no longer does what changed? Could that same change possibly happen to us?
Finally, scientific curiosity. It's just darned interesting to know these things for the sake of knowing them. What's Martian life like? Is it going to kill every human who sets foot on the planet? Might it yield valuable insights into how life evolved here?
I guarantee, if we find life on Mars there will be people who will disagree with you about who owns it. After all, manifest destiny was a great idea unless you were a Native American.
20 years? 50? 1000?
It's no reason to stop investigation. Your line of reasoning can be compared to saying studying distant galaxies is useless because we won't reach them anytime soon.
Maybe you find researching new forms of energy is useless because the petrol we still have will last at least for your life's length.
Climate change? The earth will most probably endure us for a couple hundred years, leave the investigation to our sons.
Exploring Mars may be useless if you're looking for instant rewards, but sooner or later we'll establish colonies there.
Maybe only jump bases for longer trips. Maybe sun energy collectors. Maybe "martian soy" production fields with robotic managers that regularly send the crop back to Earth. Who knows?
The problem with investigation is precisely that you need to start to be able to know where you're really going; sometimes you even reach a completely unexpected benefit.
And still, life's quite better now than in the 13th century.
I cant rember where i read about it, but theres quite an interesting concept about life on a neutron star (where it would be based about nuclear interactions instead of electronic interaction, somewhere. I think it was probably sci-fi but it is a cool concept.
Generally people consider water essential to life because:
Chemical based life forms are much more likely than nuclear or gravitation based life forms (too small or too slow)
Carbon based life is much more likely than non-carbon based life
Carbon based life depends on water for alot of interactions (mainly due to hydrogen bonding)
Considering non-carbon life forms, if life where nitrogen based, it would probably also depend on water
There is the possibility of phosphorus based life (which would probably be hydrophobic tho)
The possibility of silicon based life also exists (which wouldn't depend on water)
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
From what we know now you need a good solvent. Ammonia is a potential candidate. Hydrogen is not. Methane could be used for respiration in conjunction with life that evolved in ammonia.
Of course, there's plenty we do not know and it's always possible, but with the ubiquity of water and it's favorable properties it's the best place to start. Also, we may be more likely to recognize life that evolved using water as it's solvent. More alien types may just elude us.
That being said, we are talking about life on Mars here, so water would be the most likely substance based on temperature and it's prevalance in the early Martian surface.
Believe it or not, there are whole areas of science NOT concerned with finding more land, killing off the inhabitants, and consuming all the local resources. Finding life on Mars, or the evidence of past life, would impact so many areas of human life, it's hard to really fathom them all. Every expert in religion to biology would weigh in, not to mention the psychologists as we assimilate this new though suspected information into our collective psyche. If it was past life, then what happened to it? What level of complexity did it reach? Was there ever anything close to what we are, as a species?
In fact, finding evidence of life from either the present or the past would be a prime factor in just how much we DO colonize the place. It's all well and good to think we would just bulldoze the area level and set about building, but what if the life is microbial and the wee beasties kill us off?
Sticking a shovel in the Martian surface is NOT the same as it is on Earth, where at least we have a fairly solid understanding of what we are likely to encounter. I, for one, would want to know all about whatever might be living there, past or present, before I build a shelter in which I will shower, use the toilet, etc.
You're missing the point.
..."
Here's a scenario: Someone says, "I want to do X. Here are some thoughts/plans that I've put together for accomplishing my goal. Please help me refine my plans and give me constructive criticism."
Response A: "Don't do that. Your idea is stupid/doomed to fail/a waste of time. Here is a list of reasons why you shouldn't do it."
Response B: "Well, I may not agree with the overall premise, but there are some interesting ideas. Here are some thoughts of my own about how to refine your plans. For example, you're working from flawed assumptions here and here
Do you see the difference? Do you see why response A is seen as not contributing to the discussion? Anyone can quickly come up with reasons why something is not worth doing. It takes time and thought to actually contribute to a discussion.
For example, I could have just called you a stupid hoser and left it at that. But instead, I decided to try and contribute to the discussion. I'm not sure I added much signal to the noise (especially since it's off-topic), but I'm trying.
Response C: ""
And finally, there's the "didn't your mother teach you that if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all" approach. By "nice", I mean constructive. There's nothing wrong with ignoring something that you don't agree with.
This is Slashdot, not Congress. No one is deciding on funding for NASA here. You can rant all you want on Slashdot, but I can guarantee you that your congress-critters aren't going to read your pithy screed about why Mars colonization is a bad idea.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
That Mars life had a demise? We have only explored a tiny fraction of the planet. You are making multiple unsupported ass-u-me-s here.
Let me explain:
1) Life may still exist on Mars, we just haven't found any yet, but given the only places we've really successfully landed were deserts, this isn't surprising;
2) Any life found may possibly still be contamination from probes we've sent;
3) You offer no evidence that Mars is: (a) "once habitable" or (b) "no longer hospitable";
4) You are assuming Mars is similar enough to Earth so that we can project environmental changes from one to the other.
Most of your assumptions are invalid, but let's just look at #4. Mars has considerably less atmosphere and of largely different composition. Earth is covered by water on over 2/3 of it's surface, we have not found sufficient evidence that Mars is capable of close to this. The core of Mars is much smaller than Earth's and as such has cooled significantly, but may still be churning out enough lava to cause more eruptions on the planet's volcanoes, but we have yet to record an eruption on Mars. It will be more than "many millennium" before Earth is cooled this significantly. While most anything is plausible, it is highly improbable, scientifically speaking, that Earth will ever have all of it's water extracted from the atmosphere and locked in ice in the polar regions or in subterranean locations. Or in plain speech, it's not going to happen here save we cause it with WWIII, or we get hit with and ELO.