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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."
Most life evolved based on water in our planet, because there's a lot of it here... that doesn't mean life couldn't have evolved based on hidrogen, or methane, or whatever substance is abundant on a specific planet.
Even on our planet, living creatures have been found in strange places like lava and volcanoes.
Save that money for understanding Mars as it is NOW, before investigating his history.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Wouldn't it be really funny if some space ship that we send to Mars to look for signs of life accidently has some bacteria on it, which goes into the Martian soil and eventually evolves into an alien race?
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
It does the same experiment that the 1970s initial Mars Landers did.
The signs then were inconclusive and will be inconclusive because: We look at other planets with the same glasses we look at Earth.
Heck even on earth, we are still surprised daily by new findings of life we thought could not support life.
And these were detected after so many years and with so good tools.
What makes you say a rover-sized tincan will magically detect past life on Mars?
Has life detection techniques improved so fast in 30 years?
Get about 10 kgs of Mars soil from various locations to Earth orbit (ISS) and let the ISS search it for life.
Stop wasting money and sending tincans all over again.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
It's still available. You don't have to kill anyone (well, except for some microbes, maybe) for it. (Yes, yes, I know. Killing people and taking their stuff takes much, much less energy than getting anything to Mars. Some people may find the former ethically objectionable, though).
Someone has been reading too much sci-fi -- just try playing around with high school physics for about five minutes on exactly how much work would be required to lower an entire atmosphere one stinking degree, and then compare that to the power consumption of the human race.
Oddly enough, humanity has managed about +0.8K here on Earth in about a century, and that was entirely unintentional.
I find it very interesting that all negative comments to finding life on Mars have been modded down. Seems to me that certain people don't like criticism or contrary opinions.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Looking at Google's three-layered Mars map: dunno how they determined their 'zero' with the elevations, but it looks like there are significantly more meteor craters on the 'above zero elevation' parts of the map (Surface water = insulation from meteor impact).
A few thoughts:
(1) Arsia Mons - the enormous volcanic mountain - is almost exactly on the other side of the planet from the -9 km near-circular depression, Hellas Planitia (there's a map with geographic names linked to the the USGS astrogeology image gallery). I wonder if Hellas Planitia is the scar of a meteor that penetrated the planet's crust, and the volcanoes on the other side of the planet from the shock of the impact?
(2) Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Odyssey Mars radiation environment experiment seems to have focused on the impact of solar and other cosmic radiation, rather than scanning Mars for any naturally 'hot' spots? It seems as though Argyre Planitia might be a place to 'look' for higher-than-average radiation of planetary origin: according to Google's Map - the 'infrared' scans - it's thermally "hotter" than surrounding areas, could that be from radioactive decay? Was there a thermonuclear 'event' on Mars, millions of years ago???
(3) It seems that most ecologists do not think all that deeply about the overall and very powerful influences of 'life' on the ecosystem: moderating temperature, plant roots bringing water back to the surface and then transpiring water vapor into the atmosphere, etc., etc. The living ecosystem has a bigger role than most people realize, in maintaining an life-sustaining environment... but if was stressed beyond certain bounds, it would collapse.
Thermonuclear event??? Ecosystem stressed beyond life-sustaining limits??? Like the drifting dunes of what was once the Sahara Forest, perhaps we are looking at the consequences of a planetary ecological disaster, millions of years ago... and, how many 'signs of life' might a Rover find, randomly looking, on the arid drifting sand of Earth's deserts?
If you land on Mars you have to expend lots of energy to get off, whereas if you mine the asteroids, it's a lot cheaper.
;).
We're doing things the wrong way.
Steps should be:
1) Space station with artificial gravity (classic spinning wheel, or stuff on tether)
2) Space station with artificial gravity and decent radiation shielding
3) Figure out how to build space stations from asteroid materials
4) Send space stations to asteroid belts or wherever.
5) Space colonies.
Whereas right now, there's crazy talk of
1) Space trip to Mars
That sure sounds like a one way trip. That's only worth the $$$$ if we can vote for politicians to send on that one way trip. Do that regularly and it'll be a net benefit to the world
When I have mod points, I rarely mod things down. However, I think that the other moderators are actually correct in their downmodding of these posts.
It's not so much that they're quieting dissenting voices -- it's that they're weeding out comments that don't add to the discussion.
Anyone familiar with the concept of Stop Energy will understand. I linked to that particular blog post (not mine), because it underlines the point that Stop Energy is bad behavior.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
"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?"
Besides the whole "no magnetic sphere" and being "too small to hold down an atmosphere" there are other things that we know about Mars already!!! Check out the below link to learn more!
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/funzone_flash.html
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)