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Methane-Eating Bacteria May Presage ET Life
asukasoryu sends along an intriguing piece in light of our recent discussion of possible signs of life on Saturn's moon Titan. "Researchers have discovered that methane-eating bacteria survive in a unique spring located on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada's extreme north. The subzero water is so salty that it doesn't freeze despite the cold, and it has no consumable oxygen in it. There are, however, big bubbles of methane that come to the surface. Lyle Whyte, McGill University microbiologist, explains that the so-called Lost Hammer spring supports microbial life, that the spring is similar to possible past or present springs on Mars, and that therefore they too could support life."
Or, in fact, symbiotic organisms on Titan, along with ones which might well be methanogenic in nature if they exist, and at even lower temperatures. Life finds a way, ladies and gents.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Can we transplant some of these methane-eating into the Gulf of Mexico? They're badly needed right now.
Organisms on Earth which live in extreme environments probably evolved from related species which live in less extreme environments. I have no doubt that there are Terrestrial organisms which could survive in certain environments on Mars, but if they have counterparts on Mars, where did they come from? If they evolved on Mars, there has to have been an environment in which such evolution could have taken place over some kind of condition gradient, from less hostile to more hostile. If they came from Earth, you need a hell of a story about how they got there -- not only are meteor strike ejecta a lot less likely to make it from Earth to Mars than the reverse, you have to envision one piece of rock that just happened to be carrying a viable population of (already rare, even here on Earth) extremophiles that were suited for certain (also very rare) Martian conditions, and landed in just the right place.
If we can ever confirm that Mars had a more life-friendly environment for a significant portion of its history, of course, then these objections can be disregarded. But until we have much more evidence of that than we currently do, I'd be very surprised to find native life on Mars. It's much more likely that if anything is living there, it was carried there by probes from Earth -- and even that seems like a one in a million shot.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If humans actually came across intelligent life forms on other planets that were inferior to us, would we:
A. Adopt the Star Trek philosophy
B. Immediately try to "civilize" them like we did to every other foreign culture on our own planet
C. We accidentally kill each other due to cross infection; OOPS!
Hey, that's what my ex called me! So I guess I'm your man- er, bacterium
The story intrigued me, so I browsed wikipedia searching for the history of the atmosphere and atmospheric methane. I find it very difficult to believe the idea of a chunk of Titan travelling all those years, carrying life and enough reserves of methane for the trip. And since methane used to be much more abundant in the atmosphere, isn't it possible that very old, earthy life forms lived off methane?
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
Earth and Mars are constantly seeding life to each other? Wow!
This sounds very interesting at first glance but from the same link:
There is a trap in considering average (annual) values because the transfer of rocks occurs in spikes. It is assumed that impacts by asteroids 1km in diameter or larger are needed to launch ejecta into interplanetary flight. Such impacts produce craters 20km or more in diameter. They occur on Mars and Earth (land impacts only) over typical timescales of one to ten million years.
By definition, viable transfers only take place within 100,000 years of the impact so there are long periods between impacts when Mars rocks that fall to Earth have remained in space for too long and any hitchhiking microbes are assumed to have died. There do not appear to have been large impacts on Mars (or the Earth for that matter) over the past 100,000 years so it is unlikely that "hospitable" Mars rocks are reaching the Earth at present, or vice versa.
Ergo... we are not CONSTANTLY seeding any life to Mars or vice versa
There's been an incredible number of papers on the subject, and the overall conclusion is that lithoautotrophic extremophiles most likely do survive the trip. Your objection to the timescales involved is anthropomorphic thinking. On geological timescales the exchange of meteorites between Earth and Mars is constant, and so yes, we are constantly seeding life to Mars.
How we know is more important than what we know.
And yet, even though it's been happening for a really long time, the supposed life has not grown out of single-celled bacteria, nor has it been observed by humans. On cosmic timescales, the Sun is going to die pretty soon, and humans will probably die in an instant, will we be able to see Mars life before this happens?
As if being fixated with our own farts isn't bad enough, now we intently study microbe's trumps...and use them to spot life on other planets! *sigh*
My web domain.
Well that's the controversial part.. almost every instrument that has been sent to Mars to search for life, actually made it to the surface safely, and managed to turn on, has returned positive results of life on Mars. Every time this has happened there has been denials.. as there's always a malfunction or non-biological explanation that can be used to explain the data. Similarly, every instrument that has returned a negative result for life on Mars (and there's less than have returned positive results) have been shown to be unable to detect life in the extreme locations of Earth, whereas a microbiologist with a $5000 microscope and some plastic slides can find life in these same areas without any trouble. Which is why the question of life on Mars remains open.. and probably will remain open until a sample return mission gives a positive result, and maybe even then not until the first extraterrestrial genome has been sequenced.
As for multi-cellular organisms, for all we know there's plants, moss, or fungi in caves on Mars.. but we'd never know because we've never explored any of them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Your reference scale is too short. Human life vs Age of Earth. Every 100,000 years for 4.5Billion years is pretty constant.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
... this dude feels about that.
If they're methane-eating bacterias, how come there's big bubbles of methane that come to the surface? Or are the bacterias unrelated to the production/source of said methane?
But are you referring to the hot or cold biosphere as being hostile? Ever hear of the deep, hot biosphere? (PDF)
Slashdot has just discovered the anaerobe
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Why does the "I'm My Own Grandpa" song, and the 'Futurama' episode with Fry being his own Grandpa come to mind?
*recursive loop*
*head A Splodes!*
Nevermind, problem(brain) disappeared.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Revoke your geek/nerd card on the way out.
Thus the seed theory (or what ever it's really called)
To answer your question:
"I'll go with 'What is Panspermia' for two hundred, Alex?"
FTWA:
There are those[1] that can proclaim:'Been there, Done that, and WORE the tee shirt out!'
*Disclaimer*
I'm not one of the above.[1]
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Do you realize what you are writing?
You tell us that *every year*, we are impacted by meteoroids so gigantic that the blast sends tons of rock into space.
I'd find humiliating to even ask you where were last year's impacts.
Slashdot looks more and more like the worst sides of Wikipedia: this guy must be right, since he points to an existing url, even if its affirmation is pathetic. Let's mod him interesting.
"Every year".
Convincing.
I suppose now some guy will come telling me it's on the average, on a billion years, that was just a way to talk. Sure.
Herve S.
caves on Mars.. [...] we've never explored any of them.
That's something that's always bugged me about the Mars missions. Maybe it's just that I've only seen the popular images from the rovers - the panoramas of plains - but it seems fairly obvious to me that if life isn't rampant on Mars then it might be hiding in more sheltered environments, such as caves.
There is the human interest element, too. People see a panorama of Mars and most people say "wow, you went to a lot of trouble to take a photo of some rocks that kinda looks like Arizona through a colour filter". Even if you understand how awesome it is (and it is awesome) the photos aren't spectacular until you realise what they are of. If you want to increase interest in exploration take a photo of Olympus Mons. Take a photo of something that looks, well, out of this world.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Lack of oxygen does not mean life cannot exist. Not all life processes need oxygen.
Google "anaerobic respiration"
Funny you should mention that. I took a bunch of pictures with my hot-wheels pathfinder model when I went to Arizona on vacation many years ago. A lot of the regular people who I showed them to couldn't tell the difference until shown the real images side by side.
When Lovelock was first contracted by NASA to invent machines to search for life, he investigated all sorts of extremophiles--the kind of 'life' we might expect to find on Mars--and quickly concluded that life isn't a bacterium, it is a system of recycling various chemicals that works in conjunction with the sorts of organisms we think of as 'life.' That was his discovery of Gaia. Too many 'real' scientists didn't understand what he had discovered and bought into the greenie definition of Gaia as some sort of spiritual earth mother. They replaced the concept with Earth Systems Science but that is not the same concept.
Thinking of Gaia as a one-celled organism puts it into better perspective. A cell is not completely controlled by the nucleus nor does it cause physical processes like osmosis. Gaia does not create species; it does not have a controlling brain, and it 'makes use' (do not interpret that phrase anthropomorphically) of calcium carbonate subduction under continental plates. Organisms depend on free chemicals for respiration and physics tends to work against providing free, easy-to-connect-to chemicals.
Lovelock lost the contract because he said we can use spectrometers to investigate whether an atmosphere is 'alive' or not and not have to send expensive equipment. This was not the answer the NASA contracting officer was willing to accept.