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Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life
sighted writes "NASA is announcing that analysis of a rock sample collected by the Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater last month. The announcement quotes Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program: 'A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment. From what we know now, the answer is yes.'"
I can speculate just as well as the next slashdotter. Mars could have done all sorts of things.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Morgan Fairchild could have made mad passionate love to me last night as my house supports an environment an actress could survive in. Geez, I thought that article on Panspermia was bad...
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
If you just look at the photo of the powdered rock sample, you can see it doesn't look dusty red, like soil samples and rocks from elsewhere on Mars. The red is hematite, a sign of high-oxidation. The grey of Gale Crater says right away that this environment is different, less-oxidized, and probably also a good deal less acidic.
From such maybes come later conclusions likely a good bit more concrete. Exploration and the resulting science is a process; it's not very smart to take a point in midstream and bitch about it. Don't hold your breath, go about your life, and eventually you'll catch notice of something that wows you, or enables your technology, etc.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Could have been....
One aspect of the possibility of life on Mars that is rarely discussed is the fact that there are still a couple of other characteristics of Mars in it's current state that preclude life, as we know it--a lack of a strong magnetic field and the permanent sequestration of CO2 in the ground.
Mars is dead. The core of Mars has long since cooled, leaving it with a much thicker solid mantle then Earth currently has. It may have similar "ingredients" to Earth, but those ingredients on Mars have stopped flowing--much of the magnetic field on Earth is a result of not only the ferrous content, but the motion of that content within the Earth, motion that can only occur in non-solids.
Why is this important? Without a swirling interior, you have a much weaker magnetic field protecting the planet from solar radiation, radiation that is harmful to life. Another more important aspect is the effect of a magnetic field in terms of solar pressure (the same pressure that propels a "solar sail") on the atmosphere of Mars. Here on Earth, our magnetic field counters that pressure from solar winds and literally keeps our atmosphere from "blowing" away. There are other things that keeps our atmosphere around (ha!), like gravity, but protection from solar pressure is important--the solar pressure exerted on Mars is greater then the countering effect generated by Mars' magnetic field.
There is nothing to keep Mars' atmosphere from blowing away.
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/mars_mag/
All of that being said, any CO2 released from the ground--CO2 that would create a greenhouse effect--doesn't stay in the atmosphere. The idea of Terra-forming Mars wouldn't work--we could bring the entire atmosphere of Earth along with us to Mars and it would simply blow away into space.
But, Tardigrades have survived in space a very long time...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrades
Ah, carry on.
So Mars evolved republicans...
Commies, surely.
Well, they do call it the Red Planet.