Intraterrestrials: Mars Life May Hide Deep Below

astroengine writes "Almost every month we see news dispatches from the Mars where the nuclear-powered rover Curiosity finds water-bearing minerals in rocks and other circumstantial clues that the Red Planet could have once supported life. But in terms of finding direct evidence of past or present Martians, the rover barely scratches the surface, says geochemist Jan Amend of the University of Southern California. Using Earth life as an example, some species of microbes live miles below the surface, without sunlight or oxygen, metabolizing chemicals that are the result of radioactive decay. Most intriguing of all is the microbe Desulforudis Audaxviator that dwells nearly two miles down, a life form that would feel right at home inside Mars' crust. 'This organism has had to figure out everything on its own,' says Amend, 'it splits water into hydrogen and oxygen for metabolism.' Amend hopes to drop probes deep underground in some of the world's most inhospitable locations over the next few years, creating a possible analog for future Mars subsurface studies."

Comments

Deep underground = inhospitable?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Amend hopes to drop probes deep underground in some of the world's most inhospitable locations over the next few years

Where? Beijing? Mexico City? Or the real kind of inhospitable like the Gobi desert or Antarctica? I'd think once you get far enough underground pretty much anyplace would be inhospitable...to humans.

Ugh, more Mars love

[GodfatherofSoul]

I wish I had a few hundred million to push NASA out to Encelaedus or Europa. I bet we could just take samples of water spewed up from below to find evidence of life it it exists on either moon.

Mars life will be DNA based

[Invisible Now]

Panspermia is the theory that life is ubiquitous and travels from planet to planet and star to star. Less unlikely than it seems. For example, dormant spores trapped in salt crystals 25 million years old rejuvenated themselves when released. Life is hardy.

Which of three theories seems on the right side of Occam's Razor:
    That life is unique to Earth (where it is all DNA/RNA based)?
    That life originates in novel non-DNA based ways independently on each planet?
    or that DNA-based life is mobile, seeds planets from above, and then evolves to suit each new environment?

(Wait, I think that could be a Slahdot poll...)

I believe we will find the same is true for life in the the seas of Europa, and elsewhere, too.

Re:Mars life will be DNA based

[Vintermann]

James Lovelock pointed out in the sixties that viewed from space, it would immediately be apparent that earth and life. The prescence of huge amounts of gases which are not stable distinguishes from all other planets in the solar system. He predicted that Mars was in fact dead (before the Viking landers). The idea was that if life had got a foothold, it would probably have managed a similar totally transforming expansion over millions of years. Life that does not leave a big footprint wouldn't seem very much like the life we know from Earth.

You got to admit, it's held up for a long time. Viking sondes found no life on Mars. OK, maybe there used to be life on Mars, at least microbial life? Newer sondes with better instruments find no evidence of that either. If there was, wow, it's done an exceptionally good job of dying out without trace (considering the extremophiles we know from Earth). Now maybe there's life deep in the crust?

Maybe not. And maybe still more excuses will be made if that too fails to pan out.

This would be the least interesting Martian life.

[Dr. Spork]

At this point, we've learned enough about the hardiness and versatility of microbes that I would frankly be surprised if we found a completely sterilized Mars. In the history of the planet, many rocks knocked loose from Earth have landed there, and we know many organisms that could have survived the whole trip. If absolutely nothing took root, I would consider that a mild surprise. With extremophiles being found at pretty much everywhere we looked, we should be ready to find terrestrial extremophiles living even on Mars. That's definitely worth a few articles and TV specials, but it wouldn't really change the way we see the universe. Much more exciting would be to find Martian life of a totally independent genesis. Somehow I find that deeply unlikely, given that life genesis seems to only have happened once even in a place as comfy as Earth.