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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."
They're already sniffing around for more money to send more hardware to Mars. Don't these fucking morons understand how far underwater this country is? We simply do not have the cash to continue shooting billion dollar probes around the solar system that most people do not give the slightest shit about, and paying all these people to sit around in their offices all day and dream up ever more expensive ways to spend my money.
I've always wanted to visit the Mars.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/details.php?id=5928
The InSight mission (formerly called GEMS), would place a lander on Mars that would be designed to drill beneath the surface and investigate the planet's deep interior to better understand Mars' evolution as a rocky planet. As part of its investigation, InSight would use a seismometer and a heat-flow probe to study the interior structure of the Red Planet.
It's more geology than biology oriented, but afik, the final hardware has not yet been determined.
>> 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.
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.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Hey, if we're just speculating, why stop at microbes?
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In former Soviet Russia, you don't search for aliens, aliens search for YOU.
Invisible Pink Unicorns definitely live way above.
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.
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
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.
NASA these days is staying alive more by issuiing a weekly
PR-bulletin than by good old scientific or technological achievement.
It's their Swan-song, in a way.
Me -- I want some proof.
Life happened when Earth was in general far far less comfy to life than it is now. Mars likely had similar conditions very early on, but for a number of reasons (lower gravity, lack of magnetic field), it lost the thick atmosphere that would have made liquid water possible for extended periods of time on its surface. The hypothesis is that Mars may have evolved a biosphere during that period when it possessed a dense atmosphere and liquid water. In that case, even after most of the atmosphere disappeared, some portion of the biosphere that had adapted to living deep underground would have continued on even after the surface of the planet had been rendered completely uninhabitable.
And, of course, we do not know for certain that the entire surface is uninhabitable. We have a damned small sample size, and have landed no probes in places like Valles Marineris, where the atmosphere is considerably denser and liquid water may last longer (we have observed fog there). If I was looking for life closer to the surface, I'd bee doing it in the deepest points of Valles Marineris.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So is that what we need to do to smoke them Mars critters and varmints out . . . ?
And maybe some natural gas, on the side, to power our Mars colonies . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Me -- I want some proof.
That can be a problem. If it was at all possible to prove/disprove the existence of something then the whole discussion about God would be a non-issue.
Well, I guess that it still is possible to prove the existence of something but we will never reach a point where we have proven that there is not life on Mars.
Somehow I find that deeply unlikely, given that life genesis seems to only have happened once even in a place as comfy as Earth.
It can't be proven it only occurred once on Earth, it could just be each redundant genesis was similar enough to combine and we see no difference. There might also have been silicon based lifeforms on Earth before carbon based (if they're better suited to extreme temperatures, and then it'd be even harder to notice them if Si lifeforms live in something like molten salt).
There's probably a clever way to identify non-carbon based lifeforms, by measuring patterns of heat, in some very generic way that indicates a type of recurring multi-step metabolism rather than a simpler chemical reaction. The thing that makes life on earth so widespread and successful across the globe is harnessing solar radiation. Not all forms of life might do that, and then might exist in closed loops (briefly, with the inevitably run-down loop acting like a spore). So, lifeforms might even exist in bizzare places where our type can't, like near black holes or inside stars. Heck, life as we know it is an elaborate chemical reaction, something life-ish based on a fission instead could exist.
The great thing about carbon and silicon are the variety of chemical bonds possible, and with the possibilities that most alternate chemistries could have they might not be capable of becoming multicellular, or even cellular at all. Most life in the universe could be hydrogen based, whose existence involves condensing sets of gaseous molecules into particular isomers and living off temperature differences.
We define life too rigidly. I've heard people argue viruses don't qualify, and these days prions. Organic and inorganic are not the right way to think if you want to find new lifeforms, besides what we already know exist on Earth.
There is no life on Mars. Stop dreaming.
We'll strip mine the other planets later.
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If it was at all possible to prove ... the existence of something
That one's easy: find one.
If it was at all possible to prove ... the existence of something
That one's easy: find one.
It's not that easy, just because you know it's real doesn't mean others will.
If most people think that it is fake or a misreading then it isn't proven. There is also the whole issue with contamination.
Another problem is that proof is subjective. What one person considers proof another might disregard as opinion.
many rocks knocked loose from Earth have landed there
Really? I find that very hard to believe. Earth's atmosphere is so thick that a rock would need to be extremely elongated, basically rocket-shaped, to escape. This is not simply a question of starting out with "escape velocity". Do you have any references to back up that claim?
If MSL could find a fresh crater, it might have a chance to sample potential microbes / organics before the UV and peroxides break them down. The craters left by the tungsten EDL weights would be ideal but their craters are too far away....
It's intraAreale (from Ares), unless you're suggesting that if we go under the Earth (terrestrial) we come up on Mars on the other side....
mark
Here is my second comment entitled "Life IN Mars"; my original comment on this was so long ago that it has vanished. Let me merely add that eventually we will find life inside almost every extra-terrestrial planet-sized-or-larger object (assuming we get there), with the probable exemption of solar objects.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
'This organism has had to figure out everything on its own,' says Amend, 'it splits water into hydrogen and oxygen for metabolism.'
It's hard to believe that geochemist Dr. Amend said that about Desulforudis Audaxviator, since D. Audaxviator is completely intolerant of oxygen, and its sulfate reduction mechanism is right there in its name!
If anyone had bothered to follow the links in that discovery.com article, they would have found this useful article that quotes the original discoverers of Desulforudis Audaxviator: "Tullis Onstott classified the microbe under the genus Desulforudis for its ability to get energy from sulfate and its rod shape... Living deep underground for such a long time has also stripped D. audaxviator of the ability to use oxygen as an electron acceptor in its metabolic pathways, thus making it a strict anaerobe. Instead of oxygen, sulfate is used as an electron acceptor...These [2157] genes allow the microbe to live in almost all conditions except in the presence of oxygen." (my emphasis)
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.